red light on sailboat mast

Navigation Lights for Sailboats (And How To Read Them)

Last Updated by

Capt Chris German

June 15, 2022

Navigation lights on a sailboat can be confusing. If you understand the reason behind why they are the way they are however, they can make a lot more sense.

At their heart, sailboats are really just a power boat and as such must adhere to all power boat rules such as navigation lights. Other times however, a sailboat is classified in a special category. They have a set of additional lights they CAN show as an option, but are not always required to do so.

That’s about as clear as mud if you ask me and I contend that that is where the confusion about lighting a sailboat begins.

Just because you can show a light to identify yourself in times of low visibility, does not mean you have to and then we add in a little sibling rivalry between power and sail and things get downright adversarial when it comes to navigation and the night.

Table of contents

The USCG says You’re a Power Boat Whether You Like It or Not

Much to the consternation of many a sailor who has earned a commercial license to drive their sailboat, when you received your credential from the USCG it says you are a master of steam and power across the top with no mention of wind as a source of propulsion.

It is not until you read the back pages of your little red book that feels like a passport and looks like a US Sailing credential, that you will see the term “sail auxiliary”. That is because most of the time the U.S. Coast Guard knows that you are primarily reliant on your mechanical power to propel your vessel.

It's a sad thing, but the days of commercially viable sail boats are done and all but the most select few even have sails let alone use them as their primary power source. All sail boats by law are powerboats, but not all powerboats are sailboats.

Navigation Lights for a Power Boat

As a power boat, you are required to show certain lights and have been required to do so before power was even invented. 

In the days of man powered vessels like the viking ships who relied on oars while in close quarters to power their vessels, they needed to show other boats, friend or foe, where they were by showing lanterns in the dark to identify themselves. As you know, it is a time honored rule among all the nations of the world both past and present, that you must avoid a collision at all costs while at sea and even the viking knew that you should not run into things.

By lighting the front and back of your boat, you could warn other boats of your presence as well as identify which way you were heading. As such there is a very specific rule in the Code of Federal Regulations Number 46 (CFR46 by common name) that spells out with detail how many, the color, the luminosity or brightness, the angle of visibility and the location of all of the lights required for navigation on every single boat, seaplane, submarine and other nondescript vessel conceived by man to date that they must show while underway in reduced visibility.

And there is no flexibility in the rules.

As such a power boat, and by extension all sailboats, MUST, without question show one green light on the starboard bow and one red light on the port bow and one all around white light or lights while operating in reduced visibility. These lights should shine at all 360 degrees of visibility with the bow lights shining at an angle of dead ahead to 22.5 degrees abaft the beam and the stern lights shining 225 degrees dead aft. A forward facing masthead light that is white in color shall shine forward to comply with the directive that all vessels must carry an all around white light. For more read here .

As you can see, there isn’t much wiggle room when it comes to lights that must be shown.

Sailboats get a little flexibility with lights

Sailboats however, are a little different when they are in fact sailboats, which is only when you are entirely reliant on the wind for power and in no way reliant on any mechanical or manual means of propulsion. And for good reason.

Back in the day when men were men and sailboats were wooden, fire was a major concern. Sails were coated with wax and other flammable substances and the wood on boats was saturated with oils and grease. Even the ropes were plant materials saturated with oils to keep them pliable and strong.

Add those highly flammable substances to a parching environment like the sea and you had what was essentially a giant floating tinderbox.

Then tell that giant floating tinderbox that they need to identify themselves to the world at large at night using oil lamps with flames because batteries and lights were not invented yet. It didn't take very long or very many ships burning to the water line for the Governments to say to the sailboats, you get to do things a little different.

As such, sailboats are given special dispensation when it comes to lights aloft. They don't have to show an all around white light in their rigging because no one wanted to set their rig on fire with oil lamps 60 feet up in their rig.

However, when a sailboat takes their sails down such as when they are powered or at anchor, they must resume the display of an all around white light or lights aloft. That became a real challenge with aluminum masts and the disappearance of rat lines on the shrouds because there was no easy way to climb the rig and check the bulbs up the mast on a regular basis. 

Red over Green Sailing Machine

I have no idea where the history of this particular light comes from, but if you ever take a deck exam with the USCG, you better remember this mnemonic. An all around red light over an all around green may be displayed on a vessel during times of reduced visibility to indicate that a vessel is operating under sail power alone. 

I won’t even speculate on how or why they came up with this particular light configuration, but if you want to use these lights as a sailing vessel, you can do so, but that means that you will need three all round lights at the top of your mast, an all around white, an all around red and an all around green, just in that order.

The red over green is to be displayed in addition to the running lights or the red and green bow lights with the 225 degree stern light. As always, when the motor comes on, so does the steaming light or the forward facing white light that is also usually about ¾ of the way up on your mast to complete the requirement of an all around white light that indicates a power vessel.

What is a “steaming light” and why are you mentioning it now?

Most sailboat electrical panels will have a switch that is labelled “steaming light” and it will only come on when your anchor light is off. This is probably the most confusing part of sailboat navigation lights so if you are confused about this, you're in good company as most people are. 

A “steaming” light is named thusly, going back to the days of steam powered sailboats where when they fired up their boilers and doused the sails, they became a power boat once again. There aren’t too many steam powered boats, let alone steam powered sailboats, but the name stuck and it is a vestige of a bygone era.

Either way, when you fire up your motor, you turn on your “steaming light” and that locks out the all around white light which is used for anchoring to minimize the number of switches on your panel and reduce the number of wires in your mast. The fewer wires, the less chance of something not working or becoming disconnected.

The steaming light and the anchor light both go up the mast, but you can’t use an all around white light while using the 225 degree stern light at the deck level because to other boaters you would look like you have two white lights from the stern and that would be confusing.

The anchor light is used exclusively for anchoring while the steaming light is used to indicate you are a power vessel while underway.

As to why I am mentioning it now in the article, is because this would have blown your mind if I started with this subject cause it can be really confusing stuff.

Aspect Recognition with Lights

Remember when I said earlier that lights can help you tell others which way you are heading as well as tell you which way other boats are heading? That is called the aspect of the vessel and the USCG tests you on this for your deck exam as well. 

Knowing that the bow lights go 22.5 degrees abaft the beam on both sides or 112.5 degrees on each side, and the stern light faces 225 degrees aft for a total of 360 degrees of visibility, you can tell a lot about where a boat is heading and who has the right of way.

One thing that's easy to remember is red means stop and if you see a vessel's red light, it means stop as you are the give way vessel and approaching the other vessel from his port side. Conversely it works with green as well as that means you are approaching from the other vessel's starboard side and you are the standon vessel.

If you see a red and green light equally low on the horizon, that means your heading dead on into another vessel's path and conversely if all you see is a white light low on the horizon, it means you are overtaking another vessel power or sail, we don’t care because it is an overtaking situation. However, any time you do see a white light aloft in addition to the red and green bow lights, you know you are encountering a power boat.

Then there are angular approaches as well, where you see white and red or white and green light low on the horizon. You know in that case you are seeing a portion of the bow lights and stern lights from the side approaches of a vessel. Based on which direction those lights are heading, you can deduce which way that boat is going in relation to your boat.

So put it all together and you see a green light and a white light low on the horizon with a red over green light aloft, you know that you are approaching a sailboat that is traveling to your port and that might make you the standon vessel. That is of course, if we didn’t concern ourselves with windward and leeward and port tacks and starboard tacks, but that is a discussion for another article. So stay tuned when we talk about sailing rules and the right of way. But for now, do good, have fun and sail far.

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Capt Chris German is a life long sailor and licensed captain who has taught thousands to sail over the last 20 years. In 2007, he founded a US Sailing-based community sailing school in Bridgeport, CT for inner city youth and families. When Hurricane Sandy forced him to abandon those efforts, he moved to North Carolina where he set out to share this love for broadcasting and sailing with a growing web-based television audience through The Charted Life Television Network.

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Boat Navigation Lights Rules: Illustrated Beginners Guide

When navigating at night, the lights on other boats are your first clue about the moving dangers around you. And your navigation lights are your first line of safety in avoiding collisions in the dark, and they tell others vessels what you are and what you are doing. The rules sound complex, but with a little understanding you can get the basics for any situation.

So what are the basic navigation light rules? For most small vessels, motoring requires red and green (port and starboard) lights, and a white light visible in all directions around the boat. This is almost always a stern light and a masthead light on sailboats. Boats under sail require port and starboard lights, and a white stern light. Sailboats below sixty-five feet may show a tricolor light at the masthead instead of side and stern lights when sailing.

That's it, in a nutshell. There's a little more to it, as the rules change with different sizes and there are some specifics about angles of display for the colors. Identifying other ships at sea requires more study, but the basics are the same. And it's not much trouble to make sure you've always got the proper lights on your vessel.

On this page:

What are the official colregs rules for your sailboat, what about the uscg (united states coast guard) rules, lighting at anchor, identifying the boats around you.

The International Regulations for the Prevention of Collision at Sea , abbreviated "COLREGS" is very specific about the lights required, their shapes and sizes, and the distance they must be visible. For the smaller boat, the following definitions apply.

• Masthead Light - a white light placed centerline on the boat showing an arc of 225 degrees with 112.5 degrees either side of the front of the vessel.
• Sidelights - A red light on the port side and a green light on the starboard. They must show an arc of 112.5 degrees from centerline of the bow.
• Stern light - A white light on the stern of the boat showing an unbroken arc of 135 degrees from centerline of the vessel.
• All-round light - A light showing in an unbroken arc of 360 degrees.

The good news is you need not measure these angles. Any properly installed USCG or COLREGS approved light which will cover the correct arcs. If you have to replace the original light from your boat, make sure it's with an approved replacement.

Lights When Sailing

The specific rules for a sailboat under sail are in COLREGS Rule 25 and vary slightly with the size of the boat. A sailboat powering is considered a power boat and falls under in Rule 23.

• Under 23 feet (7 meters) - side lights and a stern light, possible. If these lights can not be displayed a light must be kept at hand to help avoid a collision. This can be a bright flashlight.
• Over 23 feet - Side lights visible to one nautical mile and stern light visible for two.
• Vessels under 65 feet may combine both sidelights into a single lantern on the bow.
• May show a tricolor light on the masthead instead of sidelights and a stern light. It's one or the other though, do not show these lights at the same time .
• Masthead light must be visible for three nautical miles, all other lights must have a two nautical mile visibility.
• Side lights must be separated.
• May not show a masthead tricolor light.
• Masthead light must have five nautical mile visibility, all other lights must be visible for two nautical miles.
• Optional masthead lights - any vessel under sail may display a red light over a green light at the masthead with sidelights and stern light. The red over green may NOT be displayed with a masthead tricolor light. It's one set or the other.

Lights When Motoring

For all navigational purposes a sailboat under power is considered a power boat. This includes motor sailing - if the engine is on and providing propulsion you are on a power boat, even if the sails are up . This applies to navigation lighting, sound signals in fog and limited visibility, and rights of way.

Sailboats under 50 meters under power need to show:

• A masthead light
• Stern light

A power-driven vessel under 23 feet (7 meters) that does not exceed seven knots of speed may display an all around white light, though sidelights should be used if available.

The USCG has published its own "Rules of the Road" that are based on the COLREGS. In addition, it has rules for the "Inland Waterways" for rivers, inland lakes and the Great Lakes.

The good news is this has no impact on what you have to do with your own boat.

They mostly relate to lighting changes on towed vessels like barges and tugs. For example, a vessel towing or pushing another vessel in the ocean under COLREGS shows two masthead lights, sidelights and a stern light, whereas in Inland Waterways the towing or pushing vessel displays two yellow towing lights instead of a white stern light.

If you sail on lakes, rivers or the Great Lakes where towed commercial traffic is common you should learn the inland lights, but coastal or ocean sailors will never see these.

When you anchor outside a designated mooring field, you should display an all around white light at the masthead or as high in the boat as practical.

If your boat is large and has a very tall mast, you may wish to display another light closer to the waterline. Boats approaching in the dark may not see a light on a mast sixty or seventy feet in the air when they are close to your boat.

We use a simple garden path light on our stern when we anchor, left in a rod holder or flag socket. It comes on automatically at dusk and is a cheap and easy way to be more visible. There is no specific rule stating you can not display more lights than required, or the nature of any lights beyond the required all around light.

The COLREGS also specify that a round black "daymark" should be displayed in the rigging of any vessel at anchor. Very few small vessels observe this, however it is the correct display for a vessel in an anchorage.

If you tie to a mooring in a marked mooring area you are not required to display anchor lights, but there is no harm in doing so.

The other important reason to know your lights is to figure out what's going on around you at night. The water may be ablaze with white, red, green and other lights at night and they are your first key to avoiding collisions and problems.

All combinations of lights for fishing boats, commercial vessels, and so on are outside this post‘s scope. The odds are small you will encounter a submarine, seaplane or hovercraft at night, but there are regulations regarding specific lighting for each of those vessels!

There are a few fundamentals to help you figure out what that is you see on the horizon, which way it is going, and whether it is a danger to you.

Port Wine is Red

The fundamental rule is that red sidelights will ALWAYS be on the port side of a vessel, and green lights will always be on starboard. However, some vessels can use all around red and green lights for other purposes, though those will be higher than sidelights.

The light‘s on a ship is not important, some large tankers and freighters will have their sidelights far aft and put them on the superstructure for better visibility. It is not safe to assume that sidelights you can see are on the bow of large vessels .

When you can see the color, you know which way the bow is pointing. If it's red, it's pointing more or less to the left and will travel in that direction. A green light shows it is heading more or less to your right.

If you can see the red and green lights at the same time, you are looking directly at the bow of the vessel. When you are far away, this isn‘t as alarming as if you are close crossing. Seeing red and green lights together on a vessel is something you never want to see for long.

Be aware of red and green lights used in combination with other red, green and white lights. These may not be running lights and could have other significance.

Tankers, Freighters and Large Ships

Tankers, freighters and large ships will have side lights, a stern light and a masthead light. In addition, on vessels over 50 meters there will be a second masthead light further aft and higher than the forward light. The masthead light positions are a better tipoff to the bow direction and how far from the bow the sidelights might be. Remember - on a large vessel the sidelights may not be at the bow or even close to it.

USCG Inland Rules allow for a second all-around white light on large vessels on the Great Lakes instead of a second masthead light.

Fishing Boats

Fishing boats engaged in fishing will have more complex light displays. When they aren't fishing, they will show lights like any power vessel, but Rule 26 spells out light combinations that vary by the fishing activity being done. In general:

• Boats which are Trawling but not making headway will display a green all-around light over a white all-around light , and a masthead light aft of these lights. Boats making headway while trawling will show these lights, plus sidelights and a stern light.
• A vessel fishing other than trawling will show a red all-around light over a white all-around light . When making way they will also show sidelights and a stern light.
• If a vessel has gear more than 150 meters away from the boat, it will show a second all around light in the direction of the gear. The best rule is to give fishing boats as wide a berth as you can at night. They're easy to pick out if you check the top light configurations but their course may be difficult to predict.

Towing and Pushing

Towed vessels can be the most dangerous to cross, but they have the most lights to tell you what is happening. Refer to COLREGS or the USCG Rules of the Road Rule 24 for all combinations You can pick a tow/push vessel out with the following lights:

• Two or three masthead lights in a vertical line. Three masthead lights shows a tow over 200 meters. Additional masthead lights may show for larger tow vessels.
• A towing light (yellow light with the same characteristics as a stern light) directly above the stern light.
• The will also have side lights and a stern light.
• The towed vessel will show sidelights and a stern light. Lighting may vary under USCG inland rules, where towing lights may replace stern lights. Learn these differences if this is your regular cruising ground. If you think there is a tow ahead of you, always go well behind the aft most set of lights. Never go between a tow and avoid crossing ahead if possible as it may restrict their maneuverability.

Special Situations

There are several rare situations you may encounter. As a general rule, if there are a lot of lights and you don't understand them look for the sidelights on a moving vessel. If you can find them and figure out the direction it is moving, it makes the vessel easier to avoid. Stay well clear of lights you do not understand if you can avoid them without risk.

Most of these signals are used by larger, commercial vessels and you will not need them.

They use these light combinations with other light combinations. For example a towing vessel may also be restricted in maneuverability, and a vessel constrained by draft will show running lights if moving.

• Not Under Command - two all around red lights in a single line
• Restricted in Ability to Maneuver - red, white then red in a single line
• Constrained by draft - three all around red lights

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Mast head light confusion

Here is a question from a Student who posted it on Disqus. I felt it was important enough to post out here for public. Displaying correct lights on boats is important.

Could you please provide more of an explanation for the following: Although ‘steaming light’ is used extensively, this does not have a definition within the IRPCS [International Regulations for Prevention of Collisions at Sea], the correct definition being a masthead light.

If the tri-colour light can replace the stern and red/green pulpit light on a sailboat how can it be unacceptable to use the tri-colour light with mast head light? If you are under power you of course need your steaming light/ mast head light illuminated. So if you don’t have pulpit or stern lights aboard as you are using a tri colour light how can you do this?

Agreed – lights can be confusing at the onset. In this particular topic, sailors tend to get confused because they think  a mast is only on a sailboat. But, a mast head light is also used (and defined for use) on power boats. Take a look at this image shown in the rules. It shows a power driven vessel longer than 50 meters using two mast head lights.

A large Power vessel displaying two mast head lights.

Here is the definition of a mast head light in the rules:

(a) “Masthead light” means a white light placed over the fore and aft centerline 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 abaft the beam on either side of the vessel.

Note also that is does not say the light must be at the top of the mast.

For sailboats, a tricolored light is a light described by rule 25(b) in USCG Nav Rules. It is at or near the top of the mast and is for sailing vessels less than 20 meters in length. It is an optional alternative to having the lights down on the hull or pulpits. It faces a white light to the aft 135 degrees plus red from directly forward around to port 112.5 degrees and a green light directly forward and around to starboard 112.5 degrees. This makes up 360 degrees and meets the requirement for a sailboat sailing. When the sailboat turns on it’s engines it must also in addition to the white, red and green above, display a white light 225 degrees facing forward. You can name this light what ever you like but it must exist. These white “mast head” lights are also defined by the distance they must be seen by – it does not mean they have to be at the top of the mast. On power vessels they are typically at the top of the mast because that is what the mast is for.

Here is a sailing vessel under sail only with a tricolored light

Tri-colored lights on a sailboat

On a sailboat less than 50 meters in length, a mast head light (white under power light) can be just “up the mast” anywhere. It’s not part of the tri color. It is white and faces forward 225 degrees and is to be used when the sailboat is under power. You also might be confusing the term mast head light with the two all around red and green lights at the top of the mast. These are not mast head lights. They can be used in addition to the hull or pulpit mounted red green and white. The rules prevent a top of the mast tricolored light AND the two all around red and green at the top of the mast. This would create confusion and may be your source of confusion. i.e it is unacceptable to use the tricolored and two all around red and green lights. Again the mast head is white 225 deg forward facing to be used under power only.

Here is a vessel with the two all around red and green lights.

The Vessel sailing “on starboard” is utilizing the optional two all around red and green lights.

Here are the rules as stated: Rule 25 – Sailing Vessels Underway and Vessels Under Oars

(a) A sailing vessel underway shall exhibit:

(i) sidelights; (ii) a stern light

(b) In a sailing vessel of less than 20 meters in length, the lights prescribed in Rule 25(a) may be combined in one lantern carried at or near the top of the mast where it can best be seen.  [note this is the tricolored light]

(c) A sailing vessel underway may, in addition to the lights prescribed in Rule 25(a), exhibit at or near the top of the mast, where they can best be seen, two all-round lights in a vertical line, the upper being red and the lower green, but these lights shall not be exhibited in conjunction with the combined lantern permitted by Rule 25(b).

I hope that helps.

I highly recommend that you complete our Navigation Rules Course . It is free for everyone.

International Rules for Prevention of Collision at Sea FREE Sailing Course

We also have a Paper Book that you should order and keep on your boat for reference.

The book is a stand alone excellent explanation of the Rules of the Nautical road and is a good and quick easy read. It has additional really cool features. Through out the book you will see QR Codes. When you scan any QR code with your mobile device, the book element comes alive and shows you animations and videos.

To get a QR Reader – 

For Android

Order the International Rules of Prevention of Collision at Sea Book from Amazon.

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Sailboat Lights

Sailboat Lights can be confusing and usually need some explanation.

Common Questions:

Is the tri-color light all I need when under power?  Are the red and green lights at the top of the mast all I need?  Am I supposed to turn any of these off?  How then do I let others know I am under power?  If you are under power, you of course need your mast head light illuminated, correct? (As seen here on the left).  What if there are no pulpit or stern lights on your vessel?  Shouldn’t you always use your mast lights?  This is confusing!

Let’s talk it through:

Mast head lights can also be seen on power boats. Take a look at this image shown in the rules. It shows a power-driven vessel longer than 50 meters using two mast head lights.

Here is the definition of a mast head light in the rules:

A “Masthead light” means a white light placed over the fore and aft centerline 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 abaft the beam on either side of the vessel.

Note:  It does not say the light must be at the top of the mast.

What is the tricolored light for?

Well, it is at or near the top of the mast and is for sailing vessels less than 20 meters or 65.5 feet in length.   It is an optional alternative to having the lights down on the hull or pulpits.  The tri-color light at the top of the mast faces a white light to the aft 135 degrees plus red from directly forward around to port 112.5 degrees and a green light directly forward and around to starboard 112.5 degrees.

This makes up 360 degrees and meets the requirement for a sailboat sailing .

So, when the sailboat turns on its engines it must also, in addition to the tri-color light at the top of the mast , display a white light 225 degrees facing forward.  You can call this light whatever you’d like but it must exist.  Now these particular white lights that we preferably call mast head lights , shall be visible from 6 miles.  Note:  It does not mean they have to be at the top of the mast.  On power vessels they are typically at the top of the mast because that is what the mast is for.

Here is a sailing vessel under sail using a tricolored light.  There is no forward-facing white light, like in the upper picture, so we know it is under sail.

To clarify, on a sailboat less than 50 meters in length, a white under power mast head light can be just up the mast anywhere.  That is to say that it’s not part of the tri color.   It is white and faces forward 225 degrees and indicates a sailboat is under power.

Where the confusion lies:

You also might be confusing the term mast head light with the two all-around red and green lights at the top of the mast.  These are not mast head lights.  They can be used in addition to the hull or pulpit mounted red, green, and white.  A sailing vessel cannot display a top of the mast tricolored light AND the two all-around red and green at the top of the mast.  Above all, the mast head is white 225 deg forward facing to be used under power only.

Pictured, the Vessel on the left is utilizing the optional two all-around red and green lights.  Subsequently, this states that it is under sail or underway and not under engine power.

To further understand this picture, here are the rules as stated:

Rule 25 – Sailing Vessels Underway and Vessels Under Oars

(a) A sailing vessel underway shall exhibit:

(i) sidelights; (ii) a stern light

(c) A sailing vessel underway may, in addition to the lights prescribed in Rule 25(a), exhibit at or near the top of the mast, where they can best be seen, two all-round lights in a vertical line, the upper being red and the lower green, but these lights shall not be exhibited in conjunction with the combined lantern permitted by Rule 25(b).

In Conclusion:

You can further investigate using the United States Coast Guards book on Navigation Rules…  NavRulesAmalgamatedwAnnexes.pdf (uscg.gov)

We are proud to discuss navigation lights in our Public Course please visit our Schedule any time.  We teach all of our classes live in a virtual setting

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Boat Navigation Lights: Everything You NEED to Know (2024)

In many cases, boating at night requires the use of boat navigation lights, but boaters often have many questions about them.

They often wonder when they’re needed, what the requirements are for various locations and vessels, and more.

We’re going to do a deep dive into navigation lights for boat to see what you need on your boat, and when you need to use them. 

Legal Requirements

Types of navigational lights, which navigation lights are required on my boat , operators responsibility  , navigation lights .

On any vessel operating on or in US waters, there is a need for the operator to display navigation lights under certain circumstances. Their purpose is to make vessels aware of each other at night or in times of generally reduced visibility. This is incredibly important during times when you may not be able to see the craft itself.

Other than visibility, marine nav lights also help boat operators determine the size, direction of travel, and even the potential activity of another boat on the water. When an operator understands the type of information each light tells them, they will be better able to determine appropriate courses of action for potential situations.

Boat running lights are divided by location and color, and each of them has specific requirements with how they must be displayed and perceived. You are the one legally responsible for displaying proper nav lights on the boat, for displaying them at the proper times, and for understanding how to read them.

The US Coast Guard ’s legal navigation light requirements include guidelines for every aspect of light usage.

Their materials start by first defining the standard daily period during which they must be used, then they detail how many of each type of light is needed as well as where they are located. Each light also has constraints regarding its visible distance and the arc over which it can be seen. 

In the US, the Coast Guard says that any powered vessel that is under 39.4ft., may operate with boat nav lights in as little as two positions, an all-round light at the stern, and a set of sidelights at the bow. 

Vessels that are under 164ft. must have lights displayed in four positions, a stern light, a masthead light, and boat sidelights on both the port and starboard, near the bow.

The ship navigation lights also have minimum visibility distances, depending on the size of the craft. The minimum visibility for nav lights, even for small crafts, is one mile, with requirements that other lights on larger vessels be visible for up to 3 nautical miles.

Also read: Boating Rules and Etiquette On the Water

Boat lights come in 4 types, sidelights, stern light, masthead light, and all-round light. Lights only come in white, red, and green, and all have very specific jobs.

Masthead Light

The masthead light is the white light located about ⅔ of the way up the mast, rather than at the top as you’d think. This boat bow light is required when using motor power at night. To be acceptable, the light must have an arc of 225° and needs to be seen from 2 miles away.

Large boats can have up to 3 mast lights. If your boat is shorter than 39 ft., all 2-3 white mast lights can be combined, utilizing one larger white light at the top of the mast.

Color : White ARC : 225 degrees Position : Front of boat

Port Sidelight

The boating lights located on the port side of the watercraft are red and mounted so that boats can see as they approach either head-on or from the left. This light helps tell if a boat is coming towards you or if it is pointing away. The phrase “red, right, returning” means that if you see a boat with their red navigation light on the right, they are facing your boat. The only time it is not needed is when your boat is anchored for the night .

Color : Red ARC : 122.5 degrees Position : Forward, left side

Starboard Sidelight

If you are to approach a boat from the front or right, you will see the green starboard sidelight. With an ARC of 122.5 degrees, approaching boats will be able to see yours easily.

This light helps tell you whether or not you have the right of way, which is important when it comes to keeping both you and your passengers safe. These are some of the front boat lights.

This light will often be combined with the port light, in small boat navigation lights. When out in the water, if you see the green light, that means it is safe for you to go, as you have the right of way.

Color : Green ARC : 122.5 degrees Position : Forward, right side.

The rear boat light is called the stern light. It is used to mark the rear of the boat. The operator can infer from only setting a boat stern light, that they are directly behind the vessel. 

The stern light is white and is visible for an arc of 112.5 degrees on both the port and starboard sides, making a full arc of 225. Being able to see the red starboard side light as well as the stern light, should indicate the other vessel is traveling to the right from the perspective of the observer. 

Color : White ARC : 225 degrees Position : Stern

All-Around Light

One of the boat night lights that is required when on your boat between sunset and sunrise is the all-around light. This light is intended to be seen from any point and helps to tell what direction a boat is moving. This light is also used when a boat is stopped or anchored.

This anchor light is required to have an ARC of 360 degrees and should be visible for two miles. The all-around light is white and it is located at the top of your boat’s mast for maximum visibility.

Color : White ARC : 360 degrees Position : Top of mast

Tricolor Light

A tricolor light is a sailboat mast light that has your three types of bow light in one convenient piece of equipment. They are for sailboats that are smaller than 65.6 feet long. The point of this sailboat light is to increase your nighttime visibility. They are mounted at the top of the mast, allowing larger boats to see yours better. They are not permitted to be used by any boats with a motor. The only type of boat that can utilize a tricolor light is a sailboat.

Color : White, red, green ARC : 360 degrees Position : Top of mast

Towing Light

These yellow lights are important, as they indicate to other watercraft that, not only is there another boat nearby but that they are also towing someone as well. The light must be positioned at the back of the boat, as close to the stern as possible. The goal is to avoid having anyone run into the boat that is being towed, as there may be no lights showing where that boat is located. The boat lighting requirements when towing state that both sidelights, a stern light, and masthead lights should also be displayed.

Color : Yellow ARC : 135 degrees Position : Over fore and aft centerline of the boat

Law Enforcement Light 

Lights used by law enforcement on the water are flashing blue lights that can flash 120 times per minute or more. They can be used nearly anywhere that is convenient for the operator, provided they do not interfere with the function of the other lights.

This light may be displayed by any type of local law enforcement that is engaged in the course of their duty. This can apply to local, state, or federal police, as well as officials from wildlife and conservation departments, the Coast Guard, and more.

Color : Flashing Blue ARC : 180-225 degrees Position : Anywhere not interfering with other lights

Find your boat type below for the lineup of nav lights that you will need to safely operate after sunset and in other times of limited visibility.

Be sure you know which lights you will need to have on while underway, as well as at anchor or while towing. If you’re sailing, don’t forget that you are considered power-driven when using your motor.

Powerboat under 23 feet (7m) 

Powerboats under 23 feet are required to have the following navigation lights displayed:

• One white masthead light visible for 2 miles
• One red & green sidelight visible for 1 mile
• One stern light visible for 2 miles
• One white, red, green, or yellow all-round light visible for 2 miles

Powerboat Under 39,4 feet (12m)  

Powerboats under 39,4 feet are required to follow these boat light rules:

• One all-round light visible for 2 miles

Powerboat Over 39,4 feet (12m)  

Powerboats over 39,4 feet are required to have the following navigation lights displayed:

• One white masthead light visible for 5 miles, unless less than 20 meters, then 3 miles
• One red & green sidelight visible for 2 miles

Powerboat 39,4 feet (12m) to 164 feet (50m) 

Powerboats between 39,4 feet and 164 feet are required to have the following marine running lights displayed:

• One white masthead light visible for 6 miles
• One red & green sidelight visible for 3 miles
• One stern light visible for 3 miles
• One all-round light visible for 3 miles

Sailboat Under 23 feet (7m) 

Sailboats under 23 feet are required to have the following sailing navigation lights displayed:

• One white stern light
• One white mast lantern positioned at or near the top of the mast where it can be easily seen from a distance

Note: if it is not practicable for the vessel to display the prescribed lights, one all-round white light can be used or a hand torch, with enough time to prevent a collision.

Sailboat Under 65,6 feet (20m) 

Sailboats under 65,6 feet are required to have the following sailing lights displayed:

Tug Boat With Tow Length Under 656 feet (200m) 

Tug boats with tow lengths less than 656 feet are required to have the following navigation lights displayed:

• Two masthead lights in a vertical line
• Stern light
• Towing light in a vertical line above the stern light

Tug Boat With Tow Length Over 656 feet (200m) 

Tug boats with tow lengths longer than 656 feet are required to have the following navigation lights displayed:

• Three masthead lights in a vertical line
• A towing light placed vertically above the stern light
• A diamond shape visibly displayed

Anchored Vessel 

Vessels at anchor or aground are required to observe the following boat lighting rules:

• One white all-round in the fore
• One white all-round at a lower level than the fore, at the stern

If aground, the vessel should display two red all-round lights in a vertical line

Vessel Under Oars 

Vessels under oar power have similar requirements to follow as small sailboat lighting:

• One stern light

Or, alternately, one white all-round light or hand torch to be used to manually signal to avoid collision

Vessel Engaged in Fishing 

Vessels actively engaged in fishing are required to have the following marine navigation lights displayed:

• Two all-round lights oriented in a vertical line, red on top and white on the bottom
• One all-round white light for gear more than 150 meters from the vessel
• When making its way through the water, there shall also be sidelights and stern light

Vessel Engaged in Trawling 

Vessels engaged in trawling are required to fulfill the following boat light requirements:

• Two all-round lights oriented in a vertical line, green on top and white on the bottom
• One masthead light abaft and higher than the all-round green

Kayakers and Canoers 

Kayakers and canoers are required to have the following navigation lights displayed:

Alternatively, a hand torch or lantern which can be used to signal to avoid collisions

Personal Watercraft 

There are no established rules for navigation lights on personal watercraft, even though many of them are classified as a boat by coast guard standards. Personal watercraft are often not permitted to operate outside of the sunrise-to-sunset period, and so most manufacturers do not install or make possible the installation of navigation lights. 

Vessels Restricted in their Ability to Maneuver 

Vessels restricted in their ability to maneuver are required to have the following navigation lights displayed:

• Three all-round lights displayed as high a possible in a vertical line, red at the top, and white in the middle
• One masthead light

The USCG as well as state authorities hold the operator of the vessel responsible for the correct use and understanding of nav lights.

This means they also must make sure all of the lights used meet the requirements set forth by the authorities.

This also extends to ensuring that the lights are all installed for optimal visibility while underway, so if your cruiser rides high, make sure your lights are still visible.

What navigation lights do I need on my boat?

Boat light regulations state boats must have a pair of red and green sidelights, and an all-around white light that can be seen from 360°.

Why are navigation lights red and green?

Navigation lights for boats indicate to others which direction a boat is facing. The red indicates the left side of the boat, green is on the right.

What lights need to be on a boat at night?

Per the navigation lighting rules, it is crucial that you have your red and green navigation lights, as well as the white 360° light.

Which three colors are used for navigational lights?

The boat light colors are going to be green, red, and white. If you see a blue light, this generally indicates a government vessel.

Do I need navigational lights on my boat?

Yes, all boats are legally required to have the minimum red, green, and white boat safety lights

 when operating in the dark.

Why do boats have blue lights?

When you see a boat that has blue boat lights at night, that means that it is likely the coast guard or law enforcement.

Why is port red and starboard green?

The light on the starboard side of the boat is green because it is ‘safe’, as the steersman will be able to see other boats.

What does a single white light mean on a boat at night?

If you can only see a single white light on a boat at nighttime, you are likely seeing the stern light or the boat anchor light.

Robert Owens is the Chief of Content of Quicknav. Robert has been boating for over ten years and loves to share his experience on the water. His first boat was a dirt-cheap moderately beat up 2003 Bayliner 175, where he learned a tremendous amount about trailering, launching, docking, operating, and maintaining. He currently owns a Cruiser Yacht and is eyeing a sailboat.

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Sailing Signals: Nautical Lights, Shapes, & Sounds

You might be wondering what all those lights, shapes, and sounds that are either attached to a vessel or emanating from them.

While it might not be obvious what these mysterious modes of communication mean, they play a very important role in ensuring the safety and proper communication between vessels and non-vessels alike.

Sailing safety has a lot to do with proper preparedness, which means having the right gear , plan, experience, and mindset. However, sailing safety also requires knowledge in the various forms of communication between vessels and non-vessels. This is where lights, shapes, and sounds play a big role.

By using various lights, shapes, and sounds when out on the water, vessels and non-vessels are able to communicate whether there’s danger afoot, they need help, or simply telling you to get out of the way.

We’ll explore the most common and vitally important light, shape, and sound signals to make sure you’re able to pick up and recognize them when the time is right.

Vessel Lights

Whenever you see a vessel that has their lights on display, it’s most likely going to be during the evening when it matters most.

The combination of colors and how they’re oriented can mean a world of difference in terms of what they’re trying to communicate, so it’s important to keep an eye out.

The color of lights you’ll see when out on the water include white, red, green, and yellow. Again, you’ll see these on display at night when visual communication between vessels and non-vessels is crucial.

When you see lights on display, you’re essentially being told the vessel’s direction of movement, method of propulsion, and size.

Apart from the basic message of direction, propulsion method, and size, there are other light signals that are there to inform you of other situations. Some of those situations include when a vessel is

• Not under command
• Constrained by draft
• Unable to maneuver

The most important determination, when confronted with a vessel or non-vessel at night, is whether or not there’s a risk of collision.

Obviously, if there’s a risk of collision you need to attempt to communicate with the vessel immediately and to take proper action to avoid a collision. Ideally, you’ll be able to communicate with the other vessel so that you’re both in agreement about who does what to prevent a potential collision.

Basic Lights

As I mentioned previously, there are several basic colors that you’ll see on display from a vessel at night.

However, these lights can be displayed in different ways in terms of position on a vessel as well as how they’re displayed (e.g., blinking or static). Here are some basic definitions of lights that you should know.

Masthead Light

The masthead light is a static white light that sits partway up the main mast of a vessel and only displays to the front 225 degrees of the vessel.

This means that other vessels coming toward yours at an arc of 225 degrees will see an unbroken white light, which will inform them that you are possible head-on.

The sidelights are a pair of static lights that sit fore of the vessel at the bow with one being on the port side and the other on the starboard side.

The light on the port side is a static red light and the light on the starboard side is static green. The combination of both lights covers the same amount of arc as the masthead light, which is 225 degrees.

The sternlight is a static white light that sits as far back as possible aft the vessel at the stern and displays to the back 135 degrees of the vessel.

Other vessels who see this will know that they’re behind your vessel due to the light being lower than if they saw the masthead light and not being able to see the sidelights.

All-Round Light

The all-round light is a static white light that sits at the very top of a vessel’s mast and displays at a full 360-degree angle. You’ll see this light being displayed on a sailboat that’s either docked or at anchor.

Towing Light

The towing light is a static yellow light that sits at the same position as the sternlight and displays at an arc of 135 degrees aft the vessel. As the name suggests, this light indicates to other vessels that it’s currently towing an object.

Underway Vessels

When vessels are on the move and it’s dark out, there’s no doubt that being able to pick out fellow vessels is an important way to avoid any risk of collision .

In all likeliness, you’ll be able to pinpoint another vessel rather quickly at night be observing their lights and determine their position, direction of movement, and size.

Sailing Vessels

When spotting sailing vessels underway at night, you’ll be able to see at a bare minimum their sidelights and sternlight.

By observing which lights you can see and their orientation, you can quickly determine the position at which you’re viewing their vessel. However, depending on the size of the vessel, you’ll definitely see a different combination of lights.

If your vessel is less than 20 meters (65 feet) in length, then all you’ll need to display are the sidelights and sternlights when underway at night.

However, it’s also possible to display a similar set of lights in a different way indicating the same underway conditions, which is when you might see on the very top of the mast a 3-light combination — red, white, and green.

The 3-light combo displays at the same angles as the sidelights and sternlight. The only difference here is they’re situated at the top of the mast.

Sailing vessels underway that are larger than 20 meters will likely have a different set of lights on display, but the difference is huge.

With larger sailing vessels, you’ll still see the sidelights and sternlight with another pair of static lights near the top of the mast where the top light is red and the one below is green.

Power-Driven Vessels

Now, power-driven vessels are bit different when underway at night compared to sailing vessels. For one, a power-driven vessel can be as small or much larger than a sailing vessel, so the number of lights can vary quite a bit.

Also, a power-driven vessel is capable of much greater speeds than a sailing vessel, so ensuring other vessels are aware of their existence at night is very important.

Not unlike a sailing vessel, a power-driven vessel will also have a pair of sidelights and one sternlight. However, there’s an additional light that’s included in this combination and that being the white masthead light.

This 4-light combination will help other vessels like yours be aware that a 15 meter (50 feet) power-driven vessel is underway near them.

But what about the power-driven vessels that are well above the 15-meter size?

Well, the power-driven vessels that are much larger will have the same lights as the smaller power-driven vessel as well as a white static light at the bow that’s slightly lower in height than the masthead light.

This helps other vessels like yours get an idea of just how big this power-driven vessel really is.

Vessels At Anchor

Whenever you’re underway at night, there’s no doubt you want to be aware of other vessels underway to avoid a major collision .

But it’s also the case that you want to be able to spot those other vessels that are at anchor, especially if you’re moving around a marina or bay with other docked or anchored vessels.

Sailing vessels at anchor are very easy to pick out at night since all they need to have on display is their all-round light.

Remember that the all-round light is a static white light that provides a 360-degree view at the very top of a sailing vessels mast, so it’ll be quite difficult to miss. As a matter of fact, a power-driven vessel at anchor also has the same all-round light on display as long as it’s 50 meters (65 feet) or less in size.

For sailing and power-driven vessels that are greater than 50 meters in size, they have to put on display another all-round light.

However, this extra all-round light is placed near the stern of the vessel and is lower in height compared to the all-round light on the mast. This combination of all-round lights should tell you right away that you’re looking at a much larger vessel at anchor.

If you just so happen to see a vessel that’s greater than 100 meters (328 feet) in size and it’s also at anchor, you best believe you’ll see it lit up like a Christmas tree. When it comes to this size of a vessel, they’re required to put as many lights on display as possible.

Most of what we’ve covered up to this point has been under the conditions of being underway or at anchor during the evening.

However, arguably more vessels will be out during the day than at night, so it’s important to be aware of other forms of visual communication such as day shapes.

During the day there’s little need for lights to communicate visually to other vessels, which is why we use shapes instead. There are a number of different shapes that take the form of circles, squares, triangles, and more that communicate different messages.

While there are a lot of different day shapes to consider, I want to cover the most common you’ll likely see while out on the water.

Being able to pinpoint a vessel, whether sailing or power-driven, that’s anchored during the day is rather straight forward as you should see a large black sphere hanging between the tip of the vessel’s mast to the fore of the vessel.

This single black sphere should be the size of a basketball and will be attached in the middle of a line.

Motoring and Sailing

If you’re out sailing and have your engine running to help boost your speed, you’ll need to ensure that you have a black, upside-down triangle attached to the middle of your forestay.

Just like the black sphere used to illustrate that your vessel is anchored, your sailboat should have the upside triangle in the same location. It’s important to note that this is only required for vessels that are 12 meters (39 feet) or greater in size.

Diving Operations

If you like to go freediving, scuba diving, or snorkeling, you’ll want to be sure to use the proper diving day shape.

Whether you’re on a small or medium sized vessel, make sure you put up the correct flag at the top of the mast. The most commonly used flag is blue and white while another flag is red with a white slash from one corner to another.

One of the worst situations you can find yourself or anyone else in while out sailing is ending up aground.

If this situation ever occurs, there should be three black spheres, just like the one you would use when anchored out, attached to the top of the mast in a vertical column. It’s important to note that this is only required for vessels that are 12 meters (39 feet) or greater in size.

Not Under Command

There will be times when vessels out on the water won’t be under command, which means you should be aware of this so you can make sure you can avoid them on your course.

Just like a vessel that’s run aground, you should see black spheres lined up vertically at the top of the mast, but instead of three spheres there should only be two. Again, this is only required for vessels that are 12 meters (39 feet) or greater in size.

Restricted Maneuverability

Some vessels can find themselves in situations that simply restrict their ability to maneuver, so being able to put that inability on full display to the rest of the vessels out on the water is rather important.

By putting a black, diamond-shaped object in between two black spheres in a vertical column at the top of the mast, this message is illustrated successfully. Similar to other day shapes, you’ll only find this on vessels that are 12 meters (or 39 feet) or greater in size.

Fishing and Trawling

Fishing is one of the oldest industries in the world and there’s no doubt that you’ll eventually find a vessel fishing and towing along a net.

Whenever a vessel is trawling, you should find two triangle shapes pointing at each other in a vertical column hoisted as high as possible.

There are also a few strange looking flags you’ll find being hoisted in the same location whenever a fishing vessel is either shooting nets, hauling nets, or their nets are caught on the seabed.

Buoys and Marks

Being able to safely navigate around other vessels out on the water is, of course, extremely important, but it’s also important to be observant of non-vessel objects that could get in your sailboat’s way.

Circumventing spots that are potentially dangerous comes first by being able to recognize the various buoys and marks on the water.

There are internationally agreed sets of buoys and marks that ensure safety for traveling vessels all over the world. Thanks to the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (IALA), we have two major systems to abide by located in two different worldwide regions.

Fortunately, these two regions — Region A and B — have very few impactful differences. Region A (IALA A) covers all of Europe and pretty much the rest of the world while Region B (IALA B) covers the USA, Japan, The Philippines, and Korea.

Major Difference Between IALA A and IALA B

The major difference between the two regions is regarding the buoys which define which side of a channel the vessels should be traveling on.

For example, IALA B has red lights, marks, and/or buoys on the starboard (right) side of a channel when entering a place such as a harbor while under IALA A standards the red lights, marks, and/or buoys are on the port (left) side of a channel when entering.

These are known as lateral or channel marks and define the limits of the water that navigable across a channel.

Port and Starboard Marks

When it comes to buoys and marks that specify the port or starboard side of an object, the port side of an object is red and the starboard side of an object is green.

This is the same for when you’re sailing your boat when it comes to the foremost red and green lights on your vessel.

In regards to specific shapes of port and starboard marks, under the IALA B standards, port marks take the shape of a cone while the starboard marks take the shape of a can.

Safe Water Marks

A Safe Water Mark, also known as a Fairway buoy, is a red and white vertically striped object usually taking the shape of a sphere, pillar, or spar with a red ball on the top for the non-sphere shapes.

This mark usually indicates that you’re entering open and deep waters which should continue as you sail onwards.

Isolated Danger Marks

Having a mark named Isolated Danger Mark isn’t too comforting when you first read it, but it’s one of the most useful marks you’ll find. As the name implies, this mark indicates a location of potential hazard that should be avoided at all costs.

The Isolated Danger Mark should always be red and black horizontal bands with two black balls at the top. It should also have a flashing white light that comes in groups of two flashes.

Special Marks

A Special Mark can carry a number of different meanings, but it’s always displayed in the same way. Special Marks should be completely yellow and have an ‘X’ on the top of it.

A yellow flashing light is also found on the top of the Special Mark and can be seen quite distinctly at night. The reason you could find yourself near a Special Mark is due to it indicating

• Water skiing areas
• Anchorage areas
• Mooring areas
• Waiting areas
• Marine farms
• Historic wrecks
• Protected areas
• Sewerage pipes
• Submarine cables

Cardinal Buoyage System

Another useful set of buoys is based on the Cardinal Buoyage System, which was designed to indicate the safe passage around a potentially hazardous area.

These Cardinal Marks are signaling to vessels that there’s an area that’s shallow, contains sunken objects, reefs, rocks, or something else.

By observing the Cardinal Marks, you’ll be able to tell where not to go based on their explicit placement. For example, if you see a North Cardinal Mark, your vessel can safely pass the hazard by traveling North of that marker.

The same goes for South, East, and West Cardinal Marks. Cardinal Marks are always black and yellow horizontally striped pillars.

The North Cardinal Mark is black on the top, yellow on the bottom, has two vertical triangles pointing up, and has a continuously flashing white light on the top.

The South Cardinal Mark is yellow on the top, black on the bottom, has two vertical triangles pointing down, and has a flashing white light on the top that flashes in groups of six followed by one long flash.

The East Cardinal Mark is black with a yellow stripe in the middle, has two vertical triangles pointing outward, and has a flashing white light on the top that flashes in groups of three.

The West Cardinal Mark is yellow with a black stripe in the middle, has two vertical triangles pointing inward, and has a flashing white light on the top that flashes in groups of nine.

Sound Signals

There may be times when you’re out sailing and the visibility is just too poor to be able to point out any buoys, flags, or shapes of any kind. Thankfully, we have light signals that can help us out when it comes to navigation around other vessels and potentially hazardous areas.

However, there may be times when we need to communicate more direct messages much more quickly. If VHF is not an option under these conditions, the use of sound signals is your go-to solution.

“You Are Running into Danger”

There are plenty of useful sound signals to be able to send out as well as recognize when the moment’s right, but there’s one that everyone should be aware of.

When someone yells “heads up!”, it’s likely you’re going to cover your head as soon as possible. When out on the water, the “heads up” can come in the form of two distinct sounds.

When someone is attempting to warn you that “you are running into danger” or you need to inform another vessel of this, you’ll need to know the Morse code word for ‘U’.

The word ‘U’ is presented as a one-second horn blast followed by a 4-6 second horn blast. You can think of this as a short blast followed by a long blast.

In all likeliness, you’ll be the one hearing this sound signal as opposed to you sending it out. Most of the time when this sound signal is used, it’s coming from much larger vessels such as oil rigs, cruise ships, and other vessels of similar size.

Poor Visibility Sound Signals

There are a few sound signals that you should keep in mind when visibility becomes poor while out on the water. Some of the most important include:

• Power underway, making way: one 4-6 second blast and a 2-minute wait.
• Power underway, not making way: two 4-6 second blasts and a 2-minute wait.
• V essel sailing, fishing, not under command, towing, maneuverability restricted: one 4-6 second blast, two 1 second blasts, and a 2-minute wait.
• Last manned vessel of tow: one 4-6 second blast, three 1 second blasts, and a 2-minute wait.
• Warning from vessel at anchor: one 1 second blast, one 4-6 second blast, and one 1 second blast.
• Plot vessel on duty: four 1 second blasts.
• Vessel at anchor: 5 seconds of rapid bell ringing and a 1-minute wait.
• Vessel aground: 3 short bell rings, 5 seconds of rapid bell ringing, and 3 short bell rings.

Maneuvering and Warning Sound Signals

If you ever find yourself communicating with another vessel using sound signals, you’ll definitely need to confirm with one another who’s going to do what so as to avoid the risk of a collision.

Here are some of the most important sound signals you can use to communicate with other vessels.

• I’m altering course to starboard: one 1 second blast.
• I’m altering course to port: two 1 second blasts.
• I’m operating stern propulsion: three 1 second blasts.
• I don’t understand your intentions! I doubt you’re taking sufficient action to avoid collision: five or more 1-second blasts.
• I intend to overtake on your starboard side: two 4-6 second blasts and one 1 second blast.
• I intend to overtake on your port side: two 4-6 second blasts and two 1 second blasts.
• Agreement by overtaken vessel: one 4-6 second blast, one 1 second blast, one 4-6 second blast, and one 1 second blast.
• Approaching blind bend in channel: one 4-6 second blast.
• Reply from vessel on other side of bend: one 4-6 second blast.

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Boating Navigation Lights: Deciphering the Meaning Behind Red, Green, and White Lights

Navigating the waters in the dark or under low visibility conditions can be a challenging experience, especially for novice boaters. Understanding the intricate system of boating navigation lights, including red, green, and white, is an essential skill set that ensures safety at sea. These lights are not merely a decorative aspect of boating; they communicate vital information about the vessel’s position, direction, and size to other watercraft, helping to prevent collisions and misunderstandings.

In boating navigation, red light indicates a vessel’s port (left) side, green for the starboard (right) side, and white lights are used for the stern (rear) or masthead. They help determine the direction and position of boats at night or in low visibility, which is crucial for avoiding collisions on water.

The complex language of boating navigation lights – red, green, and white – often seems mystifying to beginners, causing a sense of intimidation. This article aims to demystify the codes behind these illuminations, providing you with the essential knowledge to correctly interpret the signals. 

Whether you’re a boating enthusiast, a professional sailor, or someone intrigued by nautical navigation , this exploration will shed light on the symbolic meanings and the regulatory framework underlying these maritime signals.

Table of Contents

Understanding the Boating Color Code: Red, Green, and White Lights

The color code of boating navigation lights – red, green , and white – forms the basis of maritime communication after sunset and during reduced visibility. These colors are not arbitrarily chosen; they each carry a specific meaning and are strategically positioned on the vessel to provide crucial information about its orientation and movement. Let’s delve into each color and its assigned significance:

• Red: The red light is displayed on the port side (left side when facing forward) of the vessel. When another boat sees this light, it indicates they are looking at your boat from its port side.
• Green: The green light is shown on the starboard side (right side when facing forward). If this light is visible to an observer, they view your boat from its starboard side.
• White: White lights have multiple roles. They are used at the stern (back) of the vessel to indicate its rear and as a masthead light to display the boat’s forward direction. The white light at the stern is visible from all directions, while the masthead light is visible from in front and to the sides but not from the back.

Deciphering the Port Side: The Role of Red Lights

The red light on a boat plays a crucial role in nautical navigation, indicating the vessel’s port side. The term “port” in maritime language refers to the left side of the boat when facing forward. 

This color is not chosen randomly; red is selected for its high visibility in low-light conditions and its universal recognition as a sign of caution. When another vessel sees the red light on your boat, they’re approaching or seeing your boat from the port side. This allows for clear communication of your boat’s position and direction, helping to maintain order and safety on the water.

Understanding the function of the red light is essential for you and other boaters around you. In situations of reduced visibility or during night-time sailing, the red port light acts as a beacon, indicating your vessel’s orientation and the direction in which it is moving. 

Recognizing this light enables other boaters to maneuver their vessels accordingly, significantly reducing the risk of collision. Therefore, ensuring your red port light is functioning correctly and is visible from a sufficient distance is a fundamental aspect of safe and responsible boating.

Decoding the Starboard Side: The Significance of Green Lights

The green light on a boat is equally important as the red light in maritime navigation. Displayed on the starboard side of the vessel – the right side when facing forward – the green light is a clear signal of the vessel’s orientation and direction of movement during nighttime or poor visibility conditions. 

When another seafarer sees the green light of your boat, it communicates that they’re viewing your vessel from its starboard side. This allows them to take appropriate action to avoid a potential collision. The green light, therefore, plays a vital role in ensuring maritime safety. It allows for the seamless coordination of multiple vessels sailing nearby or crossing paths. The correct display and functioning of this green starboard light are crucial. 

Not only does it help others accurately interpret your vessel’s movement, but it also contributes to the overall predictability and orderliness of maritime traffic. Ensuring your green light is in working order and visible from the appropriate distance is crucial to safe navigation and demonstrating responsible and respectful boating behavior.

Identifying the Stern and Masthead: The Purpose of White Lights

White lights on a vessel serve multiple roles in the maritime navigation system. Primarily, they are used to mark the stern (the rear) of the boat and as a masthead light indicating the forward direction of the vessel. This is critical for other mariners to understand the orientation and movement of your boat during periods of low visibility or night-time conditions.

The stern light is positioned at the back of the boat and is designed to be visible from all directions. When another vessel sees this light, it communicates that they are looking at the rear of your boat. This allows other mariners to understand that your vessel is moving away from them, providing a clear signal to follow at a safe distance if required.

On the other hand, the masthead light is located at the top of the mast and is visible from the front and sides but not from the rear. This light helps other vessels understand that your boat is approaching or moving across their path. 

The visibility of the masthead light combined with either the red port light or the green starboard light provides a comprehensive picture of your vessel’s orientation and direction. Proper functioning and placement of these white lights are thus integral to safe and responsible navigation on the waters.

The Regulatory Framework: International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs)

The regulatory framework governing the use of navigation lights in maritime activities is defined by the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) . Established by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) , these rules specify the lighting configurations for vessels of different types and sizes under various conditions. The aim is to standardize maritime communication worldwide, minimizing the risk of collisions and enhancing overall safety at sea. Let’s delve into the key aspects of this regulatory framework:

• Application: The COLREGs are applicable to every seafaring vessel on the high seas and all connected waterways that are navigable by seagoing vessels. This encompasses everyone from large commercial ships to small recreational boats.
• Lighting Specifications: The rules provide detailed specifications for the type, color, intensity, and positioning of lights. For example, a power-driven vessel underway must exhibit a masthead light forward, sidelights (red for the port side, green for the starboard side), and a stern light.
• Visibility Range: The COLREGs set out the required visibility range for different lights based on the vessel’s length. Larger vessels have longer visibility requirements.
• Special Circumstances: The rules also cover lighting configurations for special circumstances, such as vessels at anchor, towed vessels, fishing vessels, and vessels not under command or restricted in their maneuverability.
• Responsibility: Every vessel must, at all times, maintain a proper lookout and operate at a safe speed. Even with adherence to the lighting rules, it is the responsibility of each mariner to avoid collisions using all available means.

The Importance of Navigation Lights in Ensuring Maritime Safety

Navigation lights hold paramount importance in ensuring maritime safety. They are the primary method of communication between vessels during times of low visibility or darkness. By providing crucial information about a vessel’s size, type, activity, and direction, navigation lights help to prevent collisions and maintain order on the water.

These lights allow for the identification of vessels from a distance, giving other mariners ample time to understand the situation and take appropriate action. For example, if a vessel is seen displaying only a white light, it’s assumed to be at anchor. Conversely, a vessel showing a red and white light is understood to be a sailing vessel with another vessel on its port side.

Without these lights, the risk of accidents and collisions would increase exponentially. For this reason, the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) have established stringent rules governing the use of navigation lights. These rules ensure a standardized system of communication that mariners around the globe universally understand.

Navigation lights serve as the “traffic lights” of the waterways. Just as road users rely on traffic lights for safe and orderly movement, mariners depend on navigation lights to safely navigate the waters. 

The Anatomy of a Vessel: Placement and Visibility of Navigation Lights

The placement and visibility of navigation lights are crucial aspects of maritime safety, serving as key elements of a vessel’s anatomy. Each light is strategically positioned on the boat to communicate specific information about the vessel’s orientation, activity, and direction of movement. The visibility of these lights is also regulated to ensure that they can be seen from appropriate distances. Let’s break down the key principles for the placement and visibility of navigation lights:

• Port Light: The red light is located on the port side (left side when facing forward) of the vessel. It should be visible from a vessel approaching from the port side.
• Starboard Light: The green light is placed on the starboard side (right side when facing forward). It should be visible from a vessel approaching from the starboard side.
• Stern Light: The white light at the stern should be positioned to be visible from any direction behind the boat.
• Masthead Light: This white light is located at the top of the mast. It should be visible from the front and sides of the vessel but not from the rear.
• All-Round Light: Some vessels also use all-round lights (visible from all directions) for specific purposes, like indicating that the vessel is at anchor. These lights can be any color but are typically white.
• Visibility Range: The required visibility range of these lights varies depending on the size of the vessel. For instance, for power-driven vessels less than 12 meters in length, the port and starboard lights should be visible from a minimum distance of 1 nautical mile, while the masthead light should be visible from 2 nautical miles.

Ensuring the correct placement and visibility of navigation lights is a fundamental aspect of maritime safety, enabling effective communication between vessels and helping to prevent collisions on the water.

Best Practices for Maintaining and Checking Your Boat’s Navigation Lights

Maintaining and regularly checking your navigation lights is essential for all mariners. These lights ensure your safety and that of others sharing the waterways with you. Here are some best practices for maintaining and checking your navigation lights:

• Regular Checks: Before setting out, check all navigation lights to ensure they work correctly. Remember, it’s not only about your safety but also about communicating your position to other vessels.
• Cleanliness: Keep the lights clean. Dirt and grime can significantly reduce their effectiveness, making them harder to see from a distance. Use a soft cloth and non-abrasive cleaning solutions to maintain their clarity.
• Bulb Replacement: Always keep spare bulbs on board. Navigation lights can fail when you least expect them, and having spares can mean the difference between a safe journey and a dangerous situation.
• Power Supply: Regularly check your power supply. For boats that use battery-powered navigation lights, checking the battery charge and having a backup power source available is essential.
• Visibility and Positioning: Ensure the lights are positioned correctly per the COLREGs and visible from the required distances. Also, ensure that no equipment or structures on the boat obstruct the lights.
• Professional Inspection: Have your navigation lights inspected professionally at regular intervals. This can help identify missed issues and ensure your lights comply with regulatory requirements.

Remember, as a responsible mariner, you should never compromise on your navigation lights’ maintenance and operational effectiveness. They are your primary means of communication in low visibility conditions, essential to maritime safety.

Bryan is a Las Vegas resident who loves spending his free time out on the water. Boating on Lake Mohave or Lake Havasu is his favorite way to unwind and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. More about Bryan.

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Nautical Mnemonics: Understanding Boat Lights

One of the most complicated things to learn about your boat are the COLREGs lights. That stands for International Regulations for Prevention of Collision at Sea. The lights on your boat, both power boats and sail boats, help you navigate at night. They also help other boats understand how to navigate around you. We have rules of the road so it’s easy to understand how your car and the other cars around you work. On the water we have none of that. So you need to rely on these lights to understand nautical rules of the road. Luckily there are nautical mnemonics to help you remember them.

Types of Boat Lights

There are several navigation lights on a boat. All navigation lights must be working and displayed between sunset and sunrise. These will establish the rules of the road for other boaters.

Stern Light: This is a white light that is visible from behind a vessel.

Masthead Light: This is another white light. It is visible from the front and the sides. Any boat that has a motor is required to have a masthead light. If you have a boat that is below 39.4 feet it can be combined with the stern light. This takes the form of one all around white light that can be seen from every angle. If you see a boat that does not have a masthead light, it’s a sailing vessel. Sailing vessels may also have tricolor lights on the masthead. That means red, white, and green. This can only be illuminated when sailing and not combined with other lights.

Sidelights: Sidelights are red and green. They’re visible to boats that are approaching either from the front or from either side. The red light is located on the port or left side of the boat. The green light is located on the starboard or right side of the boat.

Some people have trouble remembering which side is red, and which side is green. Keep in mind the old mnemonic tool that port wine is red. It’s red to port.

Right-Of-Way Rules

Because of the lack of any roadways on the water, the rules of right away can be hard to understand. This is where mnemonics come in.

One unofficial rule of thumb for boaters is that tonnage has the right of way. That means if it comes down to you in your 12 foot boat and a massive freightliner, the bigger boat wins. Always stay out of the way of a larger vessel, even if you believe you have the right of way. This is a simple safety precaution. If there were to be a collision, a larger boat would destroy you in a smaller boat.

If two boats of similar size are approaching one another, then you want to alter your course to starboard. A handy way to remember this is by saying stay to the right and you’ll be alright.

There is an order of priority as dictated by the COLREGS. It will let you know who has the right-of-way in any given situation based on the category of boat. This mnemonic can help you remember it: Generally, Anchoring our Red Tugboat Diligently Minimizes Surge Loads .

General : In general, avoid all collisions. Even if you have the right of way and you see another boat coming right at you, do the smart thing and avoid it if possible. This takes priority over any red lights, green lights, or whatever rule applies. The most important rule is to avoid collisions.

Anchored: Boats that are anchored or more should be avoided by all other boats.

Overtaking: If a boat is being overtaken, it has the right-of-way over the overtaking vessel. This is regardless of whether either boat is powered or a sailboat.

Restricted: A boat with restricted maneuverability has the right-of-way over other boats. That means either fishing, Towing, draft or other reasons.

Traffic: Boats that are part of a traffic separation have the right-of-way over other boats. If you need to cross a traffic lane, cross it at a right angle.

Downriver: On waters where it is applicable, a powerboat heading down river has the right of way. This is over a boat that is heading up river or crossing.

Manpower: This is giving priority to power. A man powered boat such as a canoe has the right of way over a sailboat. That in turn has priority over a motorboat. And a motorboat would have priority over a seaplane. The less powerful the boat, the more priority it will have in terms of right of way. Sailboats may be used to having the right of way on the open water. It’s worth knowing that if you’re in a sailboat you still have to give way to anyone in a kayak.

Starboard: A boat on a starboard tack has priority.

Leeward: If two boats are on the same tack, Leeward gets the right-of-way over Windward.

Light Meanings

The way lights are illuminated can be used to signal other craft about the boat’s condition.

Boat at Anchor: When the boat is at anchor at night, the all-around white light should be lit. There is no clever memory aid rule or mnemonics for this one. It is anchored and has restricted ability to move.

My grandfather first took me fishing when I was too young to actually hold up a rod on my own. As an avid camper, hiker, and nature enthusiast I'm always looking for a new adventure.

Categories : Boats , nauticalknowhow

Robert Hogward on August 26, 2021

Hi there, Very informative post, thank you for taking the time to write this all out! Most folks have to learn this the hard way. 🙂

Robin Luethe on January 5, 2022

Two tugs accompanying an outgoing nuclear sub. Displaying a white light over a red light. Also two escorts with flashing blue lights (these generally are USCG boats)

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Navigation Lights on Sailing Yachts and Motor Boats

Navigation lights ensure the safety of everyone at sea. The Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (IMO COLREG 72) precisely sets out the guidelines for navigation lights, i.e., displaying lights, their range (distance from which the light is visible), as well as how they should be constructed and assembled. Our guide is of interest to sailors and sports boats enthusiasts with boats up to 20 m in length.

Regulations and official certifications:

When must navigation lights be displayed, what are the regulations concerning the use of navigation lights at sea, how do i know that my lights are eu-compliant, what is a ce mark, how are navigation lights defined, minimum range of navigation lights:.

• From what distance must lights be visible?
• What lights are required for my boat?

What lights must be displayed on a sailboat or rowing boat with a motor?

What lights should i exhibit when at anchor, what lights should be displayed to show that a vessel is unable to manoeuvre.

• How do I indicate that my vessel has run aground?

Navigation lights – Conventional and LED:

What distinguishes led from conventional navigation lights.

• Replacement bulbs for conventional & LED lights

What are the advantages of LED navigation lights?

Switching from conventional to led navigation lights.

According to COLREGs part C, rule 20), navigation lights must always be used on board from sunset to sunrise or during the day if visibility is poor.

Please refer to the German Traffic Regulations for Navigable Maritime Waterways , §8 -10 and Preventing Collisions at Sea. Part C - Lights and Shapes. rules 20 - 31, and annexes I 1. - 14 for the exact wording.

NOTE: Vessels that are authorised to fly the German flag are generally only permitted to use approved navigation lights and sound signalling devices.

EU approval can be identified via the wheel mark symbol and the notified body number. BSH approved navigation lights (previously DHI) are marked with a model number (e.g., BSH/00/01/90).

However, even older lights with DHI approval that have already been installed maintain their approval, despite the changes made by the BSH.

In addition to the wheel mark symbol and German BSH approval, some lights are also approved by other countries, such as RINA (Registro Italiano Navale), MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency) and the USCG (United States Coast Guard). These are now recognised, provided the approval comes from the national approval body recognised in the country of origin.

National bodies whose accreditation is currently recognised in Germany:

The wheel mark symbol indicates approval of the Marine Equipment Directive (MED). This approval is valid for all EU member states, both for commercial vessels and recreational shipping.

0098 = Notified Body number (here 0098 = Germanischer Lloyd in Hamburg) 18 = year in which the mark is affixed, here 2018

• A CE mark is a symbol that must be affixed to a product by the manufacturer before it is sold on the European market. It indicates that the manufacturer is aware of the specific requirements for the product in question and that it fulfils the requirements of relevant European product directives. A CE mark does not supersede approval according to collision prevention regulations.
• Navigation lights are defined in detail by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), according to the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (COLREGs) Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972), in sections C and D. The following rules apply:

Which navigation lights are required on board according to IMO COL REG?

Definitions according to the 1972 International Regulations for Prevention of Collisions at Sea (COL REG 72):

1. Side lights for starboard and port

A green light on the starboard side and a red light on the port side, which shine from dead ahead in an arc of 112.5° aft to a point 22.5° abaft the beam (behind the beam) on either side of the vessel. On ships of less than 20 metres in length, the two individual sidelights may be replaced by a dual-colour combined light. This must be centrally located on the bow and stern axis.

2. Stern light

A white light mounted as close to the stern as possible and shines dead ahead in an arc of 135° (67.5° to each side). The mounting height should be aligned to the height of the side lights and should never be higher.

3. Three-colour light for sailing vessels (sailing lights)

On sail boats up to a length of 20 m, the side light and stern light can be combined into one three-colour light mounted on top of the mast. However, as soon as the sail boat's motor is engaged, the use of a three-colour light is no longer permitted. The rules for motor-powered vessels then apply.

4. Mast-head light

A white light placed over the centre line of the vessel and shines dead ahead in an arc of 225° (from straight ahead up to 22.5° more aft than crosswise to each side). The mounting height should be at least 1 m higher than the side lights. In the past, the mast-head light was also referred to as a steam boat light or steamer light, as it is only seen on ships that operate under engine power.

5. Signal light or all-round light

A light that shines in a complete circle of 360°. It may emit white, red or green light, depending on use. Examples of use: All sailboats and motorboats at anchor must exhibit a white anchor light . Ships over 12m in length must, if necessary, display vessel-in-distress lights (two red signal lights) placed at a vertical distance of at least 12 m. The distance between such lights must not exceed 1 m.

From what distance must navigation lights be visible?

The range indicates the distance from which the light can be seen. The minimum ranges of navigation lights are defined according to ship size as follows::

Best-seller Hella marine

Note: When sailing boats are powered by a motor, the rules for motorboats apply and not for sailboats. The tricolour light may then no longer be displayed.

Displaying lights for sailboats up to 20 m

1 x red port side light

1 x green starboard light

1 x stern light

Also allowed:

1 x red all-round light on or near the mast top

1 x green all-round light on or near the mast top

1 x 3-colour light

Sailing vessels under 7 m (dinghies or small sports boats)

If, due to their design, no modern lights can be fitted, sailing vessels under 7 m in length and vessels being rowed must always carry an electric torch or lantern showing a white light, ready to exhibit in sufficient time to prevent a collision.

1 x Electric light or a torch with white light

Motorised vessels over 12 m

Lights used must be either / or:

1 x white masthead light fore

1 x dual colour light

Motorised vessels under 12 m

Alternatively, motorised vessels under 12 m can exhibit the following lights:

1 x white all-round light

Motorised vessels under 7 m and 7 knots maximum speed (small motor boats, dinghies or inflatables):

Motorised vehicles under 7 metres and with a maximum speed of no more than 7 knots can display the following navigation lights: all-round lights, portside and starboard lights.

The following applies in accordance with German Traffic Regulations for Navigable Maritime Waterways (SeeSchStrO): If, due to their design, no lights can be displayed (e.g., dinghies), sailing vessels under 7 m in length and 7 knots maximum speed must carry an electric hand-held spotlight or a torch to prevent collisions in the dark.

Left: 1 x white all-round light, 1 x red port side light, 1 x green starboard light

Right: 1 x hand-held spotlight or torch

Best-seller Aqua Signal Conventional

Best-seller Aqua Signal LED

Provided no engine power is used, the rules for sailboats apply. Motor-sailing vessels must display a large black cone pointing downwards when sailing during the day or at good light.

For vessels travelling under sail or at rudder during darkness or at reduced visibility, the rules for carrying lights for motorised boats automatically apply. This then depends on the length of the boat.

By day with a black cone, tip pointing downwards.

Visual signalling equipment

Torches & Spotlights

How must navigation lights be mounted on board?

Navigation lights must be securely mounted perpendicular to the waterline. Mast-head lights and stern lights should both be placed above the keel line.

At anchor during daylight? This must be displayed with a black anchor ball.

If the vessel is anchored outside of an area of water known by the River and Shipping Police Authority as an anchorage and berth for small vessels, this must be indicated as follows:

A black ball by day, 1 x white all-round light at night

Marker Lights

If your boat is unable to manoeuvre*, this should be indicated as follows:

Stationary: 2 x red all-round light, 2 x black ball, one below the other (during the day)

Moving: 1 x red port side light, 1 x green starboard light, 1 x white stern light

* A vessel is described as if, due to exceptional circumstances (e.g., rudder failure or engine malfunction), it cannot manoeuvre as prescribed and therefore cannot avoid another vessel.

How do I indicate correctly that my sailboat or motorboat has run aground?

If your boat has run aground, this should be indicated as follows:

2 x red all-round light, 1 x white all-round light, 3 x black ball, one below the other (during the day)

Manufacturers that specialise in navigation lights such as Aqua Signal or Hella Marine supply a wide range of internationally approved navigation lights which work with conventional (with BSH bulb) or with permanently installed light-emitting semiconductor components (LEDs). The bulbs required for operation are an integral part of the approval. Replacement bulbs must also be certified so that approval / your insurance protection is guaranteed. Ships under 20 m: Stern and anchor lights require BSH-approved light bulbs with 10 watts, all other navigation lights 25 watts.

All series listed above with BAY15d sockets could alternatively be operated with a high-Power LED . The big advantage in doing so is that the LED is suitable for multiple voltages (10-30 V) and consumes just 3 watts during operation. Since the light colour, range of light or beam angle can vary depending on the housing, this light is NOT yet internationally approved.

Spare Bulbs - Conventional & LED

Energy consumption on sailing ships is, as ever, a topic of significant interest. This is especially true for blue-water sailors who like to sail longer distances at a stretch. The arguments for converting to LED technology are as follows:

• High energy savings due to the low power consumption
• Long lifespan (over 10,000 hours)
• MultivoltTM technology (10-30V) with greater tolerance to voltage peaks
• Compact and light housing constructions
• Waterproofed, hermetically sealed housings
• Maintenance free

When switching completely from conventional navigation lights to LED lights, lights with the BSH seal of approval / EU wheel mark meet all the requirements in terms of light colour (no risk of blue tint), range of light and beam angle, and that you are travelling in accordance with KVR.

Navigation lights with LED technology

Replacing your navigation lights is often easy to do as manufacturers usually use the same mounting points for LED lights or have an adapter plate for further use of existing drill holes:

Adapter plate

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Written by our SVB (technical) experts

Our SVB safety experts regularly carry out maintenance checks and tests on our safety products, such as life jackets, life rafts etc. They test products and base their recommendations on many years of experience and their own know-how.

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Navigation lights – colregs, navigation lights colregs.

The International Regulations for the Prevention of Collision at Sea (COLREGS) apply to all vessels upon the high seas and vessels on most waterways, bays, inlets, rivers connected to the sea.

Rule 3(a) defines ‘Vessel’ as all manner of watercraft used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on water.

Rule 20 states that all vessels must display the proper lights from sunset to sunrise and in situations where there is limited visibility.

Rule 21 Defines the various navigation lights – see below.

Masthead Light

Rule 21(a) Masthead Light: The ‘masthead light’ is a white light placed over the fore and aft centerline of the vessel showing with an arc of 225 degrees.

Sidelight s

Rule 21(b) Sidelights: Sidelights are red (port side) and green (starboard side) lights than shine in an arc of 112.5 degrees from straight ahead to a point 22.5 degrees abaft the beam.

Stern Light

Rule 21(c) Stern Light: The stern light is a white light placed as near as is practicable at the stern. The light shines in an arc of 135 degrees.

Towing Light

Rule 21(d) Towing Light: The towing light is a yellow light placed as near as is practicable at the stern. The light shine in an arc of 135 degrees.

All-round Light

Rule 21(e) All-round Light: The all-round light (such as the white anchor light) shines in an arc of 360 degrees.

General Rules

At first glance the myriad of navigation lights and shapes don’t seem to make much sense. Here are a few basic rules to follow to make learning the navigation lights easier.

• a vessel will only have red, green sidelights and a stern light when it is underway (i.e. not anchored, moored or secured to a dock);
• if a vessel is under power it will have one or two masthead lights depending on it’s length (over 50 meters two; under 50 meters one). Since it is underway, it will also have the red, green sidelights and a stern light;
• a boat that is anchored, it is not making way and therefore it will only have one or more 360° white anchor lights depending on it’s length ( under 50 meters – one anchor light; over 50 meters but under 100 meters – two anchor lights one at the bow and one at the stern; over 100 meters – two anchor lights, one at the bow and one at the stern plus deck lights). Any vessel anchored will display a black disc which is the day shape indicating the vessel is anchored;
• a sailboat (i.e. a boat under sail alone) will have red and green sidelights and a stern light but since it is not under power, it will not have a masthead light

In addition to the above, a vessel will have other lights and day shapes to characterize the nature and activity of a boat. below.

Navigation Lights for Sail Boats – Rule 25

Rule 3(c) Defines a “sailing vessel” as any vessel under sail provided that propelling machinery, if fitted, is not being used.

Rule 25(a) Sailboats – Under Sail Only:

• Red and Green side lights;
• White Stern light.

Rule 25(b)Sailboats – Optional Tri-color Light:

Sailing vessels less than 20 meters in length may use a combination mast top tri-color light in place of the standard red and green sidelights and white stern light.

Rule 25(c)Sailboats – Optional Mast Top Lights:

Not required by law, but to make your sailboat more visible, you can use the  optional Red over Green mast top lights in addition to the required:

Rule 25(d)(ii)Sailboats – Less than 7 Met ers:

A sailboat less than 7 meters is not required to display lights as set out in Rule 25(a) or (b) but must have ready and at hand, an electric torch (flashlight) that shines a white light which shall be exhibited in sufficient time to prevent a collision.

Rule 25(e) Sailboats – Under Power (Mo torsailing):

A sailboat, either fully or partially under power, for the purposes of the Rules of Navigation, is treated as a power driven vessel (powerboat). This means that if you are motorsailing, you are now considered to be a powerboat and not a sailboat.

In addition to displaying the proper lights, a vessel under sail when also being propelled by machinery shall display a conical shape, apex downwards. (Vessels under 12 meters are not required to display this day shape.)

Navigation Lights for Power Boats

Rule 23(a)power boats underway – 50 meters and over:.

• Two White Masthead lights (front lower);

Rule 23(b)Power Boats underway – less than 50 Meters:

• White Masthead light;

Rule 23(d)(i)Power Boats underway – under 12 Meters:

A power vessel less than 12 Meters in lieu of the lights prescribed in Rule 23(a) may exhibit:

• All-round White light.

Vessels Not In Command

A vessel ‘Not in Command’ is defined in Rule 3(f) as a vessel which is unable to maneuver as required by these Rules and is therefore unable to keep out of the way of other vessels.

A vessel is underway when it is not anchored, docked, secured to the shore or aground.

Rule 27(a)(i)&(ii) Vessel Not in Command – N ot Making Way:

• Two all around Red lights, inline, one above the other;
• Shapes – two round discs, inline, one above the other.

Rule 27(a)(iii) Vessel Not in Command – Making Way:

• Red and Green sidelights;
• Stern light.

Vessels at Anchor

There is no distinction between power vessels at anchor and sailing vessels at anchor.

Rule 30(b) Vessels Under 50 Meters in length:

• An all-round white light placed where it may best be seen.

Rule 30(a) Vessels Over 50 Meters but Under 100 Meters in length:

• An all-round white light in the fore part or one ball;
• An all-round white light at or near the stern.

Rule 30(c) Vessels Over 100 Meters in length:

• An all-round white light at or near the stern;
• Use working or other lights to illuminate the decks.

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Lights and shapes

Definitions

• Masthead light means a white light placed over the fore and aft centreline of the vessel showing an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of 225° and so fixed as to show the light from right ahead to 22.5° abaft the beam on either side of the vessel.
• Sidelight means a green light on the starboard side and a red light on the port side each showing an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of 112.5° and so fixed as to show the light from right ahead to 22.5° abaft the beam on its respective side. In a vessel of less than 20 metres in length the sidelights may be combined in one lantern carried on the fore and aft centreline of the vessel.
• Sternlight means a white light placed as nearly as practicable at the stern showing an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of 135° and so fixed as to show the light 67.5° from right aft on each side of the vessel.
• Towing light means a yellow light having the same characteristics as the sternlight.
• All-round light means a light showing an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of 360°.
• Flashing light means a light flashing at regular intervals at a frequency of 120 flashes or more per minute.

Colour legend

Power-driven vessel underway

A power-driven vessel underway shall exhibit:

• a masthead light forward;
• a second masthead light abaft of and higher than the forward one; except that a vessel of less than 50 metres in length shall not be obliged to exhibit such light but may do so;
• sidelights;
• a sternlight.

Sailing vessels underway and vessels under oars

A sailing vessel underway shall exhibit:

In a sailing vessel of less than 20 metres in length the lights may be combined in one lantern carried at or near the top of the mast where it can best be seen.

A sailing vessel underway may, in addition to the lights, exhibit at or near the top of the mast, where they can best be seen, two all-round lights in a vertical line, the upper being red and the lower green, but these lights shall not be exhibited in conjunction with the combined lantern.

4 lights configurations sailing

A sailing vessel of less than 7 metres in length shall, if practicable, exhibit the lights prescribed above, but if she does not, she shall have ready at hand an electric torch or lighted lantern showing a white light which shall be exhibited in sufficient time to prevent collision.

A vessel under oars may exhibit the lights prescribed in this Rule for sailing vessels, but if she does not, she shall have ready at hand an electric torch or lighted lantern showing a white light which shall be exhibited in sufficient time to prevent collision.

Sailing and Motoring

A vessel proceeding under sail which has her engine running shall exhibit, forward where it can best be seen, a conical shape, apex downwards. She shall exibit lights according to a power-driven vessel.

A vessel at anchor shall according to Rule 30 (a) (b) exhibit where it can best be seen:

• in the fore part, an all-round white light or one ball;
• at or near the stern and at a lower level than the light prescribed in Rule 30(a)(i), an all-round white light.

A vessel aground shall according to Rule 30 (d) exhibit the lights prescribed in Rule 30(a) or (b) and in addition, if practicable, where they can best be seen;

• two all-round red lights in a vertical line;
• three balls in a vertical line.

A power-driven vessel when towing shall exhibit:

• two masthead lights in a vertical line. When the length of the tow, measuring from the stern of the towing vessel to the after end of the tow exceeds 200 metres, three such lights in a vertical line; Rule 24 ;
• a sternlight;
• a towing light in a vertical line above the sternlight;
• when the length of the tow exceeds 200 metres, a diamond shape where it can best be seen.

Towing an inconspicuous, partly submerged object

An inconspicuous, partly submerged vessel or object, or combination of such vessels or objects being towed; Rule 24 (g) , shall exhibit:

• if it is less than 25 metres in breadth, one all-round white light at or near the forward end and one at or near the after end except that dracones need not exhibit a light at or near the forward end;
• if it is 25 metres or more in breadth, two additional all-round white lights at or near the extremities of its breadth;
• if it exceeds 100 metres in length, additional all-round white lights between these lights so that the distance between the lights shall not exceed 100 metres;
• a diamond shape at or near the aftermost extremity of the last vessel or object being towed and if the length of the tow exceeds 200 metres an additional diamond shape where it can best be seen and located as far forward as is practicable.

Pushing from ahead or towing alongside

When a pushing vessel and a vessel being pushed ahead are rigidly connected in a composite unit they shall be regarded as a power-driven vessel and exhibit the normal lights.

A power-driven vessel when pushing ahead or towing alongside, except in the case of a composite unit; Rule 24 (c) , shall exhibit:

• two masthead lights in a vertical line;

A vessel or object being towed shall exhibit:

• Provided that any number of vessels being towed alongside or pushed in a group shall be lighted as one vessel,
• a vessel being pushed ahead, not being part of a composite unit, shall exhibit at the forward end, sidelights;
• a vessel being towed alongside shall exhibit a sternlight and at the forward end, sidelights.

Fishing – Trawling

A vessel engaged in fishing, whether underway or at anchor, shall exhibit only the lights and shapes prescribed below; Rule 26

A vessel when engaged in trawling, by which is meant the dragging through the water of a dredge net or other apparatus used as a fishing appliance, shall exhibit:

• two all-round lights in a vertical line, the upper being green and the lower white, or a shape consisting of two cones with their apexes together in a vertical line one above the other;
• a masthead light abaft of and higher than the all-round green light; a vessel of less than 50 metres in length shall not be obliged to exhibit such a light but may do so;
• when making way through the water, in addition to the lights prescribed hereh, sidelights and a sternlight.
• when shooting nets, white light over white light (Flag Z by day);
• when hauling nets, white light over red light (Flag G by day);
• When nets are caught on the bottom, red light over red light (Flag P by day).

Trawling in span

When pair trawling, each vessel shows searchlights on water aiming forward ( Flag T by day); Rule 26 (f) (b)ǂ(2)

Fishing, other than trawling

A vessel engaged in fishing, other than trawling , according to Rule 26 (c) shall exhibit:

• two all-round lights in a vertical line, the upper being red and the lower white, or a shape consisting of two cones with apexes together in a vertical line one above the other;
• when there is outlying gear extending more than 150 metres horizontally from the vessel, an all-round white light or a cone apex upwards in the direction of the gear;
• when making way through the water, in addition to the lights prescribed here, sidelights and a sternlight.

Purse seining

Purse Seiners will exhibit two all-round yellow lights in a vertical line, flashing alternately; Rule 26 (f) 3ǂ(iii)

Constrained by draught

A vessel constrained by her draught / draft may, (and not “shall”!) in addition to the lights prescribed for power-driven vessels, exhibit where they can best be seen three all-round red lights in a vertical line, or as day sign a cylinder, Rule 28

Not under command

A vessel not under command, sometimes knows as a NUC N ot U nder C ommand." aria-label="Illumination" data-bs-original-title="NUC"> vessel, shall according to Rule 27(a) exhibit:

• two all-round red lights in a vertical line where they can best be seen;
• two spherical shapes in a vertical line where they can best be seen; and
• when making way through the water also normal sidelights and a sternlight (not shown in the examples below).

Restricted in her ability to manoeuvre

A vessel restricted in her ability to manoeuvre, sometimes knows as a RAM R estricted in her A bility to M anoeuvre." aria-label="Illumination" data-bs-original-title="RAM"> vessel, except a vessel engaged in mine clearance operations , shall according to Rule 27(b) exhibit:

• three all-round lights in a vertical line where they can best be seen. The highest and lowest of these lights shall be red and the middle light shall be white;
• three shapes in a vertical line where they can best be seen. The highest and lowest of these shapes shall be balls and the middle one a diamond;
• when making way through the water, also a masthead light or lights, sidelights and a sternlight

Dredging or underwater operations

A vessel engaged in dredging or underwater operations, when restricted in her ability to manoeuvre; Rule 27(d) , shall exibit

• two all-round red lights or two balls in a vertical line to indicate the side on which the obstruction exists;
• two all-round green lights or two diamonds in a vertical line to indicate the side on which another vessel may pass; and
• when at anchor (or not making way), the lights or shapes prescribed in this section instead of the lights or shapes prescribed in Rule 30

Small diving vessel

A vessel engaged on pilotage, according to Rule 29 , duty shall exhibit:

• at or near the masthead, two all-round lights in a vertical line, the upper being white and the lower red;
• when underway, in addition, sidelights and a sternlight; as shown in the example below.

Hovercraft, hydrofoil ferry

An air-cushion vessel when operating in non-displacement mode shall, besides a masthead light forward, (plus a masthead light abaft if longer than 50 m) sidelights and a sternlight, exhibit an all‑round flashing yellow light (faster than 2 flashes per second). Rule 23(b)

Also a hydrofoil ferry or high speed catamaran when acting as ferry is often allowed under local regulations to exhibit an all-round flashing yellow light.

Minesweeper

A vessel engaged in mine clearance operations shall in addition to the lights prescribed for a power-driven vessel, or to the lights or shape prescribed for a vessel at anchor, exhibit three all-round green lights or three balls. One of these lights or shapes shall be exhibited near the mast head and one at each end of the fore yard. These lights or shapes indicate that it is dangerous for another vessel to approach within 1000 metres of the mine clearance vessel. Rule 27(f)

See all chapters

Course overview Chapter 1 – Positions Chapter 2 – Nautical chart Chapter 3 – Compass Chapter 4 – Plotting and piloting Chapter 5 – Plotting and piloting – Advanced Chapter 6 – Tides Chapter 7 – Tide prediction Chapter 8 – Currents Chapter 9 – Navigation aids Chapter 10 – Lights and Shapes

Ultimate Guide To Marine Navigation Lighting

If you drive a car or even ride a bicycle, you might be well aware of the necessity of lighting systems (though in the second case the word ‘system’ doesn’t quite apply) for the safety of you and the people around you. The thing applies just as well for ships. But since they are much larger than a car, the lighting system or navigation lights on ships is a little bit more complicated as well. Marine navigation lighting is also one of the most critical aspects of nautical studies.

It is mandatory for boats of all sizes to have a navigation system . This is to make sure that the chances of any significant accident are minimized. The United States introduced the system in 1838, and the United Kingdom followed suit. Before being internationally adopted in 1897 suitable guidelines were established by the International Maritime Conference which was established in 1889. Three colors were chosen that were to be used for the light colors. They were red, green and white.  This was based on a set of rules specified by the US and are followed around the world to this date.

This article discusses the different rules and regulations of using navigation lights, their importance, and also some basic marine navigation lighting systems along with their positions and ranges.

Marine Navigational Lights, Rules and Regulations

A standard pattern of marine navigation lighting is followed for the identification of both the vessel as well as the IALA buoyage system at night. If you are required to move from sea to a channel you need to have a list of all the IALA as well as the other fixed navigational lights that are visible on entering the channel. This includes distant lighthouses as well.

If you also make a note of the inland features like the radio and television transmitter masts it will benefit you because they act as good navigational aids due to their height and warning lights.

The helmsman should not be using any bright light source in the cockpit area and should rather take the aid of red lights and very dim white lights in the galley and navigation area. This is because he needs to preserve his night vision so that he can accurately interpret both the buoyage marine navigation lights as well as the boat navigation lights of other vessels.

The nautical almanacs contain the details of each and every visible maritime light signal coming from navigational markers that are both inside and outside the channel.

All the details about any particular light can be found in a published list or on a marine navigational lights chart: its color, period, and in some cases even the elevation and range of the beacon. Use the chart to keep a tag on the lights you are passing by putting a tick mark on the lights that you are about to pass and as the boat sails past, the tick is checked.

You will get two visual clues to figure out how far you are away from a buoy. The light will elevate from the horizon at 0.5 nm and at about 200m, the light will reflect on the surface.

Position of Boat Navigation Lights

Most of the variations that can be found in the different vessels can be read about in most almanacs. At the very basic level, a vessel needs to show a red light to port and green light to starboard. Depending on the size of the vessel, one or more colored or white lights are used as well.

For vessels that are 12 ft in length or shorter, the navigation lights must be visible from a range of one nautical mile and for the ones that are longer than 12 meters the required visibility range is 2 nautical miles.  From 5 degrees above to 5 degrees below the horizontal happens to be the required minimum intensity in a vertical sector.

International Navigation Rules state that the boat navigation lights should be placed above the uppermost continuous deck. In case separate fixtures are used for the red and green sidelights, the masthead or all-round white light is placed as close as possible to the vessel’s fore and aft centerline. The masthead or all-around light needs to be positioned at least 1 m or 3.3 ft above the sidelights.

Following are the basic positions of navigational lights. We will discuss the same in greater detail ahead.

Also read: What Is A Marine Sextant?

Boat Navigation Light Regulations

Several rules and specifications are related to the type, size, layout, arc, and distance of visibility of boat navigation lights used by all vessel types which are collectively known as the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea or COLREGs . The navigational lights used are known as ‘COLREG lights and shapes. A boat might be anchored or underway, under sail or power, or fishing or trawling. These various situations can be communicated through multiple combinations of boat navigational lights.

In addition to the primary navigation lights, vessels may also display one or more steaming lights. These lights are very useful for it gives details about the various aspects of the ship like whether it is in the sail or under power, the direction in which it is going and, in some cases, even the size of the vessel. If a ship is engaged in a specific task that might involve certain restrictions, that too can be indicated with some extra boat lights.

Always maintain the lighting system and display the correct navigation light combination to make other vessels in the vicinity aware of your course and state as to whether your vessel is under power or not. If you follow this a considerable amount lowers the chances of a collision. Here is a list that you might use to familiarise yourself with the basics of the lighting system.

• Basic Navigation Light White Light : Small dinghies that are 7m or less in size are required to carry a torch having a white light that can be flashed when needed.
• All-Round White Light: An all-round white light is expected to be displayed by a small boat, up to 7ft long that is under power and can go beyond 7 knots of speed. This light must be visible at an angle of 360 degrees and from two miles away. An all-around white light is also used when the boat or vessel is at anchor but not at a designated anchoring area. This is to make sure that the ship is visible to all the nearby ships to avoid any accidents.
• Stern and Combined Side Lights : A stern light is a white light that is installed at the end of a boat.  A vessel that is over 7 m or 23 ft in length is expected to show red and green sidelights when sailing. Each of these lights needs to cover an arc of 112.5°. The sidelights may be combined in one lantern at the bow when below 25 m or 65 ft. The white stern light can be seen over an arc of 135°. These lights need to be visible from a distance of a mile and need to be placed 39 inches below all white lights for boats of lengths equal to or less than 12 ft.
• Masthead Light : A combination of sidelight and stern light in a tricolor combination may be used sailing yachts of heights 20 m or lower.  A masthead light is required by vessels of lengths between 39.4 ft and 65.6 ft. It is placed in the masthead whose height provides excellent visibility. Still, stern lights and sidelights should be fitted separately in case of or use under power along with steaming light. This kind of light needs to be visible across an angle of 225 degrees and from a minimum distance of 2 miles.
• Separate Lights : The displaying of the tricolor masthead light is not allowed in the case of yachts that are longer than 20 m or 65 ft. Instead, they use them separately. Often on large sailing vessels, these all-around, red over green lights are present. These red and green sidelights need to be visible from a distance of one mile and across an angle of 112.5 degrees.
• Steaming Lights Combined Lights : A combination of the masthead and stern light are used in the case of power crafts that are less than 20 m or 65 ft in length. The arrangement is present at the bow.
• Single Steaming Light : Visible over a 225 degrees arc, a masthead steaming light is used by power-driven vessels that are up to 50 m or 160 ft long. Separate stern lights and sidelights are used in case of a length exceeding 20 m or 65 ft.
• Two Steaming Lights: Power-driven vessels that span over 50 m or 160 ft in length display two masthead steaming lights. The forward light placed lower than the aft light with both of them being visible over an arc of 225° with the sidelights and separate stern light.

The area of the nautical lighting system is a precise business and requires some amount of study and a good deal of responsibility. It is because its application forms a core element in safe marine navigation.

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Red and Green Lights on Boat: Understanding Navigation Lights

If you're a boater, you know that navigation lights are essential for safe travel on the water. But what do those red and green lights mean? Understanding the role of these lights is crucial for avoiding collisions and staying safe while boating. In this article, we'll explore the purpose of red and green lights on boats, along with other important aspects of boat lighting and navigation laws.

When it comes to navigation lights, the red and green lights are the most important. These lights are positioned on either side of the boat and are used to indicate the direction of travel. The red light is positioned on the port (left) side of the boat, while the green light is on the starboard (right) side. When you see a boat with both red and green lights, you know that it's underway and moving in a specific direction.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the role of red and green lights on boats is essential for safe navigation.
• In addition to navigation lights, there are other types of boat lighting that serve important purposes.
• Following boat navigation laws and practicing safe navigation etiquette can help prevent accidents and keep everyone on the water safe.

Understanding Navigation Lights on Boats

Importance of navigation lights.

As a boater, it is important to understand the significance of   navigation lights . Navigation lights are a safety precaution that helps you to identify other boats and their direction of travel in low-light conditions. They are also critical for avoiding collisions and ensuring the safety of all passengers on board. Navigation lights are mandatory for all boats and must be kept in good working condition at all times.

Types of Navigation Lights

There are two main types of navigation lights: red and green. The red light is located on the port side of the boat, while the green light is located on the starboard side of the boat. These lights are used to indicate the direction of travel of the boat. When approaching another boat, the red light should be visible on the left side of your boat, while the green light should be visible on the right side of your boat.

In addition to the red and green navigation lights, boats are also required to have a white light that can be seen from all directions. This light is typically located at the top of the mast and is used to indicate the presence of a boat in the area.

It is important to note that navigation lights should be turned on from sunset to sunrise, and during periods of reduced visibility. Failure to use navigation lights can result in serious accidents and can also lead to legal consequences.

In summary, understanding navigation lights is critical for all boaters. By ensuring that your navigation lights are in good working condition and using them properly, you can help to ensure the safety of all passengers on board and avoid collisions with other boats.

The Role of Red and Green Lights

Positioning of red and green lights.

The   positioning of red and green lights on a boat plays a crucial role in ensuring safe navigation on the water. The red light is always positioned on the port side of the vessel, while the green light is on the starboard side. This positioning helps other boats determine the direction in which your vessel is moving.

It is important to note that the red and green lights should be visible from all angles. The lights should not be obstructed by any other objects on the boat. The height at which the lights are mounted also plays a role in ensuring their visibility. The lights should be mounted high enough to be visible from a distance.

Interpreting Red and Green Lights

Interpreting the red and green lights on a boat is essential for safe navigation. When you see a red light, it indicates that the vessel is on your port side. On the other hand, a green light indicates that the vessel is on your starboard side.

If you see both red and green lights, it means that the vessel is approaching you head-on. In this case, you should take appropriate action to avoid a collision. If you are unsure about the direction of the approaching vessel, it is best to slow down and allow the other vessel to pass.

In conclusion, understanding the role of red and green lights is crucial for safe navigation on the water. Make sure that the lights are positioned correctly and are visible from all angles. Always interpret the lights correctly to avoid any accidents on the water.

Additional Boat Lighting

White light and its purpose.

When it comes to additional boat lighting, a white light is essential. This light is typically mounted on the stern of the boat and is used to signal other boats of your presence in low visibility conditions. The white light is also used to indicate that your boat is anchored or moored.

Combination Lights and Their Uses

Combination lights are another type of additional boat lighting that can be very useful. These lights combine the functions of a masthead light and a stern light into one unit. This can save space and make it easier to navigate at night. Combination lights are typically mounted on the top of the mast and are required on boats that are less than 12 meters in length.

Overall, additional   boat lighting is an important safety feature that can help prevent accidents and ensure that you are visible to other boats. Whether you choose to use a white light, a combination light, or both, it is important to make sure that your boat is properly equipped for night-time navigation.

Understanding Boat Navigation Laws

International maritime organization regulations.

When it comes to boat navigation laws, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set regulations that all boats must follow. These regulations are known as   COLREGS , which stands for Collision Regulations. They are mandatory and apply to all vessels on the high seas and all waterways connected to them. The COLREGS is a set of rules that govern the behavior of vessels in situations where the risk of collision exists.

The COLREGS defines the lighting requirements for boats, including the colors of the lights and their placement. For example, boats are required to have a red light on their port side and a green light on their starboard side. These lights must be visible from a distance of at least 2 nautical miles.

State Laws on Boat Lighting

In addition to the COLREGS, each state has its own laws regarding boat lighting. These laws may vary from state to state, so it's important to know the laws in the state where you are boating. Some states require additional lighting, such as a white light on the stern of the boat.

It's important to note that state laws may be more restrictive than the COLREGS, but they cannot be less restrictive. This means that if a state requires additional lighting, you must comply with that requirement even if it is not required by the COLREGS.

In summary, understanding boat navigation laws is crucial for safe boating. The COLREGS set the standard for boat lighting requirements, but it's important to also be aware of state laws which may be more restrictive. By complying with these laws, you can ensure the safety of yourself and others while out on the water.

Boat Navigation in Different Conditions

Navigation in restricted visibility.

When navigating in restricted visibility conditions, such as fog, it is important to rely on your boat's navigation lights. These lights are designed to help other boats see you and determine your direction of travel. When visibility is poor, it is important to reduce your speed and keep a lookout for other boats and obstacles.

In addition to relying on your boat's navigation lights, it is also important to use radar and other electronic navigation aids to help you navigate safely. If you are unsure of your position or direction of travel, it is best to slow down or stop until visibility improves.

Navigation in Clear Weather

In clear weather conditions, it is important to use your boat's navigation lights to signal your direction of travel to other boats. Red lights are used to indicate the port (left) side of the boat, while green lights indicate the starboard (right) side of the boat. White lights are used to indicate the stern (rear) of the boat.

It is also important to keep a lookout for other boats and obstacles, especially during sunrise and sunset when visibility can be poor. If you are unsure of your position or direction of travel, it is best to slow down or stop until you can determine your location.

Remember, safe navigation is essential for the safety of yourself and others on the water. By following these guidelines, you can help ensure a safe and enjoyable boating experience.

Boat Navigation for Different Vessels

Lights for power-driven vessels.

As a power-driven vessel, you must display a red light on the port side and a green light on the starboard side. These lights should be visible from at least two miles away. Additionally, you must show a white light at the stern that is visible from at least one mile away. This will help other vessels identify your position, direction of travel, and size.

Lights for Sailing Vessels

As a sailing vessel, you must display a red light on the port side and a green light on the starboard side, just like a power-driven vessel. However, if your sailboat is less than 23 feet in length, you may instead display a single white light at the top of your mast. This light should be visible from at least two miles away and will help other boats identify you as a sailboat.

Lights for Small Boats

If you are operating a small boat, such as a kayak or canoe, you are not required to display the same lights as larger vessels. Instead, you must display a white light that is visible from all directions whenever you are underway between sunset and sunrise. You can attach this light to your boat or wear it on your person.

It is important to note that these are just the basic requirements for boat navigation lights. Depending on the size and type of your vessel, you may need to display additional lights or use different colors. Always consult your local boating regulations to ensure that you are in compliance with the law and that you are keeping yourself and other boaters safe on the water.

Boat Navigation Etiquette

Right of way and boat lights.

When it comes to boat navigation, it is essential to understand the   right of way and boat lights . The right of way refers to the vessel that has the right to proceed first. The give-way vessel must yield to the stand-on vessel. The rules of the road apply to all boats, and it is necessary to adhere to them.

Boat lights are also an essential aspect of navigation. Red and green lights indicate which side of the vessel is port and starboard. When two boats approach each other, they should pass port to port. If you see a green light, it means the other vessel is coming from the starboard side, and you should give way. If you see a red light, it means the other vessel is coming from the port side, and you have the right of way.

Communication Through Lights

Communication through lights is another crucial aspect of boat navigation etiquette. It helps to avoid confusion and prevent accidents. When overtaking another vessel, it is necessary to indicate your intentions using your boat lights. A white light indicates that you are overtaking, and the other vessel should maintain its course and speed.

When anchoring, it is essential to use an anchor light. It is a white light that indicates that your boat is anchored. It helps other vessels to avoid collision and maintain a safe distance.

In conclusion, understanding boat navigation etiquette is crucial for safe and enjoyable boating. By following the right of way and boat lights, communicating through lights, and adhering to the rules of the road, you can avoid accidents and ensure a smooth sailing experience.

Boat Navigation Safety Tips

When it comes to boating, safety should always be a top priority. One of the most important aspects of safety is ensuring your boat is visible to other vessels on the water. This is where navigation lights come in.

As a boat owner, it is your responsibility to ensure that your vessel is equipped with appropriate navigation lights. These lights help prevent accidents by making your boat visible to other boats, especially in low light conditions.

When anchoring your boat, it is important to turn off your navigation lights to avoid confusing other boats. Additionally, it is important to be aware of traffic around you and adjust your speed and course accordingly.

If you are operating a sailboat, it is important to note that the wind can affect the visibility of your navigation lights. Be sure to position your boat in a way that maximizes visibility and use additional lighting if necessary.

By following these boat navigation safety tips, you can help ensure a safe and enjoyable boating experience for yourself and others on the water.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which side of a boat has a green light at night.

The green light is always on the right side of the boat. This is known as the starboard side. The green light indicates that the boat is approaching from the right side.

When boating at night, what does a single white light on a boat tell you?

A single white light on a boat tells you that it is a power-driven vessel. This means that the boat is being propelled by an engine. If you see a white light and a red light, it means that the boat is moving away from you. If you see a white light and a green light, it means that the boat is moving towards you.

One boat is overtaking another. Which boat must give way?

The boat that is being overtaken must give way to the boat that is overtaking. The boat that is overtaking must keep a safe distance from the boat it is passing.

When a sailboat is approaching a powerboat, which one is the give-way vessel?

The powerboat is the give-way vessel. The sailboat has the right of way because it is not powered by an engine. The powerboat must keep a safe distance from the sailboat.

A PWC is overtaking another vessel. Which vessel must give way?

The PWC must give way to the vessel it is overtaking. The PWC must keep a safe distance from the vessel it is passing.

What should a sailboat operator do when approaching a PWC head-on?

The sailboat operator should give way to the PWC. The sailboat operator should steer to the right of the PWC and keep a safe distance. The sailboat operator should always be aware of other vessels in the area and take appropriate action to avoid collisions.

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RAM Lights for Sailboats

A search for a brighter anchor light yields a versatile surprise..

We have the minimum required lights, including running lights for sailing and motoring, and an anchor light. We might even have an electronic distress signal (“ Distress Flares Go Electric, ” June 2021). But do we have lights for rare navigation lighting situations, such as restricted ability to maneuver (RAM) or not under command (NUC)?

Ships, fishing boats, tugs, and dive boats are just some of the vessels that have masts dedicated for lights to alert nearby ships of their status, and to signal situations that might prevent them from maneuvering to avoid collision. Relatively few sailors have a means of showing all the specialized lights that might apply to sailboats. Should we?

An anchor light is not for drifting, using a sea anchor, or any situation where you are not made fast to the ground. Flashing lights are only for distress. Thus, lighting and day shapes for a few additional navigation situations deserve discussion.

RESTRICTED ABILITY TO MANEUVER (RAM)

The lights for this situation are a vertical row of three lights, red/white/red, spaced 1 meter apart. The day signal is a ball/diamond/ball. RAM suggests that the motion of the boat will be predictable. A boat with divers in the water, hove to, or towing a drogue would be considered a RAM.

NOT UNDER COMMAND (NUC) DAY SHAPES AND LIGHTS

A vertical row of two red lights indicates the skipper has no control over motion, perhaps because of a broken rudder. Any motion, including drifting, qualifies as NUC. The day signal is two balls.

A day flag (either the blue and white “alpha” flag, or red with white diagonal stripe in the US) is required by law or regulation in the US and many countries. The divers are to stay within 25 yards (varies by state) when near the surface and boaters are to stay 300 yards from the flag (100 yards in a marked channel). No divers? Take the flag down. (Some states permit a flag painted on the side of dive boats).

At night a dive boat is considered restricted in its ability to maneuver (RAM), and the required lights are red/white/red, one meter apart in a vertical line. If the boat is drifting, running lights are also required, and if anchored, an anchor light is still required.

SEA ANCHOR OR DROGUE

Just like a dive boat that is drifting, a boat dragging a sea anchor or drogue needs to show running lights and RAM lights. Running with a drogue in heavy weather can be a matter of speed control and easing the motion, or survival. In the first case your ability to change course is limited, and you have very little control over the vessel’s speed. In the latter case you have no control over speed or course, but the motion of your vessel will be predictable.

PROPER USE OF NUC INDICATORS

A boat with steering failure, dismasting, or some other situation that makes it impossible to control is considered not under command (NUC). A rudderless boat may randomly tack, circle, or speed up and slow down. Its motion is unpredictable. The day shapes and lights for this situation are not for sleeping or leaving watch, only for a boat that cannot be controlled.

COLREGS AND LIGHTS

A discussion of the Collision Regulations (COLREGs) regarding the above situations is best carried out with the rules at hand. The Coast Guard version, which includes U.S. inland rules as well as international rules, is available online ( www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/navrules/navrules.pdf ). Here are just a few excerpts relevant to lights and shapes for sailboats.

WHAT IS RESTRICTED ABILITY TO MANEUVER?

Definitions for a boat that is restricted in its ability to maneuver are in Rule 3 of the COLREGs.

(g)The term vessel restricted in her ability to maneuver means a vessel which from the nature of her work is restricted in her ability to maneuver as required by these Rules and is therefore unable to keep out of the way of another vessel. The term vessels restricted in their ability to maneuver shall include but not be limited to: (i)a vessel engaged in laying, servicing or picking up a navigation mark, submarine cable or pipeline; (ii)a vessel engaged in dredging, surveying or underwater operations; (iii)a vessel engaged in replenishment or transferring persons, provisions or cargo while underway; (iv)a vessel engaged in the launching or recovery of aircraft; (v)a vessel engaged in mine clearance operations; (vi)a vessel engaged in a towing operation such as severely restricts the towing vessel and her tow in their ability to deviate from their course.

SLEEPING UNDER SAIL OR UNDER BARE POLES

An unattended helm is not allowed under COLREGs. This is spelled out in Rule 5.

Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions.

Rule 37 covers distress signals.

When a vessel is in distress and requires assistance it shall use or exhibit the signals described in Annex IV of these Rules (33 CFR part 8) to illuminate her decks.

The accepted signal is a strobe flashing 50-70 times per minute. Sailors should also review also Rule 36, which states that any light used to attract the attention of another vessel cannot be mistaken for any aid to navigation. The rule also advises that the use of high intensity intermittent or revolving lights shall be avoided.

VERTICAL SPACING

Vertical spacing of lights is covered in Annex I. For boats less than 20 meters in length, the vertical row of lights must be greater than 2 meters above the uppermost continuous deck, spaced one meter apart, and be visible in all directions (no more than 6 degrees may be blocked by mast). For boats greater than 20 meters, the lights must be 4 meters above the deck and the spacing must be 2 meters (see illustration 2, page 18).

EXTRA LIGHTS

Rule 30 deals with extra lights in subsection (c):

A vessel at anchor may, and a vessel of 100 meters and more in length shall, also use the available working or equivalent lights to illuminate decks.”

FLORIDA DIVER LAW

Florida gets specific regarding divers. Not only are lights required at night, but a flag must be displayed. Interestingly, the specified flag differs from the international flag, which is the blue and white “Alpha” signal flag. According to Section 327.331 of Florida code:

(c) “Divers-down flag” means a flag that meets the following specifications:

1. The flag must be square or rectangular. If rectangular, the length must not be less than the height, or more than 25 percent longer than the height. The flag must have a wire or other stiffener to hold it fully unfurled and extended in the absence of a wind or breeze.

2. The flag must be red with a white diagonal stripe that begins at the top staff-side of the flag and extends diagonally to the lower opposite corner. The width of the stripe must be 25 percent of the height of the flag.

3. The minimum size for any divers-down flag displayed on a buoy or float towed by the diver is 12 inches by 12 inches. The minimum size for any divers-down flag displayed from a vessel or structure is 20 inches by 24 inches.

4. Any divers-down flag displayed from a vessel must be displayed from the highest point of the vessel or such other location which provides that the visibility of the divers-down flag is not obstructed in any direction.

(2) All divers must prominently display a divers-down flag in the area in which the diving occurs, other than when diving in an area customarily used for swimming only.

A black ball displayed where it is visible during they day indicates that a boat is at anchor. Use of this day shape for anchoring varies with the region, but in most of the U.S. no one uses them, few look for them, and most wouldn’t recognize it for what it is. Rules for smaller boats vary. In the U.S., boats less than 7 meters are exempt. Nevertheless, displaying a black ball makes sense near channels, so ships to determine your navigation status (anchored vs. underway) at a great distance. COLREGS specifies a ball with a minimum diameter of 2 feet, with exceptions.

For vessels of less than 20 meters in length, shapes of lesser dimensions but commensurate with the size of the vessel may be used, and the distance apart may be correspondingly reduced.

CONCLUSIONS

If you carry a sea anchor or drogue, have ever considered diving at night, or embark on single-handed voyages, making yourself both more visible and communicating your navigation status is smart. We don’t understand why hoistable light systems for recreational boaters is not available, so we’ve offered some do-it-yourself ideas in this report.

When it comes to lights for special situations like night diving or when the boat is disabled, recreational boats need temporary options that cost less and require little power. We found nothing practical that met our basic criteria for contingency use on sailboats. If you know of one, you can email us at [email protected] . These are all the lights that we found:

AQUASIGNAL HOISTABLE LIGHT

Aquasignal Series 40 hoistable lights. Similar to standard series 40 lights, these are 8 inches tall, 3 inches in diameter, and fit 25W incandescent bulbs (no LED option). Rigged as a red/white/red RAM light, they use 75 Ah of power each night, an unacceptable amount for many cruising boats. The cost is also steep, at $120 each ($360 total).

PERKO HALYARD MOUNT

The Perko halyard mount navigation lights are similar to the Aqua Signal lights, but they are discontinued, and we found no replacement. They cost about $85 ten years ago.

PRACTICAL SAILOR DIY LIGHT

Our DIY RAM light is based on the DIY anchor light modules but substituting red LEDs for white. They are weather proof, vibration resistant, meet the Coast Guard requirement for 3 mile visibility, and because the lights have a 120-degree vertical arc of visibility, full visibility is maintained even as a boat rolls heavily. The red version is slightly less bright than the white version, though it still meets the standard. You could, of course, mount four LED strips to make the red version brighter; there is enough room.

We considered adding switches, allowing a single unit to show a single white (anchor), red/white/red (restricted ability to maneuver) or two red (not under command), but decided that introduced additional failure points for options that would very seldom be used. Instead, we made the system modular, and you hoist only the components you need. They are chained together with cord/line extensions as needed. The cord/line extension is a 30-inch Dyneema strop with an eye in each end (one-meter spacing is required, and the light units are 10 inches long). Cable ties firmly attach a 24-inch 2-pin extension cord. One end of the strop is secured with a luggage tag hitch and the other with a screw link or shackle.

Our design for a DIY anchor light/RAM light is based on three white LED road trailer clearance marker lights, available for less than $1.50 per unit when purchased in packs. They meet the visibility requirements for boats of all sizes because they are designed to meet EU and US truck clearance light brightness requirements, which are significantly greater than those required for navigation lights. They are low-profile, weatherproof, and resistant to impact and vibration.

We mounted the lights around an 8-inch length of 1 ¼-inch PVC pipe; a single 5/16-inch hole passes the wires, two screws attach it in place, and it is sealed in place with a generous application of polyurethane caulk (we used Sika 291). The leads are coupled to a common 12V SAE 2-pin extension cord. Remember, LEDs are sensitive to polarity, so keep the positive and negative straight and used polarized plug connectors. The current draw is low enough (0.09 amps or 2.2 Ah per 24 hours) that we skipped the photo-electric cell that would turn it on and off automatically.

STEP BY STEP

1. Cut 6 ½-inch length of 1 ¼-inch schedule 40 PVC pipe.

2. Drill three x 5/16-inch holes in the side for the light’s wires (Photo 1). Fit should not be too tight—you don’t want to pinch the wires. The holes are centered between the ends and spaced around the pipe 120 degrees apart. An easy way to mark for drilling is to wrap a sheet of paper around the pipe and cut at exactly one circumference length. Fold the paper into thirds, mark the folds, and wrap again. The folds will be 120 degrees apart and in line vertically, ready for marking

3. Drill holes for the mounting screws. Machine screws about ½-inch long are preferred; they won’t stick in far and they won’t cut the wire insulation. No need for nuts. Just drill holes 1/64-inch smaller than your screws, and they will self tap in the soft plastic.

4. Insert the wires through the center holes, apply sealant around each hole and down the center of the light strip, and screw them down. It is tempting to apply the sealant first, but then inserting the wires is a mess.

5. Wipe up the excess sealant. It’s a mess. You could mask around the holes for a neater finish.

6. Prepare the top cap (white anchor light-only). Drill two 3/16-inch holes in the cap, insert 10 inches of 3/16-inch Dyneema to form a loop, securing the ends with stopper knots. Apply sealant inside and out.

7. Prepare bottom cap and top cap of RAM modules. Same as Step 6, but add about 5/16-inch to center hole, to accommodate the plug pigtail.

8. Thread the plug pigtails through the bottom cap hole and knot inside (Photo 2).

9. Twist the leads together and crimp to the pigtails (Photo 3). Be sure to strip enough insulation to allow for several twists. LEDs are polarity sensitive, so connect black-to-black (Photo 4). Seal the union with adhesive-lined heat shrink. Good fittings will have enough adhesive to fill the gaps between the three leads. The three leads, twisted together, should be about 14-16 AWG. RAM modules should have double-plug leads, one through the top and one through the bottom, so that they can be chained together.

10. Note that although all 2-pin plugs appear identical, there is a distinct male and female. The male plug has the ground (black) exposed, so that accidental contact with a grounded surface, like a mast or engine, does not cause a short. Each light module must contain either a female plug (anchor light only) or one of each (RAM modules), so they can be chained together. Mark each module with an up arrow, or you will be frustrated when you plug in the wrong end and it doesn’t light.

11. Seal the Dyneema line and the pigtail into the bottom cap, inside and out.

12. Glue on both end caps on with PVC cement. The tensile strength of each unit exceeds 1,000 pounds (we tested them), so a string can safely be hauled as tight as hand tension allows.

13. Prepare the supply cord. For the emergency anchor light we chose an 8-foot extension cord with SAE 2-pin connectors. We have three convenient outlets for this connector. We can plug it in just in front of the mast, in the cockpit, or in the cabin. In a pinch, you can rig a fused lighter plug directly to a battery (Photo 5), but lighter plugs are notoriously unreliable on boats, so this is temporary. As a supplemental harbor anchor light, we hoist the light 6 feet above the deck; at this level it is visible to nighttime dinghy operators and also lights up the deck. We can also extend with standard 2-pin extension cords. If the light is to be used as part of a RAM light system, the cord is shortened to 6 inches, so that it can be used as a module. Red light modules are the same as the anchor light module, except red LED marker lights are used.

14. Rig using non-stretch line (a halyard is good for the top) to reduce swinging. In wild weather, reduce swing by rigging the bottom line as a bridle that secures to the port and starboard toe rails (see Image 4). To prevent fore-aft swinging, add a loop (about 30 inches long) attached to the bottom light and around the mast, and raised to a point just below the spreaders. The bridles should be led aft and outboard. The lights must be pulled several feet away from the mast to keep the blind spot less than 6 degrees. The lights will hang at a slight angle, but this is not a big deal. In our case, the mast is raked sufficiently to serve this purpose. There is no need to pull the lights to the masthead, although they should be high enough to be visible above the swell.

15. Prepare cord locks, if desired (Photo 6). The SAE plugs were designed for trailer wiring and the high friction fit is very unlikely to pull apart. But you can add locks for more security, and they take only a few minutes to make. The holes in the locks are 1/16-inch larger than the widest cord diameter. The slot is just wide enough to pass the narrowest dimension. The spacing is about 3/8-inch longer than the length of the closed plug pair. The strip can be either 3/16-inch HDPE or 1/8-inch aluminum, or fiberglass. It’s width is about 1 inch (aluminum or fiberglass) or 1 1/4-inches (high density polyethylene). Smooth the edges to avoid damaging the wire insulation.

The white light makes a useful cockpit and bilge work light. It’s waterproof. The red lights can be hung in the cabin or cockpit for vision-safe night lighting, although you still don’t want to look directly at the light (see “ Are Chart Lights Steering Us Wrong ,” PS October 2020).

Caps. $ 2 x 1.57 = $3.14

6.5” pipe = $0.70

LEDs = Three white side marker lights (6 LEDs each), 3 x $2.12 = $6.36

Assorted wire and sealant = $4

Cord = $4.20

Rope = $0.40

Total = $18.80

Since our August 2021 review of deck connectors (“ Watertight Connector Test ”), we’ve converted our F-24 test boat to SAE 2-pin connectors for many applications, including tiller pilot, mast lights, and utility cockpit connections. We like the price and widespread availability of the components, but the big selling point is easy interchangeability and ruggedness. For example, we can plug the emergency anchor lights and RAM lights into the mast base plug, the tiller pilot plug, a cabin plug, the cockpit plug, or straight to the battery with clips. Same with our utility washdown/emergency sump pump; we can plug it in wherever needed, just like appliances at home.

All of this applies equally to 4-pin connectors. They can be the better answer if you need more power to control more things. We’ve used 4-pin connectors for connections at the mast base for trailer boats.

The exposed pin should be ground phase to reduce the risk of shorts. As long as the exposed pin is ground and the adjacent pin is power, 2-pin plugs can also be inserted into 4-pin sockets. Grease exposed ends with Tefgel or Green Grease twice per year (every few years inside the cabin). Keep the caps on when not in use so they don’t attract dirt and to cover the ground pin.

You will have to splice the wire tails. Crimping and heat shrink is preferred below deck. Soldering and adhesive lined heat shrink yields a more streamlined result and is acceptable for above-deck cords.

We like the broad deck mounting flange. We like the molded seal. Between these two factors, they absolutely cannot leak through the deck. Most have tinned wire, and because they are used for motorbike charging, the wire is typically at least 14 AWG.

Maintain polarity. If you are careful with your wiring you’ll ensure correct polarity.

We have used these SAE connectors on a Stilleto 27 for 8-10 years with no problems, while multiple brands of “marine-grade” connectors failed.

The COLREGs allows two lighting schemes for sailboats; either red and green side lights plus a stern light, or a single tricolor mounted at the top of the mast. The advantage of the tricolor is that it can be seen above waves. However, like a masthead anchor light, it is hard to see at close range. Also you can’t use a tricolor when motoring, since your white steaming light indicating a power-driven vessel must be above the side lights.

A less commonly seen combination is for sailing boats is red over green, one meter apart, at or near the top of the mast. This is in addition to the usual side lights farther down and the white stern light. Advantages of this setup are increased visibility in waves, visibility in close quarters, and unlike the other options, a means of estimating distance, since more than one light is visible at a time.

It is widely believed that the red-over-green light is for sailboats longer than 20 meters, but in fact there is no size restriction. A tricolor cannot be used by boats over 20 meters, and so red-over–green makes sense for them at sea. Ideally, the lights are above the mast and unobstructed in all directions. A one meter mast light could also be attached to the top of the mast; it won’t increase the air draft by one meter, since the VHF aerial is probably more than half that.

However, the USCG COLREGS manual clearly shows the green light some distance down the mast, where it will be blocked in some directions by the mast and sails. Green light will also reflect off the sails, which can be annoying. Commonly, instead of a single green light, 180-degree green side lights are mounted on each side of the mast, 1-meter down, with a red light at the masthead.

This requires one more pair of lights, but no more cabling than a tricolor. However, a hoistable red-over-green modular light like the one described in the adjacent articles could be used when more visibility is desired.

A paper recently submitted to World Sailing lays out the problems sailboats face trying to comply with the COLREGs ( http://honeynav.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/OC4biNavigationLightReportVerFinal-25596.pdf ).

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Sailboats under no circumstance are under the category of ram. They are not restricted of maneuver. No need for this

Where did you get this idea? Sailing vessels had in the past performed many of the tasks in Colregs Rule 3(g) and most are also auxillary power driven vessels. They can, for instance, engage in emergency towing and are then very much in a RAM condition. Bering Sea Gold had a sailboat involved in dredging (and diving!). The same lights are used for diving. People don’t dive off sailboats? That’s news. Sailboats can be aground, and then should display two red all around lights. Just omit the white in between.

Which case do you disagree with and why? Diving at night (COLREGS rule 27ei and state law)? Lying to a drogue (steering is greatly restricted and in survival conditions releasing the drogue is not an option)?

Sail or power is not a factor in these determinations. Very likely the sailboat has no sail up and is a power driven boat for the purposes of COLREGS.

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mast/steaming/anchor lights?

• Thread starter Al
• Start date Aug 6, 2002
• Forums for All Owners
• Ask All Sailors

Could someone set me straight regarding the differences between a steaming light, mast light, and anchor light (their intention, where they should be located, and when to use them)?  

Stu Jackson

Lights Alsteaming light: about two thirds the way up the mast, faces forward (see reference books for coverage - 225 degrees?) used when motoring (NOT sailing) at night; use running lights all the time at night. When you're sailing (only under sail) at night, turn off the steaming light. Use only when the motor is on (even if you're motorsailing) at night.mast light: I assume you mean the "downlight" that is usually built into the steaming light, called combination steaming mast lights), only used to light up your foredeckanchor light: top of the mast, all around (360 degrees) fixture, for when you're anchored. Do not ever use when moving.  

Robert Pugh

Mast and Anchor Lightss A steaming light is used when you are using your engine in the dark, fog, etc. It tells other boats that you are a "power" boat. An anchor light is only used when you are at anchor. It is the light at the top of your mast. The mast light, if I understand your term correctly, is used to illuminate the deck when you need to see there. The best way to understand these lights is to go out at night and try them.  

Scott Blahnik

A bit complicated I went to the boatsmart course and initiated a big discussion about this. Seems even the instructors have some problems with it. I copied my conclusion from the archives:The (Coast Guard ) manual requiress white MASTHEAD LIGHTS on all vessels less than 20 meters, including powerboats. They are defined as "white lights that shine 225 degrees forward". (As opposed to ALL AROUND LIGHTS (360 degrees) SIDELIGHTS (red port, green starboard) and STERNLIGHTS (135 degrees aft).It does mention that on sailboats masthead lights "are seldom at the top of the mast, but partway down".So, it seems, by law, that we as sailors must have a white masthead light, but it cannot be used while under sail power.So, on my hunter, I have a RUNNING LIGHTS switch (which is SIDE and STERN lights)...I have STEAMING lights (which is the MASTHEAD light)...and an ANCHOR light, which must be the ALL AROUND LIGHT.While sailing at night, I will have only the RUNNING LIGHTS on, when I look up I will see no lights anywhere on the mast.Hope this helps !  

Dennis Thomas

Reasons? Any power vessel under 20 meters must show a white light that is visible 360 degrees (all around). On a typical powerboat, this light is on a pole at the stern, (like on a bass boat) or perhaps on a mast on the cabin top. One of the purposes of the white light is to mark the stern of the boat relative to the sidelights near the bow. That way when you see the red light (or green) and the white light, you know which direction the boat is pointed. If the boat is large with structures on deck like a fly bridge that might block the light when viewed from forward, the light is sometimes split between a stern light and a forward facing light near the center of the boat (like on the mast of a sailboat). Sailboats under sail alone don’t show the forward facing part of the “all around” white light. So, if you see only red or green lights with no white you can be sure you’re seeing a sailboat headed toward you that is restricted in its’ ability to maneuver. This is a dangerous situation and you may need to make allowances for giving right of way. If you see either red or green with white, it’s a safer situation. You may be seeing a powerboat coming toward you or a sailboat moving away from you. As the sailboat is moving away, it posses no threat and the powerboat may need to give way to you.All vessels when anchored are to show an “all around” white light with no other colored lights. We sailors have the single light at the top of the mast for this. Powerboats have to have a separate switch for the red & green or set up a special anchor light.S/V Anodyne  

Dennis, good reasons but what differentiates a sailboat under sail power only headed away from you from a power boat doing the same? Your answer implies that you keep an aft-facing white light on in this instance, and I'm not sure it's technically correct. What I get out of my research is that under sail alone, only the running lights are used. I would like to be sure, even though I like your logic, and practicality.  

Wanderer138

If I may shed some light (no pun intended) As Dennis correctly pointed out, a side light (red or green) with a white light above means a vessel approaching under power and a single colored light means a vessel approaching under sail only. However, at any given time only ONE light should be visible on a vessel under sail because of the sectors that each light covers. When moving aft around a vessel under sail, the colored side running light should disappear just as the white stern light appears.For extra visibility and improved electrical efficiency at sea, some sailboats have a masthead tricolor lit by a single bulb. However since the steaming light must be above the running lights, the tricolor must be turned off when steaming and a second set of running lights near deck level has to be lit.PeterH23 "Raven"  

Lights Peter and Dennis absolutely correct. Just goes to show how confusing such a 'simple' thing as turning your lights on can be!Scott...NOTHING different between a sailboat or a powerboat less than 50m seen moving away from you as long as you are in the 135deg arc immediately astern. As soon as you move ahead of this the sailboat would show only a single red or green light whereas the power boat would also show the white steaming light as Peter says at the higher level.  

Thanks, I stand corrected My "running lights" include the stern light, so a white light will be visible from aft. I guess the part that gets me is that there is no light on the mast while under sail, unless you have that tricolor setup. It seems to defy logic to me, as you'd think to most easily identify a sailboat there would be a light somewhere high above, indicating a mast. Thanks for setting me straight fellows.  

Thanks! I'm glad to see that it wasn't just me that feels confused about this. To summarize everyones comments/concensus:Running lights (red/green/aft white) ON all the time at night while moving.360 degree white light on top of mast ON only while motoring or anchored.225 degrees white light (pointing aft) on top of mast ON when sailing.Correct??  

Not exactly Al, I would modify your statement as follows:Running lights (red/green/aft white) ON all the time at night while moving under sail or motor.360 degree white light on top of mast ON only while anchored at night.225 degrees white light (pointing foward) in middle of mast ON when motoring at night.  

Night time... "Night time" is defined as "one half hour before sunset to one half hour after sunrise"Ligths should also be used during periods of restricted visibility (visibility less than 1 mile)Smooth sailing,~~ __/) ~~Marc  

anchor light Good summary FredOK just to add a little more confusion...what would be wrong with using all round anchor light at masthead whilst motoring, together with red and green lights forward as long as aft white light can be independently switched off?Good to see the same confusions seem to occur both sides of the pond LOL and lets NOT get into buoyage hehe.  

Lights Although it can be anywhere (acutally should be no more than 20 feet above the hull), the anchor light is usually at the masthead. The anchor light shows 360°. The anchor light is required when the boat is anchored at night in an area that is not designated as a special anchorage on the chart of the area. The steaming light is usually mounted on the front of the mast, and is used in conjunction with the red and green running lights when the vessel is operated under power (as opposed to using sail power only). The steaming light is supposed to show through a total of 20 points (10 points on each side of the bow). This equates to about 150° on each side of the bow.The mast light you refer to is often called a spreader light. This is used to illuminate the foredeck for handling anchors, sails, etc. at night.If you are going to operate at night, it is probably also a good idea to get to know the lights carried by tug boats, fishing vessels, and other commercial craft.Hope this helps.Vic  

For Scott and Colin The masthead tricolor is designed to make a relatively slow sailboat as visible as possible to other traffic at night because running lights at deck level can be obscured in waves. I guess the single light convention is based in tradition, when running lights were lit by oil, and the fewer open flames on board a wooden boat, the better!!.Some masthead anchor lights are made in two sectors with two lamps, one facing forward and the other aft. The aft one is lit when sailing and both are lit when powering. When anchored, both remain lit but the red/green would be doused. I had a masthead light like this and I got rid of it right away! It was a lot of weight at the masthead and the power draw with both lamps lit was 20W. It's also a pain to bang on it to get it to work when the contacts become corroded. It's so much easier just to lean over the transom! The worst part was that one night at anchor would kill the battery, and on a hot Florida night, I'd rather have the power for my Hella fan and some music.My current anchor light is an LED light on a stick hoisted to the masthead with the main halyard. I know it's not USCG approved, but to my mind it beats an approved light that goes out at 2 am. I also keep a Dietz oil-fired hurricane lamp on board as a backup. The regs don't say it has to be electric...it just has to be visible at 2 nm. Happy sailing.PeterH23 "Raven"  

Roger,Peter I just read in SAIL that those led's are coming a long way and will probably be the lights of the future. Adiing the masthead tricolors will have to go on the list, but only after an Autopilot, Dinghy, etc!  

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Boat Masthead Lights

Whether you use your craft for water sports, fishing, or leisure cruising, it should be equipped with proper navigation lights to make sure it is safe and legal. Even if taking a boat out on the water after the dark is not your cup of tea, sometimes your afternoon water trip may turn into a night adventure. Besides, if you are a regular boater you will inevitably get caught in a rain or fog at some point. Obviously, inclement weather reduces visibility putting you at risk of having an accident with another vessel. That is why every craft is required to have navigation lights. The size of a boat determines what type of them should be used. To wit, masthead lights are required by all motorized boats that are longer than 39.4 feet.

They are white and installed at the front of a vessel. The arc of illumination is 225 degrees. They are combined with stern lights which are visible across 135 degrees to provide 360 degrees of visibility. When it comes to boats that are greater than 39.4 feet but less than 65.6 feet, they should be visible from at least three nautical miles away. For vessels which are less than 39.4 feet, the visibility range is two nautical miles. Keep in mind that they can be also equipped with an all-round light instead of a set of stern and masthead lights. Whatever size of your vessel, we have the right product for it in our selection. Our offerings are made by reliable brands including Sea Dog , Attwood , and many others.

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Couple stranded in bahamas after lightning strikes, destroys boat: ‘all mighty bang’.

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A British couple who spent their life savings to buy a sailboat and enjoy their retirement at sea are now stranded in the Bahamas after their dream vessel was struck by lightning — and the duo are in a race against time to fix it before the hurricane season starts

Mike Beech, 63, and his wife Helen, 61, spent $63,000 to buy the 38-foot Mistral Dancer in July 2018 and began their sailing adventure, the Times of London reported .

On March 23, they were moored off a small island near George Town in the Bahamas when they heard an “all mighty bang” as a lightning bolt struck the vessel’s mast and destroyed the navigation equipment, according to the outlet.

“I never want to experience anything like that again, at all,” Mike, told the Times of London.

“It’s really scary at the moment because all the other boats are racing back to the US to get out of the hurricane and tropical storm belt and we’re stuck here.”

Mike, who is from Suffolk, said he had never seen an electrical storm quite like it.

“But we’re alive because I’m not sure what would have happened if we had been on deck,” he said.

While insurance is expected to cover most of the $45,000 repair cost, the couple will still have to come up with about $7,500.

Mike, who has had several careers, including as a truck driver, and Helen, who was a midwife, receive only a modest pension and can’t afford even that amount.

In the meantime, they are stuck and are in a race against time before the hurricane season arrives.

The couple set off on a 35-day Atlantic crossing in 2022 and spent the past year island-hopping in the Caribbean, where they moored off the small island of Crab Cay before disaster struck.

“At first I thought someone had crashed into the side of us or something,” Mike said.

“With it was this massive flash of white and blue light that just lit the inside of the boat up. It was like a flashbulb but 100 times brighter and with blue light added to it,” he added.

 A friend and fellow sailor has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help the couple cover their insurance excess and any extra costs, including visa renewals and the cruising permit.

The couple tied the knot after 37 years and three children together, then sailed through the Mediterranean to Turkey and later crossed the Atlantic in 2023, according to the fundraising organizer Tony Wells.

“Their savings have been exhausted preparing the boat for ocean passages — the Pacific was in their sights – and upgrading safety equipment,” he wrote.

As of Friday morning, about $4,500 had been raised in the funding drive.

“Mike and Helen are overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity thus far and would like to say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to each and every supporter,” Wells wrote.

If they can somehow get their craft repaired in time, they plan to continue to Jamaica and then Colombia.

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Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.