Navigation lights

[Guest]

In light of the recent posts about ships, lookouts and yachts. Do you not think it is strange that the requirements for navigation lights have not really changed even though the relative speeds have?

Why is it that a small boat should have only little lights but a ship have bigger ones! It is still the same mark one eye ball that is looking at each other. (Unless you have sunglasses on)

Take the Aquasignal range for masthead lights:
Series 20 Masthead 5Watt <12metres Min Range 2nm
Series 25 Masthead 10Watt <12metres Min Range 2nm
Series 40 Masthead 25Watt <20metres Min Range 3nm
Series 55 Masthead 25Watt <50metres Min Range 5nm
Series 70 Masthead 40Watt >20meters Min Range 5nm

Obviously the ranges are their minimum standard. So a 25W bulb can be used in a light for 5nm range.
So why does anyone use anything less than the 50metres standard?

In particular LEDs! Absolute minimum requirements only. So you spend all that money just to make sure you can NOT be seen in time. Also fitting lights that will be the first thing to pack up in a lightning strike is strange.

Not trying to start the debate about LED (Yes I would like to, but not in this thread) But in general why do yachties think that it is good to wear all black clothing and walk across the M25? If you want a ship to miss you, then have the lights that will give them a chance at the 5nm range.
Running 70W computer, 30W radars and 50W high brightness screens and then using the equivalent of 5 and 10 watt navigation lights is not sensible.

As for the quality of some of the lights! The problem is that they are hard to seal due to temperature changes. So why are the contacts just unprotected copper strips. The main failure of navigation lights is due to the bulb holder resistances and corrosion of the contacts. The bulbs blow only when using very high boost charge voltages on the batteries or the holder allows them to vibrate. My bow lights take a dip quite often in the waves.

 

[Guest]

Must apologise I just found a 5nm masthead light.

It costs €1500 and takes 21 Watts! I think I woke up on the wrong planet today.

 

[mel80]

[ QUOTE ]

Why is it that a small boat should have only little lights but a ship have bigger ones! It is still the same mark one eye ball that is looking at each other.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess it's because small boats go slower and weigh less than large ones; they will do less damage if one hits you. The regulations are there to stop you from hurting other people, not from hurting yourself.

Also, small boats tend to have pretty limmited electrical power. I could just about manage to run a single 40W for a night, but it wouldn't leave me anything spare. Most important thing is to be aware of the limitations of what you have, and know that anything you could hurt will see you in plenty of time.

 

[webcraft]

[ QUOTE ]
small boats tend to have pretty limmited electrical power.

[/ QUOTE ] - which is why so many long distance sailors in small boats leave the tricolour off until they see a ship.

Gettng an LED is a huge relief - you can leave it on all the time.

- W

 

[Guest]

That brought the reasons out of the woodwork. So they think appearing out of thin air in front of a ship will not make it endanger itself. The only results is the attitude in the MAIB report on Ouzo; yachts never have lights. Yachting should clean up its own act first.

Putting on a weenie light that can not be seen in time by ships is reckless and thoughtless.

From our experience the yachts that do turn off their lights are the ones that take other risks too. My crew got within metres of an unlit yacht in the Atlantic. It was invisible and they had no lookout. I also know 2 Germans that ended up on reefs that did not use lights at night. If you are that careless then you are careless ...

25W is 2 Amps so that is 24 Amp hours. Northern latitudes its a lot less than 12 hours. That is less than a fridge or a Radar. Even our Alaskan friend that had a Medical reason for power every night still ran a light after some one ate his trailing generator and his engine failed. Ours is only a 27' waterline boat and we have way too much power. It is a matter of priorities.

There are not actually that many stupid cruisers. It is a concentrated problem with the central European and cheapo English boats ( They have a special club ) The rest of the cruisers make sure we stay away from them. Its amazing but some cruisers actually care for their fellow mariners.

 

[Guest]

25W is 2A is 24A/hrs .... not quite .... you make no allowance for losses etc. 25W is more likely 2.2A and probably worth 27A/hr .... plus any other electrical item in use ...

but hang on is that only one light ? or are you adding up 3 or 4 lights ......... power = steaming + 2 side + stern (oh dear most boats are now at 40W or more already) ... sail at 2 side + stern .. ( thats probably 30W)

so lets look again ... ignoring 10% losses ....

Power 40W for 12 hrs = 480W .... = 40A/hrs + Advantage here though is engine can power them.

Sail 30W (which approximates my 25ft'r lights) for 12 hrs = 360W ..... = 30A/hrs = ~ 35 - 40% of one battery useful capacity - leaving me one actual useful battery. If I run anything else - I have serious problem. So prefer to have nav lights to be seen.

I appreciate your post and reasoning to be seen ... great .. but it always comes down to how do you power better lights ? What about the losses and volt drops etc. ? As you see on many posts on these forums - the number of boats that already have battery capacity / charge problems.

 

[Cornishman]

I must admit that I am getting confused here with all this talk of "masthead lights".
According to Rule 21 (a) of IRPCS a masthead light is described as :
a white light placed over the fore and aft centre line of the vessel showing an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of 225 degrees and so fixed as to show the light from right ahead to 22.5 degrees (two points in old money) abaft the beam on either side of the vessel.

What are you talking about?

 

[webcraft]

Drawing sweeping conclusions from one accident where the fault seems to lie entirely with the ship is strange behaviour. The enquiry certainly hints that yacht lighting is not of the best, but the conclusions re. the non-observance of the Ouzo's lighting point to bad practice on the bridge of the Pride of Bilbao:

[ QUOTE ]
2.5.6 Conclusion – visual detection
Assuming that the lights on the yacht Ouzo were working, they were not seen earlier by the lookout on the bridge of Pride of Bilbao because:
o At least 20% of his night vision was obscured due to his wearing glasses with photochromic lenses;
o His eyes had had insufficient time to adapt to the dark; and,
o There was significant white light pollution in the wheelhouse due to poor blackout procedures.

[/ QUOTE ]

All the action points and recommendations at the end of the report cover things like radar reflectors. lifejackets and bridge procedures, not lighting, and the whole lighting issue is a red herring anyway just giving us something to gossip about on here - the problem was that the Ouzo was not detected by the ship's radar.

I for one would rather spend money enhancing my vessel's radar cross-section than fitting brighter lights, as I believe that radar is the primary method used by most ships to detect yachts.

Perhaps you give more than you realise away with your statement that:

[ QUOTE ]
It is a concentrated problem with the central European and cheapo English boats

[/ QUOTE ] - You Mr Solar sound like a bit of a snob . . .

And us cheapo boat owners keep away from you electricity junkies as well, as when all your electrics go tits up people like you are usually in the dark in more ways than one.

We have no fridge or radar, and neither do we currently have the power to run either. We have ALWAYS run the tricolour constantly when sailing in areas where we are likely to encounter shipping (eg Irish Sea, Biscay (esp. when near shipping lanes), on coastal pasages etc), but when miles from any shipping lanes and with low batteries we have sometimes been known to run without lights for a few hours - keeping a good lookout of course. We prefer to make sure we have enough power when we really need it, and don't like running the engine for three hours every day to feed our electricity habit.

You also mention priorities - for us the priority is to go sailing. We can only do that if we call a halt to endless boat upgrades at some point. Cheapo, you see. Do you feel that there should be a minimum wealth requirement to go sailing?

Yachts have run at night with rubbish lighting for decades. Finally there are some affordable low consumption LED alternatives so we can relax a bit, switch on the tri at dusk and forget about it. Apparently you don't approve of this either because it is only a 'teeny light' . . . well, ours is 38W equivalent . . . and anyway, I believe that radar is the primary method of identification of yachts by ships in this modern era.

And why you imagine that running without lights increases the risk of running ashore frankly mystifies me /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif - do you use headlights as well?

- N

 

[Guest]

I chose the masthead light because it is common to all the ranges. Some ranges do not have tricolours. I had to choose something. It is only a comparison of like with like.

 

[sailingcatlady]

But can we, should we, rely on the radar of others?
I have always called up ships encountered well away from land, and have asked them if they had seen me, and if they had their radar running. The majority told me, No, they had not spotted me, and No, they did not continue to run their radar once away from land. One merchant ship's captain, met on dry land, also told me that there was seldom anyone maintaining a look-out, due to the crew being a skeleton crew.
One forgets many (indeed most) of the conversations one has had ... but I remember those. I found them disturbing.

 

[jb2006]

I thought there was a comment about the potential condition of the colour filters on an older boat - where crazing of the plastic leads to a loss of brightness.

But then I might be mistaken....

 

[gandy]

Remember though that the ship did see Ouzo's lights, delayed before taking action, then took minimal and insufficient action even then. Seeing the lights earlier might not have made a difference.

 

[Guest]

The inefficiencies are inside the 25W. It certainly does not make 25W of light output! Any wire loss just drops the light output. So its about 24Ah as I said. Well that is my budget for it and it works.

Looking at the LED 5nm light as the example. To get certification they needed 21W of input power.

Good testing data is here:
http://www.unece.org/trans/doc/2007/sc3wp3/ECE-TRANS-SC3-WP3-2007-09e.doc

 

[Guest]

Webcraft

Just to make it absolutely clear. I thought the report from MAIB was disgusting. To refer to 2 unconfirmed issues about the sunk yacht was terrible when there were so many confirmed problems about the ship.

Namely: Yachts don't use lights and the lenses could have been damaged.

So I wondered if there was anyone out there that would let the side down and admit to this act even after the report played it as an excuse for ships.

I found one!

My words were:
"The only results is the attitude in the MAIB report on Ouzo" as in their unsubstantiated statement about yachts going around with no lights.

The other thread on distances of a ship seeing you at 5nm then acting by 3nm made me think of the poor lights I have seen. Having lights that appear at 3nm means you surprise a ship. Then I found that the LED lights were actually even smaller and only just made the ranges. A factor of 10 times dimmer than what the ship would need.

As for the generation of 24Ah by solar, alternator, wind generator is not hard. It is 1/4KWh or 3p. 1 hour of engine on the worst car alternator. 1 Siemens panel. (OK not in UK water) It is also the useful capacity of a 50Ah battery. So that is 2 nights on every 100Ah battery.

So by cheapo I mean those that do not invest in decent charge system but can afford boats of £1000s and sails and all the rest of the essential gear. Its priorities.

I would hardly say a 27' water line 34 year old yacht is luxury!

As can be seen from the example light, the actual efficiencies of LEDs, to get certification, is not much different from normal bulbs. In fact Halogens are better than White LEDs for efficiency. So you are being deceived if you think it is equivalent to 38W.

 

[Guest]

sailingcatlady

No, we should not rely on radar of ships. I was on a ship a few months ago working, so I especially looked at how each of the watches set up the radars.

On entry to a port I looked for the 2 yachts that were behind us and visible. They did not appear on the radar.
Sadly, I could not go playing with the settings. They were about 40' to 50' yachts.

So the only thing we have is lights and our actions. At least only sunglasses and light pollution stops them being seen! (another dig just in case you missed the first one)

Thank you for confirming the radar issue. I have a detector on board that agrees that they do not run the X band away from shore. However, it is only a few ships that have not answered a call immediately. So I would disagree with the lack of watches.

I can only remember 1 clearly off California that seemed to be a ghost ship.

 

[jonjo]

[ QUOTE ]
Just to make it absolutely clear. I thought the report from MAIB was disgusting. To refer to 2 unconfirmed issues about the sunk yacht was terrible when there were so many confirmed problems about the ship.

[/ QUOTE ]
Strange, I thought the report was excellent and on this rare occasion felt the pen pushers of the public sector had consumed my income tax productively and for the benefit of many.

The investigators were perfectly entitled to question the performance of Ouzo's nav lights because they established these had not been replaced. They reasonably speculated that UV degradation of the lenses had occurred.

 

[Guest]

I took the following statement with a pinch of salt:

[ QUOTE ]
The condition of the lights aboard is not known, but the unit had not been replaced since the boat was built.

[/ QUOTE ]

The replacement time for the lens is probably less than 10 seconds. I doubt the bulb had lasted 26 years so there must have been some interaction with it over the years, so it would have been known. The son at 36 year of age was quite capable to make decisions also. Its just like the insinuation that some one swapped the bulb for a small one. They either have evidence or not. Did they ever go sailing in company? Did some one ever say it looked dim?

It was just more FUD. If it was real, they would have cited the evidence.

(FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) (or ****** unfair digs)
Its an age old marketing trick used in articles that can ruin others reputation especially those that can not defend themselves.

But adding "second officer opined that yachts often went around with their navigation lights off, "
confirms that they were scraping out the barrel for counter arguments.

Other examples are on the diagram on page 43 the statement: "however (sic) yacht already clear of stern" how on earth did they come to that conclusion. The yacht could have started surfing until it became too unstable and rolled. No evidence for definitive statements. It could have sunk before reaching the stern.

[ QUOTE ]
The crew of Ouzo did not effectively warn Pride of Bilbao of their presence because:
o Pride of Bilbao altered course slowly towards Ouzo between 7 and 4 minutes before the incident and this possibly confused the crew about her intentions, such that they did not recognize the danger they were in until it was too late. [2.7] [MAIB Flyer]


[/ QUOTE ]

WHY was that paragraph heading implying a failure of the yacht crew. It was the ship that moved onto a bearing that caused the run down. The ship was not steady on its new course until 4 minutes before collision. It would take 2 looks to work out it had stopped turning and was not going around their stern. So that would not leave much time to panic!

[ QUOTE ]
...poses the question as to why the VTS radar detected the yacht when Pride of Bilbao’s didn’t. The answer is believed to lie in the different sea conditions that the yacht would have been experiencing at the relevant times.


[/ QUOTE ]

Rubbish. How about VTS know how to use a Radar and the ship crew did not! If the clutter was set too high then it was useless.

Even in section 3 part 1 they start with 5 unsubstantiated claims with no evidence against Ouzo. Then followed with 5 reasons that were known against the ship. That is unforgivable.

The Radar stuff is totally stupid, like we all know, radar is bound by inverse squared law. So if we intend to be seen at 3 miles, at 3/4 of a mile the signal is 16 times bigger! It is also covered, due to the beam width property of Radar, by more pulses. If the boat was not seen at 3/4 mile then nothing would have helped. It was the Radar settings that were wrong. Human carelessness. (as in: less than necessary care)

According to the report the ship finished its turn 4 minutes before the collision. That leaves 1.27 miles. So the yacht was directly ahead for the 1.26 to 0.75 miles distances. That was a full minute and a half that the Radar would have seen them clearly if it was setup correctly. We can track space debris to 10cm pieces but we live in a world that can not see a yacht at 0.75nm. Maybe it is time Radar was improved. I do not mean ARPA etc. I mean the base technology could be way better if there was a will.

I stand by the claim that the report was disgusting. Also since NO report was made after the incident and it took a full investigation to get the truth into the open. In light of this, I would not trust anything the ship crew reported they said or did.

 

[jonjo]

[ QUOTE ]
But adding "second officer opined that yachts often went around with their navigation lights off,"
confirms that they were scraping out the barrel for counter arguments.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, they were just illustrating the cavalier attitude of the second officer. Quoting opinion from crew on the PoB bridge does not imply official support for that view.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The crew of Ouzo did not effectively warn Pride of Bilbao of their presence because:
o Pride of Bilbao altered course slowly towards Ouzo between 7 and 4 minutes before the incident and this possibly confused the crew about her intentions, such that they did not recognize the danger they were in until it was too late.

[/ QUOTE ]
WHY was that paragraph heading implying a failure of the yacht crew. It was the ship that moved onto a bearing that caused the run down.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think you have completely misunderstood the structure of the report. First the report attempts to paint of picture of events from the perspective of each vessel, interpretation and conclusions are elsewhere. These MAIB reports are usually presented in mild non partisan language and refrain from criticism. Criticism of the slow waypoint turn is obvious elsewhere in the report.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
...poses the question as to why the VTS radar detected the yacht when Pride of Bilbao’s didn’t. The answer is believed to lie in the different sea conditions that the yacht would have been experiencing at the relevant times.

[/ QUOTE ]
Rubbish. How about VTS know how to use a Radar and the ship crew did not! If the clutter was set too high then it was useless.

[/ QUOTE ]
I can only assume you have no local knowledge of how sea state can vary in this area. Close inshore at the north end of Sandown Bay at slack tide is very different to 5 miles south of St. Catherine’s with a force 4-5 over an ebb tide.

 

[Cruiser2B]

SolarNeil,

I thought you brought up some very good points regarding nav lights. I long for the day when technology allows all of my nav lights to have 6+nm range at a load I can handle, within my budget. On the other hand, your comments on the MAIB report couldn't be further from my views. Your biggest complaints seem to be with the speculative nature of the report, but you fail to acknowledge the biggest speculation in the report - there is no physical evidence that Pride of Bilbao had anything to do with Ouzo's sinking! That said, I think the MAIB did a pretty good job, in using reasoned arguments to support a good working theory. Remember, their job is not to lay blame, but to identify shortcomings and suggest ways to increase safety; from that I think they accomplished their aim.