Are anchor lights a navigation hazard?

[Nostrodamus]

We are anchored in a particularly busy bay at the moment and at night most people turn on their anchor lights.
The trouble is some are on the top of the mast and some have little solar lights somewhere on deck level.
Although some of the solar lights are difficult to make out the real problem is the anchor lights which are red, blue, green or orange and flash!
Now it may attract your attention but for a boat approaching the anchorage from a distance seeing a red or green flashing light must look like some kind of buoy or marker and could be a navigational hazard. You check your charts or plotter but there is nothing yet you see the flashing light ahead!
Why when so many people are obsessed with rules of the road is this one ignored.
Could a green or red flashing anchor light be a navigational hazard?

 

[michael_w]

The boats pretending to be a northerly cardinal or the feeble yellow garden lights that make a boat look like a street light 4 miles away. Still it's better than nothing I suppose.

 

[geem]

The boats pretending to be a northerly cardinal or the feeble yellow garden lights that make a boat look like a street light 4 miles away. Still it's better than nothing I suppose.

I have to say I am strongly opposed to the idiots that think it is ok to use flashing red, blue, green or whatever colour they fancy in an anchorage. There are rules that need to be obeyed for all our safety. Can you imagine the scene if everybody used these illegal lights? You are trying to follow a buoyed channel into an anchorage and all over the place are flashing lights pretending to be channel markers and then there are the real markers, it’s raining and blowing and you can’t see so well. These people need there lights ramming where the sun don’t shine! Anchor lights should not flash and they shoulde be white, end of

 

[sailaboutvic]

I have to say I am strongly opposed to the idiots that think it is ok to use flashing red, blue, green or whatever colour they fancy in an anchorage. There are rules that need to be obeyed for all our safety. Can you imagine the scene if everybody used these illegal lights? You are trying to follow a buoyed channel into an anchorage and all over the place are flashing lights pretending to be channel markers and then there are the real markers, it’s raining and blowing and you can’t see so well. These people need there lights ramming where the sun don’t shine! Anchor lights should not flash and they shoulde be white, end of

Yea , I with you on that one .
PS
Do anyone know where I can buy a green flasting light ? Only joking

 

[rich]

lights at the top of masts, useless when you get closer in, on a dark n stormy night.

 

[sadlerbob]

Last year we were above a fairly new yacht in Dartmouth both of us anchored just below ditisham he had flashing lights. I wondered what the outcome would have been, if another vessel had collided with him.

 

[affinite]

I dont know where you sail, but in Greece and Turkey the anchorages are full of all manner of fixed and flashing "anchor" lights.
Many of the big mobos have a pair of red flashing lights on their stern lines.
I do agree with you wrt adhering to international rules but I think that this particular battle was lost years ago. (at least in the Med)
Try telling the Greeks that they should start enforcing anchor light regulations right now and I think you'll get an interesting reply.
Better an anchored boat has some sort of light than none at all.
One year in Lakka I did think of fixing one of those little illuminated Christmas trees that you see in lorry cabs to the top of the mast, but I thought that the irony would be lost on most of my neighbours.

 

[oldharry]

Anchor lights = fixed all round white. Flashing coloured lights can have other meanings, or none at all. Therefore unless showing a fixed white, the vessel is not showing an anchor light. Thats how both insurers and courts would see it, and insurers are always looking for ways of not paying out.

 

[awol]

How else can you identify your AWB from all the others in an anchorage full of the things when you stagger back from the hostelry?

 

[Mrnotming]

Would one be able to pick up an AIS signal which one's vessel would be sending to something like marine traffic.com
whilst off the boat? It would mean having a smartphone with data.might not work so well in isolated Greek bay!
Of Course a steady white light would also be suspended in the fore triangle in place of the daytime shape.

 

[RupertW]

How else can you identify your AWB from all the others in an anchorage full of the things when you stagger back from the hostelry?

Exactly - I'm in agreement with those who say that lights at the top of the mast are useless, and coloured ones are dangerours, but I do use and like a couple of solar powered garden lights - one at bow and one at stern to help avoid collisions with boats coming in late. Lights at eye level visible from 100 yards away will do me fine.

However to ensure we can identify our boat amongst all the lights we have a set of solar powered (non flashing) white fairy lights in a nice arch across the back of the bimini. Hideous but very distinctive - even from half a mile away when all the individual lights are completely invisible the arch shape is somehow very clear.

 

[prv]

How else can you identify your AWB from all the others in an anchorage full of the things when you stagger back from the hostelry?

Press the remote fob in my pocket and the very bright LED deck lights under the spreaders come on

Actually I haven't wired that up yet - I have the lights and they are awesomely bright, but only controlled by a switch in the cockpit for now. But remote control would be very easy to do, and modules promising several hundred metres of range are under a tenner from China.

(Our anchor light hangs above the ball in the foretriangle, has bright white LEDs facing outwards, and less bright "warm" LEDs pointing downwards to gently illuminate the foredeck and show how the boat is lying.)

Pete

 

[Highland Bear]

We have a full set of disco lights with multi coloured strobes and rotating glitter ball to display when at anchor. That way other vessels assume we must be some dance hall or pub on shore and come nowhere near us!

 

[dslittle]

We are anchored in a particularly busy bay at the moment and at night most people turn on their anchor lights.
The trouble is some are on the top of the mast and some have little solar lights somewhere on deck level.
Although some of the solar lights are difficult to make out the real problem is the anchor lights which are red, blue, green or orange and flash!
Now it may attract your attention but for a boat approaching the anchorage from a distance seeing a red or green flashing light must look like some kind of buoy or marker and could be a navigational hazard. You check your charts or plotter but there is nothing yet you see the flashing light ahead!
Why when so many people are obsessed with rules of the road is this one ignored.
Could a green or red flashing anchor light be a navigational hazard?

Careful Mark

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29127726

 

[JumbleDuck]

I have to say I am strongly opposed to the idiots that think it is ok to use flashing red, blue, green or whatever colour they fancy in an anchorage. There are rules that need to be obeyed for all our safety. Can you imagine the scene if everybody used these illegal lights?

In what way are they illegal?

 

[Pye_End]

20 (b) ?

 

[Capt Popeye]

Anchor lights = fixed all round white. Flashing coloured lights can have other meanings, or none at all. Therefore unless showing a fixed white, the vessel is not showing an anchor light. Thats how both insurers and courts would see it, and insurers are always looking for ways of not paying out.

Yep, totally agree

 

[Resolution]

Anchor lights = fixed all round white. Flashing coloured lights can have other meanings, or none at all. Therefore unless showing a fixed white, the vessel is not showing an anchor light. Thats how both insurers and courts would see it, and insurers are always looking for ways of not paying out.

Fine, so you have your all round white as required either at masthead or better somewhere in the foretriangle, PLUS your additional non-navigational lights to help you identify your boat amongst the many. Like almost every commercial ship at anchor in port. Any legalistic objections?

 

[Pye_End]

Any legalistic objections?

20

(b) The Rules concerning lights shall be complied with from sunset to sunrise and during such times
no other lights shall be exhibited, except such lights as cannot be mistaken for the lights specified
in these Rules or do not impair their visibility or distinctive character, or interfere with the
keeping of a proper look-out.

 

[Resolution]

20

(b) The Rules concerning lights shall be complied with from sunset to sunrise and during such times
no other lights shall be exhibited, except such lights as cannot be mistaken for the lights specified
in these Rules or do not impair their visibility or distinctive character, or interfere with the
keeping of a proper look-out.

More specifically Rule 30, Anchored Vessels,
(c) A vessel at anchor may, and a vessel of 100m and more in length, shall also use the available working or equivalent lights to illuminate her decks. (My BOLD).

I read this to mean that I am permitted to illuminate my decks with whatever colour flashing garden gnomes I happen to favour at the time. But not to leave my red/green navigation lights on.