Anchor lights

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Anchor lights are important, and far too many cruisers aren't displaying them at night.

International law requires that you display an anchor light  

If you aren't showing a light and someone collides with you at night, you will have a great deal of difficulty in collecting for any damages to your vessel, or avoiding liability for damages to the other vessel (or people who are injured in a collision).  Sure, the other guy will share in some percentage of the blame, 'cause he's supposed to be keeping a good lookout.  But, my guess is, you'll be the bigger loser.

Courtesy

It makes it far easier for others to avoid you, whether it's cruisers arriving in the anchorage after dark, inebriated cruisers in a dinghy returning at high speed from a party late on a dark, rainy night, or local fishermen or villagers who don't expect to find a dark, unlit yacht anchored in their usual traffic lane.  Think about the other guy and turn on that light!

Anchor dragging?

OK, so you're the only guy showing an anchor light in a crowded anchorage and the wind picks up big-time in the middle of a moonless, overcast night.  You look out to check where the other boats are and you see...  nothing!  

How are you or someone else supposed to know if you're dragging anchor?  Or if they are?

GPS, chartplotters, and anchor lights

With the wide use of GPS and chartplotters, inexperienced yachties are much less intimidated by night arrivals than they should be.  Therefore, the risk of a collision with an anchored vessel is far greater than it used to be, when most yacht skippers did everything possible to avoid arriving after dark.  

Consider that the guy coming into your anchorage, in the dark, for the first time (not a great idea in itself), is far more likely to be staring at his chartplotter (ruining his night vision) than looking for your (unlit) anchored vessel.  Especially if it's a remote anchorage where he isn't expecting to (literally) run into another boat.

Brightness

Your anchor light is legally required to be visible in all directions, for a distance of two miles.  I hardly ever see anyone showing anything near this bright.  

Look, the whole point of an anchor light is to make your boat visible at night!  Anchor lights are useless if they're too dim to be seen from a reasonable distance away, and "reasonable" means more than 50 or 100 feet.

LED anchor lights

If you want to go the LED route to save power (we did) get a REAL light.  

We (like just about everyone who came through Savusavu, Fiji) installed a couple of the brightest LED arrays I've ever seen, obtained from Bebi Electronics.  They're brighter and more visible than our former, incandescent Aqua Signal anchor light.  They use less than 0.1 amp, about 1/10 of the incandescent light, and won't burn out..  

Great product, reasonably priced, highly recommended.

November, 2005.  RED's anchor light from Bebi Electronics.  It's that incredibly bright bluish-white light in the upper right.  The dimmer lights in the background are a resort behind us.  Believe me, these LED lights really stand out in the anchorage!

© 2005-2010 Beth and Kevin Hansen, all rights reserved 

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