Nav Light Conundrum?

[lpdsn]

Please remember the lumens output is measured at source not at a distance so hard to compare. Led light output has a far narrower band in the light spectrum compared with incandescent bulbs. This may explain why I have found at night yachts with led nav lights are harder to spot at a distance than ones with older incandescent bulbs.

Certainly not my experience where AtoNs have been fitted with LEDs. Sometimes they are so bright you question whether you are seeing the right buoy and wonder if a new closer one you hadn't heard about has been added.

 

[Roberto]

All true, but they wouldn't know that Roberto was a sailing boat without sighting him visually.

(I'm assuming he wasn't transmitting AIS or there would be no mystery.)

Pete

Hello Pete,
indeed I was both transmitting AIS and having the radar target enhancer on, hardly invisible for a warship.
I show a French MMSI, on that occasion they hailed me in French (we were off French speaking Senegal); a few other times I was hailed in English by French military (ships and airplane), off French Guyana, maybe they were not using AIS?

Talking about visibility, the military airplane flew very low over me, then called by VHF saying "please remove the fenders from the transom, we could not read the name of the boat"