Security at anchor - camera in top of mast

[SV Bacchus]

On eBay you can buy fake cameras for about $10, or less. Put a couple around the outside where they can be clearly seen. You have to put a battery in them every once in a while so the little red light flashes.

You should then hook up an interior light to a timer so that it comes on for about 5 minutes every 20 minutes. If a BG (bad guy) is casing your boat he will think someone is awake and hopefully go somewhere else. If someone else approaches without casing the boat and the light clicks on the BG would surely think you heard and/or saw him/her!

Better than a dog because you don't have to clean up after it or feed it!

But if you really want to spend the money go to YouTube and look up Sailing SV Happy Together and find the episode where the owner details the security system he installed.

[SecondBase]

Whatever solution you decide on for yourself obviously be certain you prevent this outcome.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/time/...3/ze2s0oTNjp0/

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by SecondBase

Whatever solution you decide on for yourself obviously be certain you prevent this outcome.

A 4-Year-Old Is in Critical Condition After Shooting Himself | Time.com

So a strightforward technical question brings responses on lifestyle, moralizing, self righteousness and now guns .... hilarious. Next .... anchors.

[Pelagic]

Since the goal is to primarily to deter, but also record, then a simpler solution is to put a variable timer on Security/ flood lights to come on for a few minutes at night.

This automatically draws attention to your boat and will ward off boarders who depend on the darkness
a low light camera covering the cockpit

[Roy M]

SecondBase, sorry for not responding earlier. Your question was what camera for a masthead. No camera for this condition, since it would make one very seasick just to watch the image shift back and forth with every ripple on the water making the masthead whip about. Better to have a battery of four cameras: three rigged at 120 degrees to keep a perimeter record, and the fourth to be a PTZ for zooming in when you want to monitor the camera personally. A fifth camera choice would be (if I could afford $10K+) would be a FLIR to actually read a heat image, as someone else has pointed out. The cameras I refer to, from SCD, work passively in low to zero light levels, illuminating their targets with infrared lamps. While helpful, these low light cameras lack the resolution desired for excellent identification. However, if you are home alone and you hear a bump in the night, being able to take a quick looksee to see if a potential problem exists beats no options. If you don't like what you see, then you can activate your deck lights, or as some boats I won't mention might do, turn on the High Intensity Discharge decklights (directed outwards, just below the horizontal) to activate the full color, high resolution capacity of the rest of the cameras. Just turning on the lights can have a profound effect on a bad boy coming closer. If that doesn't work, the switch next to the HID lights goes to the 130dB siren alarm (three languages, English, Spanish, French) that tells bad boys to play elsewhere, wakes up the neighbors and the rest of the folks within earshot that something bad is about to occur near by.

[jeff gedgaud]

Get a dog, best alarm you could have. And you can list him/her as crew, night watchmen, security, etc. Even therapist if you train your dog that way.

[masonc]

If you have internet available, you can can put a couple of blink cameras in your cabin. if anyone opens the hatch and enters, you will get emailed a video. I have three on my boat and they work great.