Navigation and Other Lights

[BoatCop]

I got this from the Coast Guard, expressing concern with Navigation and other decorative lights. Since a lot of us use rope and other party lights on our toons, reading this may keep us from causing a collision and out of trouble.

http://www.nasbla.org/Files/News/MSANav ... ts2015.pdf

[nugilo92]

Great info. I was wondering about that myself. My boat has rope lights under bench seats that I don't think will cause any issues.

[sunedog]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.

I added blue LED's to both sides of my pontoon. My boat is 22' long and I added 16' strips to each side. They stop 2' or 3' from the front navigational lights so I don't think they "impair the visibility or distinctive character of approved and properly placed navigation lights." They are not green, yellow or white, so I don't see how they could be "mistaken for navigation lights." While they reflect off the water beautifully, they don't in any way "interfere with the operator’s ability to maintain a proper lookout."

After being out in the madness of the fireworks celebration of Independence Day, there is no doubt in my mind a boat with strip lights down its length is much easier to see and less likely to get into a collision. You can literally see them for miles.

The head DNR officer on our large lake is an acquaintance of mine. After I installed my lights, the first time I saw him at a marina after dark I asked him to come look at my boat and give me a definitive yes or no on whether any of his officers would pull me for light violations. He said, unequivocally, "No."

Interestingly enough, there was a center console with a T-top parked right next to my boat. It had blue LED's under the T-top. He said a boat with that set-up running in a chop looks like it has flashing blue lights (which are strictly reserved for law enforcement in my state.) He said one of his officers saw one like that running a few miles off and, thinking it was a law enforcement boat in pursuit, tried to reach them by radio. When he couldn't raise him, the officer chased the boat for quite a ways until they caught up to it. That officer was pissed.

[OldePharte]

I find fascinating the enforcement of the "extra" lighting depends upon how large the offending vessel is. We have a lot of bass boats, pontoons, and wake boats that have the LED lighting along with the cruisers. The ones that get stopped are the smaller vessels. The big cruisers seem to always get a pass.

Probably 20 years ago, I wanted to add strip lighting around a pontoon; red on left, green on the right, and white along the back. All basically to make me more visible. The water patrol, obviously, said no freakin' way. It would interfere with other boaters. "Making myself more visible is a problem?" Yes, other boaters are only looking for the standard navigation lights and anything else is confusing and could cause an issue. Sigh.

[Reiner]

I find fascinating the enforcement of the "extra" lighting depends upon how large the offending vessel is. We have a lot of bass boats, pontoons, and wake boats that have the LED lighting along with the cruisers. The ones that get stopped are the smaller vessels. The big cruisers seem to always get a pass.

Probably 20 years ago, I wanted to add strip lighting around a pontoon; red on left, green on the right, and white along the back. All basically to make me more visible. The water patrol, obviously, said no freakin' way. It would interfere with other boaters. "Making myself more visible is a problem?" Yes, other boaters are only looking for the standard navigation lights and anything else is confusing and could cause an issue. Sigh.

The red & green lights have a 112.5 degree radius, your white light shines 135 or 360 degrees so other boaters can tell at night from what direction, angle and where you're heading. Your lights maybe visible but would obstruct that purpose.

[teecro]

While I tend to agree with the common thought process that lighting your boat up like a Christmas tree would indeed make it easier for someone to see and avoid at night but in todays world when you just happen to get run over and end up with a court case the opposing lawyer will ask one question "Were you displaying any other lighting besides USCG approved running lights?" When you answer yes the case will be done and over....

Having worked on boats and ships all my adult life even our running lights have changed to the point that we must use USCG approved bulbs inside our running lights. For many years we simply used regular screw in bulbs of the required voltage and wattage. But due to ever changing litigation it got to the point that we had to change to specific approved bulbs that despite being many times more costly they were more failure prone.....

Light her up like a shrimp boat and while you may never get run over you will sooner or later attract the attention of the wrong person while underway and get your chance to donate to the dance....

[nugilo92]

I think Reiner has the best point. Really, the navigation lights are a huge clue as to what direction another boat is traveling. Anything taking away from that may be a distraction and confuse other boaters. We are on a small lake with very little night time boaters, and I only have the underseat lighting on the inside of the boat which probably won't be visible to other boaters anyways, so I hope I won't have any issues.

[Strake]

On our lake, (Smith Mountain Lake), several of the 5 different police agencies are really cracking down on folks running with anything additional besides proper running lights. 2 of our friends have been stopped. One for running at night with underwater (blue) lights, and the other for running with LED lights on the perimeter.

We had underwater lights on our last boat ( Sea Ray 250 SLX) but after hearing that my buddy was stopped, we only ran them when anchored in a cove. Rarely used them anyway...... NO additional external lights for this boat. We have the blue LED "mood lights" on the interior of this boat.

[OldePharte]

I find fascinating the enforcement of the "extra" lighting depends upon how large the offending vessel is. We have a lot of bass boats, pontoons, and wake boats that have the LED lighting along with the cruisers. The ones that get stopped are the smaller vessels. The big cruisers seem to always get a pass.

Probably 20 years ago, I wanted to add strip lighting around a pontoon; red on left, green on the right, and white along the back. All basically to make me more visible. The water patrol, obviously, said no freakin' way. It would interfere with other boaters. "Making myself more visible is a problem?" Yes, other boaters are only looking for the standard navigation lights and anything else is confusing and could cause an issue. Sigh.

The red & green lights have a 112.5 degree radius, your white light shines 135 or 360 degrees so other boaters can tell at night from what direction, angle and where you're heading. Your lights maybe visible but would obstruct that purpose.

I understand all that and it works fine for just about every off-shore activity. Consider this - it's moonless night, relatively tight channel, and you come up on a single white light. Obviously, it is going away from you - maybe. Is it going straight ahead, turning slightly, or coming at you? Granted, one must always keep a sharp lookout, but considering that a lot of large cruisers can't see 100 feet in front of them and if they just happen to miss that single white light, one can get run over real quickly.

[BoatCop]

A lot of people think that navigation lights on boats are just to make them be seen by other boaters. They actually convey a whole bunch more information than just that a boat is there.

Lights will tell you:

1) Which direction a vessel is traveling.
2) What kind of vessel it is
3) What the vessel is doing (fishing, trawling, minesweeper, dredge, pilot boat, air boat, etc.)
4) What side of the vessel it's safe to pass on (dredges, fishing gear, outriggers, etc)
5) Whether the vessel is under command or not (can maneuver on her own or not)
6) Whether the vessel is constrained by draft
7) Length of vessel and/or tow, and/or trawl/fishing lines/nets.
8 ) Whether vessel is sail or power boat

and a bunch more scenarios that slip my memory right now.

Other lights, like rope or party lights, can interfere with the displayed nav lights. For people like me, who were required to know this stuff to pilot Coast Guard vessels, seeing unauthorized lighting is confusing and may cause collisions.

Here's a link to a pretty neat little quiz that will test your knowledge of navigation light displays. Click on "Navigation Lights Test" under the picture of of the USCG surf boat on the right.

http://www.usboating.com/test.htm

While we may not see all of these light configurations on our local little inland lake, we will see them on larger rivers, like the Mississippi, Missouri, etc. and on larger bays or lakes, e.g. the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, or harbors of major ports.

[Strake]

A lot of people think that navigation lights on boats are just to make them be seen by other boaters. They actually convey a whole bunch more information than just that a boat is there.

Lights will tell you:

1) Which direction a vessel is traveling.
2) What kind of vessel it is
3) What the vessel is doing (fishing, trawling, minesweeper, dredge, pilot boat, air boat, etc.)
4) What side of the vessel it's safe to pass on (dredges, fishing gear, outriggers, etc)
5) Whether the vessel is under command or not (can maneuver on her own or not)
6) Whether the vessel is constrained by draft
7) Length of vessel and/or tow, and/or trawl/fishing lines/nets.
8 ) Whether vessel is sail or power boat

and a bunch more scenarios that slip my memory right now.

Other lights, like rope or party lights, can interfere with the displayed nav lights. For people like me, who were required to know this stuff to pilot Coast Guard vessels, seeing unauthorized lighting is confusing and may cause collisions.

Here's a link to a pretty neat little quiz that will test your knowledge of navigation light displays. Click on "Navigation Lights Test" under the picture of of the USCG surf boat on the right.

http://www.usboating.com/test.htm

While we may not see all of these light configurations on our local little inland lake, we will see them on larger rivers, like the Mississippi, Missouri, etc. and on larger bays or lakes, e.g. the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, or harbors of major ports.

OK..... I bit, and now feel really dumb..... only got 35% correct. YIKES.... Time to break out the Chapman's book during the winter break.

[OK Toon]

Just one more reason I won't be on the water after dark. It's not only what I do and know, it's also about what the other boat captains do and know. I have plenty of daylight hours to be on the water. When the sun goes down, we move the party to our dock where we are hopefully a little safer. Then we can run all the party lights we want. I've put up LED RGB strip lights in the dock with a remote control to change the colors or make them fade -- I should have added the controller to make them change with the beat of the music.

[nugilo92]

Humbling quiz! Good thing I don't encounter most of those scenarios on my lake, but really some information that would be good to know. Time to start studying.

[rancherlee]

I know in Minnesota the frown upon directly visible lights but lights that are hidden and cause a glow are fine. I've seen people ticketed for driving boats around with running/docking lights on, usually out shining the Nav lights. Never heard of anyone getting a ticket for "glow" or underwater lights though as the Navigation lights are usually 10x brighter and easy to see.

[teecro]

Just a funny observation over the years of working on large boats and ships is the Captain and Mates who do the navigation are plum crazy about blocking out any unneeded light that they will go around to any piece of equipment in the wheelhouse and if they are unable to dim power lights etc they will paint or tape them over... And I can't say that I blame them one bit for this as while I don't use our boat at night very much I absolutely hate any light that comes up from the dash gauges so much so that I have pulled the bulbs out. I have no need to see the fuel, tach or trim gauges whatsoever while navigating at night.