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Thread: Navigation Lights

  1. #151
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    San Rafael, CA
    Posts
    3,621
    p bryant. Give this guy your full attention. Ebb is way too wordy and gets confused.
    It's the end of the year almost -- I feel like this one, 2021, deserves a big boot, but
    there are many confused and destructive souls around that only time can cure. At
    the moment even a mutating virus is smarter than science.

    MAST HEAD LIGHT CONFUSION
    So I won't mention Colregs or IRPCS.

    What is a steaming light? It is a FORWARD FACING NAV LIGHT.
    It is not an ALL ROUND. It is a WHITE light displaying a 225 degree
    forward facing arc. All boats have this light including freighters.
    Sailboats have the same light so they are able to legally power
    at night without using their sails. Along with a 360degree allround
    tricolor at the top of a mast OR a spread of three red, green, and
    white navigation lights at deck level. Never both at the same time.
    At deck level We have red/green sidelights as a bi-color in the pulpit
    and/or at the cabin's aft corners - also never lit at the same time.
    The pulpit combo light even at IP67 is vulnerable and exposed.
    Redundant side lights seems prudent..


    Sailboats use the term 'mast head light' for a 225degree navlight
    found above deck level usually mounted on the mast. We could use
    a white stern light up there, but it would not be appropriate. These
    days the forward facing light is combined with a down facing white
    spot light. It is not a navigation light. At night it lights up the
    foredeck (and messes with your night vision). And legally would not
    be on at the same time as the steaming lamp.


    How to keep this straight? Simple.. Consider and spell it

    'mast HEADLIGHT',

    like your wheels. That would arrange the other spelling as MASTHEAD
    light. No single light we have nav lights up there ljke the tri-color,
    port - stbd - stern - allround white light called ANCHORlight - never
    used when the vessel is moving. We do NOT have a legal navigation
    masthead light. You
    certainly can call the tricolor mast-top a single fixture (sometimes the
    combo nav light that sometimes may include the allround white anchor
    lamp.) But mast headlight is better reserved as navigation
    nomenclature for a forward facing white lamp of a vessel UNDER POWER.

    And that is why a mast headlight is not at the mast head (mast top).


    There is a movement afloat to sail at night offshore with
    RED OVER GREEN,
    allround nav lights that pbryant is a proponent. He has posted here and
    elaborated on a Cruising site how to wire and switch the system. Serious
    cruisers are unanimous in NOT obeying the single tricolor on a dark hull
    directive. If you will, they say it's at your peril. But it is the current rule..
    If you insist, I suggest for our boats a 3NM tricolor..

    I've now gone with MARINEBEAM 3.5" x 3" plastic IP67 navlights. At the
    moment I'll go with the redundancy of having a red/green bicolor in the
    pulpit and a 2nd set on the cabin-trunk sides where the originals were.
    Creative mounting require4d. $89 ea. 2021.
    I chatted with mb & asked him if they had a R.O.G. in the works.. Nope.
    They will have to come up with something soon, there's $$$ to be made
    there. imco, in a dark & stormy night it's preferable to be lit up like a truck.
    Marinebeam wld be reasonable and do it right.

    pbryant has a solution that makes sense. He has mounted two allround
    greens about a meter down his mast on the opposite port & starboard
    sides when lit up throw enuf green to look green all round -- and with
    the single red allround on the mast-top passes for R.O.G. (Green has double
    the lumens but the red is in the alpha spot.) His single 3 position toggle
    switch solution exists here or on the Cruising site, he hasn't revealed whose
    allrounds he used. At night we'd probably have a reef in the main -- sure
    I would! [This toggle switch is intuitive. Will find & record it here.]


    MOST IMPORTANT.. we in R.O.G. at the same time are allowed to have our
    DECK LIGHTS ON. And the ability to indicate the vessel's length with pulpit
    and stern lights seems prudent. Red over Green, with its unique separation,
    is instantly recognizable by professionals as a sailboat under sail.

    R.O.G. is for an offshore boat under sail at night. Personally, sailing r.o.g.
    I wld have the pulpit bi-color on, the cabin mounted green and red off,
    and stern light on. And the r.o.g. instantly registers with the lookout
    size, type, direction, location and speed of the interloper. If lookout on the
    other vessel isn't responding, I'd probably use a wildly agitated spotlight.
    Or a flare!~!


    Some time ago evidently I followed thru on this & lo found in my stash 3
    allround HELLA LAMPS: two green, one red. Base is 3", stand-out about
    3", which is a stretch for an apparent single lamp 3"+mast 3.5"+3". 2NM
    - LED - CE - 9-33V. Found inside the blister-pac: IP67. $105.99 ea. 6/2018.


    Take care..
    Last edited by ebb; 04-11-2022 at 07:53 AM.

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