Standard lights are displayed aboard all vessels to help others to identify them and to better understand their maneuvering characteristics or possibly distress. The use of any lights, other than the lights prescribed by the Rules or its Annexes, is discouraged because the use of decorative lights, strobes, or other high intensity or specialty lighting could:
- confuse, rather than make you more visible;
- obfuscate a vessel’s navigation lights, its characteristics, or cease to provide crucial direction and aspect information to other vessels;
- likely hinder a proper lookout and operators visibility (see Rule 20(b));
- be mistaken for other lights used as aids to navigation, by law enforcement or public safety vessels (i.e. flashing blue, red, yellow lights).
For example, if while operating my vessel I see a red light on my starboard side I know I am the give-way vessel (Rule 16, 17).
Should a mariner opt to use additional lighting, we suggest you look at this lighting from afar to ascertain whether it would violate Rule 20; and, we exhort you to adjust or refrain from using such lighting, if that is the case.
Note, although Rule 37 of the Inland Rules allows the use of a high intensity white light flashing at regular intervals from 50 to 70 times per minute to signal in distress and requires assistance, such and similar lights are prohibited in the International Rules (Rule 36), and, shall be avoided because their use could interfere with the lookout and being seen by others.
