North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

I am after some advice, I am looking at installing a light bar or similar on my boat, I dont often move around at nite, but in case I do one would be handier than a drunk holding a torch at the front!
I plan to just run off leccy feed so all good there but want them removable so not in the way the rest of the time.
As for mounting I am thinking as far forward as possible and above leccy and rails, this is where it gets trickier as I have no side rails on lhs due to leccy till about 1200mm from nose where lhs is approx 500mm.
easiest is if it could mount vertical, is this a realistic option???

any advice welcome

cheers Craig

They are illegal if used on water.

Fish4me I seen heaps out there but why are they illegal!!!! No sense in it I think

Cheers Craig

They are illegal – I think because they can blind others driving in your direction.
Ive got a bar fitted to my boat/s so I can see obstructions and other dickheads without any lights.
The other night on territory day, there were so many people driving around without any nav lights.
Once I got away from the crowd. I turned mine on.
Saved me heaps of times from colliding with others and logs etc.
I don’t think they would work vertically. Maybe use a spotie instead

They are illegal as they do not comply with International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972 (Colregs), published by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and set out, among other things, the "rules of the road" or navigation rules to be followed by ships and other vessels at sea to prevent collisions between two or more vessels. In particular part C details the specifics on lights and shapes.

They are illegal as they do not comply with International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972 (Colregs), published by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and set out, among other things, the "rules of the road" or navigation rules to be followed by ships and other vessels at sea to prevent collisions between two or more vessels. In particular part C details the specifics on lights and shapes.

Craig

Here are my thoughts for what they're worth.

You can mount a light bar vertically but its beam is engineered for horizontal mounting. Mounted horizontally a bar has a wider beam left to right than it does vertically up to down.

Turn it vertically and the beam is opposite. Its narrower left to right than it is vertically up to down.

Mounted vertically, you'll see lots of treetops, flying foxes, insects attracted to the light (anything with height) but be restricted in what you can see left to right.

Basically what you really want to see is if there is anything in front of you that you might collide with. So you want as much light as you can muster down at water level.

If your beam is narrow left to right ( like a vertically mounted lightbar) you won't see anything coming in from the side ( particularly at speed) until its too late.

A handheld spotlight is ok because you can keep moving it side to side to overcome its lack of beam width. Using a spotlight at night on the rivers especially narrower ones is fraught with problems. The beam you get can be likened to looking for something through a straw. Blink and you miss it as the straw moves.

Bit like a telescope compared with binoculars. Easier to see things with binos wider field of view than it is to find it with a narrow field of view telescope and remain locked onto it.

So advice number 1 is mount it horizontally. That'll probably restrict the length of the bar.

Advice 2 is get a LED light that uses 10 watt LEDs. Say a 4 LED lightbar with 3 watt LEDs has 12 watts ( about 1200 lumens of light) while a 4 LED lightbar with 10 watt LEDS has 40 watts and about 4000 lumens for the same sized bar. Big difference in available light straight away.

Advice 3 is mount it (or them if 2) so that they don't illuminate the deck in front of them or you won't see a thing for glare off the boat. Maybe a bit of flat black spray paint on any surfaces that do reflect glare.

Lastly, make sure you've got the electrical capacity to light-em-up.

Add up the watts and divide watts by 12 to tell you roughly how many amps they'll need.

The 40 watt ones that we spoke about would need about 3 amps so make sure you've got that capacity.

Many ships have a large forward facing light called a searchlight. I suppose we could call them searchlights and that would cover it.

I reckon a searchlight is the same as a spotlight (handheld or not). Beamwidth is deliberately engineered to focus as much light as possible in a particular direction. A big reflector is the giveaway for beamwidth.

Liken it to a sprinkler (spreads water in all directions) vs a water nozzle which concentrates the water into a jet and a in particular direction (whichever way you point it).

Same with lights.

However, led lights only have very small reflectors and consequently have a lot of "spread". The only way to focus a bunch of small reflectors is to face them the same way but they still won't have the same focus as a big reflector.

The only thing about extra lights on a vessel under the Collision Regs is the condition that (when exhibited) they don't obscure the vessel's navigation lights. If a lightbar (or a searchlight) is not obscuring the existing navlights then its ok. Nothing about dazzling anybody in the Collision Regs.

So what's obscuring? In front of to prevent the Nav light being seen? If that's the case then the lightbar doesn't have to be turned to obscure.

Or putting out sufficient light to dazzle a viewer so the nav light's weaker light can't be discernable? Is that really obstruction or something else? If its not obstruction then its perfectly OK to fit and use a lightbar.

You fellas can sort that argument out.

i suppose i was thinking thats how they get around the legalities

Light bars on boats is an overkill .
A couple of small spots do the job
without blinding boats coming towards
You.

Thanks everyone food for thought


cheers Craig

Craig

I agree with Jeffish about a vehicle type lightbar being overkill.

However, there is another type of LED light that can be used for marine applications.

They're called work lights and are lower powered, cheaper and versatile along with the fact that they're smaller and are much easier to mount anywhere on the boat.

They're used on all sorts of applications eg tractor lights for working at night.

They'll do what you want up but like any type of headlight on a boat, they have their limits.

Here's a typical one but their are literally hundreds of different types of small worklights out there with some submersible. Ideal for a boat headlight.

But ya gotta use it responsibly so as not to inconvenience other night time users of river.

https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinf ... 1906/4463/

I ran my one off my car one trip to shady mouth was almost like daytime

A one-off experiment, Hobbit?

You'd have seen some eye-reflections I reckon.