Safe boating at night

You’ve taken guests on your boat to a waterfront restaurant and enjoyed a nice relaxing dinner and a wonderful suns et. But then you realize that you’ve let time slip and now it’s getting dark. How do you safely get everyone back to your home slip?

Boating at night is significantly different from daytime boating. Shoreside lights can mix with navigational lights of boats and buoys. It’s impossible to determine distances to objects.

In the days before GPS, nighttime navigation required accurate charts and the ability to correlate what the charts showed with what you could see on the water. You needed constant awareness of your location and the ability to identify the light signatures of lighted buoys. Today, nearly everyone carries an accurate GPS on their cell phone. You still need accurate charts, which can be affordably downloaded onto your phone or tablet. Automatic GPS location tracking significantly reduces the navigational workload.

Understanding light signatures

It’s important to take a few minutes to plan a safe route from that restaurant to your home slip. That route should keep you away from obstacles like low bridges, unlit buoys and shallow water.

This way, you can focus on following the predetermined route, identifying other boat traffic and avoiding uncharted obstacles like fish traps. In some areas you’ll need to know where float-free channels exist to select a route that keeps you away from crab pot floats.

But a safe route won’t protect you from other boats. You’ll need to know the light signatures of a variety of vessel types. Small sailboats tend to be poorly lit, requiring only a red/green bow light and a white stern light that’s difficult to discern from shoreside white lights. Fast-moving powerboats are easy to identify, except potentially when they are coming straight at you and only show three bow lights (red, green and white).

Tugs tend to be easy to identify. They are well lit and exhibit two or three vertically stacked all-around (360-degree) white lights. Two lights indicate a tug that’s pushing a barge or is towing alongside, while a stack of three lights indicates that it is towing a barge more than 200 meters astern. The barge should also be lit with bow and stern lights, but these are often dim, so give any tug plenty of room. I’ve seen situations where the only indication of the barge was that it obscured the shore lights beyond.

Large cargo ships can present another identification challenge. They are lit with a red/green bow light, a white bow light, a white masthead light (above and aft of the white bow light), and a white stern light. Cruise ships are easily identified because their deck lights always stay on. If you boat where dredges are common, you’ll need to know how to identify them and the safe side on which to pass. If you must pass under bridges, learn to identify the safe channel indicator lights, and be extra cautious since there is less maneuvering room.

It’s a good idea to have a vessel light reference card on board to help identify different types of vessels. And these days there are phone apps as well.

Preparing to boat at night

I recommend reviewing the types of lights before boating at night. A powerful flashlight or spotlight is a great safety item to have at the helm. But don’t shine the light directly at another vessel, which could blind the helmsperson. Instead, shine the light on your own vessel so that it’s easy for the other vessel to see you.

Don’t forget that you have a VHF radio. When in doubt, issue a call to the other vessel. This works best for large vessels that will be monitoring their radio. A flashlight may be best for signaling small vessels of your presence.

It’s best to start in well-known waters, with short trips and good weather. Just explore within one or two miles of your slip and expand your range as you gain experience and confidence. You can turn the night navigation into a game with guests, asking them to look around and identify vessels and buoys. The goal is to make it safe and enjoyable.

Always be aware and anticipate unusual situations. Sailing south off the New Jersey coast, just north of Cape May, our boat encountered a supposed “fishing” vessel, which was pitch dark until we were quite near. Then they turned on a bunch of lights. I guess they did not want us to hit them. I have always wondered what they were “fishing” for.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE ANNAPOLIS SAIL & POWER SQUADRON/5 NEWSLETTER, ANCHOR WATCH.