There were 4 of these lights. I guess one could sleep with their head on either end and still have a reading light. They are old and two were so frail that they were falling apart and posed a danger of creating a short. Some months ago I set out to simply remove the switch on each and replace with a new switch (outside of the old fixtures). This turned out to be a lot of trouble due to how the wiring is run. So I changed the plan to simply remove the two frail lights (I have stored them in case a future owner wants to do something different).
I had to paint all of the white in the area so I decided to not remount all of the art that was hanging on it… just the two main ones. I will see how this feels over time.
Got it all back together just in time to head to the Pender Harbour Days. The boat is not in the kind of shape that I would take it all the way down to Vancouver/Victoria for those boat shows (ie canvas over aft cockpit needs to be replaced) – but Pender Harbour is close. The plan is to ready the boat for Vancouver/Victoria over the winter and attend next summer.