Christmas in the City

As you can see from the pictures that Chris posted yesterday, the weather was stunning whilst we were installing the temporary lighting on the top of KZ1. The boat on the edges of the Auckland Viaduct Harbour has been lit for the team at Heart of the City as a part of Christmas in the City. All of us who were involved felt spoilt to have such an amazing "office" for the morning looking over the Waitamata Harbour on such a (surprisingly) sunny day.

KZ1 is one of the many vessels under the care of Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum. As such we had to be a little creative in how we mounted lighting onto the deck of this iconic boat to ensure that there would be no damage to what is a museum exhibit. Thanks to Murray and the team at the Voyager for their assistance in helping us plan this installation. They kindly found the orignial drawings that were used in the construction of KZ1 in their archives, and from these we were able to find the general dimensions of the boat upon which to base our plans. It was a unique privilage to look through the beautifuly hand-drawn drawings - and getting to see all the various notes and ammendments that had been pencilled in on various pages.

Anyway, after much deliberation we developed a raised platform installation that is supported by rubber based feet and then strapped to the top of the deck ensuring that there will be no damage to the surface and fittings of the yacht whilst still creating a solid mounting for the luminiares lighting up the mast. The pieces of the platform were all brought to site unassembled, ferried to the top in a snorkle lift, and reassembled on deck. Thanks to Chris Huff's thorough preparation everything fitted together perfectly like a giant jigsaw puzzle three stories up.

Last night we were again back down at the Viaduct, this time watching the sun set over the boats in the harbour. Once the darkness set in we were able to finish off commisioning the installation by aiming the luminiares and setting the programming. Our aim was to give a soft wash of light up the curved 48m high mast to add a some emphais and colour to the structure, in addition to the Christmas lights and decorations that have been adorning the boat in the place of rigging for the last few years at Christmas.

The result was fantastic, with the entire structure of the mast picking up the soft color and the Christmas star at the top also catching the light from the color blast over the boom. It was amazing to see the small 50W RGB Color Blast (the small white fitting Chris is aiming in the image above) throw light up over 48m to the star at the very top!