Navigation Lights and LED Upgrades: What SA Requires and What Lasts

Navigation lights are the one piece of equipment that is both a legal requirement and the thing other boats use to decide whether to run into you. A surprising number of recreational boats in South Australia carry lights that are the wrong colour, the wrong arc, mounted where the skipper's own body blocks them, or were converted to LED in a way that left them invisible beyond a hundred metres. This guide sets out what the SA handbook requires for a typical trailer boat, what the lights have to achieve, and how to upgrade to LED without going backwards.

When you need them

The South Australian Recreational Boating Safety Handbook puts it plainly: vessel lights must be displayed from sunset to sunrise, and in restricted visibility during daylight. That includes the pre-dawn run out to the grounds and the trip back after a late bite, and it includes sitting at anchor. If lights are fitted to your boat they must be fitted in accordance with the Prevention of Collisions at Sea Regulations, so a light that does not meet the arc and range below is not a navigation light in law, whatever the packet said.

What a power boat under 12 metres shows

Under way, you have two options. Either sidelights, a masthead light and a sternlight, or sidelights and a single all-round white light. The sidelights are red to port and green to starboard, each showing through an arc of 112.5 degrees from dead ahead to just behind the beam on its own side, and on a boat under 12 metres they may be a single combined lantern on the centreline at the bow. The masthead light is white, shows over 225 degrees forward, and is paired with a white sternlight showing over the remaining 135 degrees aft. The all-round white light does both jobs in one unit over 360 degrees, and it is what most trailer boats use. The handbook requires the masthead or all-round white light to sit at least one metre higher than the sidelights, and on the centreline if possible. The smallest boats have a concession: a vessel under 7 metres long with a maximum speed under 7 knots, which in practice means a dinghy or a tender with a small motor, may show an all-round white light alone, with sidelights if practicable. Anything that planes is well over 7 knots and needs the full set.

At anchor and when drifting

At anchor, a recreational vessel shows an all-round white light. That is the light that gets switched off by owners who think of it as a navigation light; it is an anchor light and it stays on all night. Drifting is a different case: the handbook says a vessel that is under way but not making way, which is the drifting angler with the engine off, must display sidelights, masthead light and sternlight, not just an anchor light, because other boats need to know you are not anchored and may move.

How far they must be seen

For a vessel under 12 metres, the handbook's minimum visibility on a clear dark night is two nautical miles for the masthead light, the sternlight and the all-round white, and one nautical mile for the sidelights. That range is what separates a certified navigation light from a decorative one. A light that meets it carries a mark saying so, and the lens is designed so the light cuts off sharply at the edge of its arc; red bleeding across the bow into the green sector tells an approaching skipper the wrong thing about which way you are heading.

The LED question

LED navigation lights are better in every practical way: a fraction of the current, so an all-round white can run all night at anchor on a small battery; no filament to shake loose; and a sealed body that outlasts the boat. The trap is the conversion. Dropping an LED bulb into an old incandescent fitting changes the light's beam pattern, because the lens was designed around a filament in one exact spot and an LED chip is somewhere else, and the result is a light that is bright up close and fails the range and the arc at a distance. Many LED bulbs are also polarity sensitive, so a light that was fine on the old bulb goes dark with the wires the other way around. Replace the whole fitting with a certified LED navigation light rather than the bulb, and you keep the arc, the range and the colour. The Narva marine range includes LED anchor lights and fold-down masts, and the marine electrical parts range carries combined bi-colour bow lights and port and starboard pairs for alloy and glass boats. A plug-in LED anchor light on a removable pole is the simplest upgrade on a boat that fishes after dark.

Mounting and wiring

Mount sidelights where the hull, the bow rail or a person sitting on the casting deck cannot block them, and the all-round white where the bimini, the rocket launcher or your own head does not shadow it, which on many boats means a pole at the transom rather than a stub on the windscreen. Check the arcs from the water in front of the boat, not from the deck. Wire the lights through a dedicated fused circuit with tinned cable, use heat-shrink crimps rather than twist-and-tape, and if you are adding a second battery or a switch panel to run them, the second battery guide covers the circuit. Lights sit alongside the rest of the compulsory kit in the SA safety equipment guide, and they are the item on that list that is checked by every other boat on the water rather than by an inspector. If you are not sure what your boat should be showing, ring 0412 532 984 with the length and how you use it.