All vessels are charged with eliminating lighting that interferes with the visibility of navigation lights.
This does not mean that they comply. I had a close call with a tanker in Long Island sound a few years ago. We were closing with the tanker on my port bow so he was the give-way vessel. He had many deck lights that had a bluish color as in florescent lights. He even had weather doors open showing interior florescent passageway lights. His green sidelight was completely invisible and it was impossible to get a judgment of his aspect. He just looked like a blob of lights. We were using the radar image to see that he had a constant bearing. I managed to contact him on VHF 13 and he agreed that we had a too-small CPA then suggested I turn firmly to my left. Rather than point out that he was the give-way vessel I just got the hell out of his path. As we passed about a hundred yards away we eventually saw his green light in a totally unexpected position low and towards the stern. I was sorry I could not note the name of the vessel to report his dangerous and illegal operation. When I was going to sea on big ships we used yellow bulbs, many shielded to shine the light just down onto the deck, for deck lights and took care to keep portholes curtained at night. Commercial vessels at anchor do not comply the 360 deg anchor light requirement. Their anchor light is invariably fairly low on the bow and thereby occulted by all of the deck gear as well as the deck house. However, for all but legal hair-splitters, this is moot because they are also required to turn on all available deck and working lights when anchored making them look like a small floating city. Our problem in small craft is that the "legal" requirement is not the safest solution. The 360 deg anchor light at the highest point of the vessel keeps it from being occulted, but it is then in a position so high up that it is not readily seen by the approaching helmsman. With the advent of LED lights I would say that the safest would be multiple LED lights at various points low down and well in the view of an approaching helmsman's area of most attention, as well as a masthead light to satisfy the letter of the law. Personally, I have interior LED night lights that come on with my automatic anchor light to make moving about in the boat at night safer. It wouldn't take much to have some visible from outside. They wouldn't have to be two or three mile visibility as the masthead light covers the legal requirements, but just enough to show an approaching helmsman that there is a vessel in front of him. While on the subject, I do wish folks travelling at night would remove their ensign if it occults their stern light. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Gloucester MA > I mean when's the > last time you saw a large, properly-illuminated vessel that didn't have > a whole mess of extra lighting beyond the required display (submarines > don't count? > > Cheers, > Kris > _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
