I think your 60M estimate is high. When we were looking for Fintry,
almost all of the 75-100' vessels we considered had dual masthead,
stern, and side lights with a control box that sounds a buzzer when
one goes out. Fintry's lights have dual supplies, as well -- the
primary light is 220V and the secondary 24V from the emergency
batteries. (These were all ex commercial, military, fishing, and
government vessels -- see www.mvfintry.com/boatsnotbought.htm for some
of them).

I agree that many "all-around lights" on working vessels are provided
by single lamps on a stalk away from the mast. Many of them appear to
violate Colregs Annex I 9(b) which requires the obstruction from a
mast be limited to six degrees (tangent 6 degrees is about 1/10, so a
six inch mast would require a sixty inch stalk -- the filament is a
vertical line source, so the width of the lens doesn't count). Note
that this does not apply to an anchor light, which must be placed
"where it can best be seen".

Fintry's NUC lights are pairs on either side of a 4" mast (see
http://www.mvfintry.com/pix/plymouth800.jpg -- they're below the
spreaders). They're 360 lights and don't have any screens. Since they
were installed for the use of the Royal Navy to meet the requirements
of the MCA, I would guess that they're probably legal, at least in the
UK.

While we're on the topic, have any of you noticed that many yachts
above 20 meters don't have legal lights -- the sidelights are often in
front of the steaming lights? While this is perhaps understandable in
the case of sail boats -- there's no good way to meet the rules when
you have an overlapping genoa -- it's also common in power yachts.
Fashion is more important than safety.

Jim Woodward
www.mvfintry.com

"PeteAlbright" wrote in message . com...
When I was refering to "ships", I meant commercial ships, usually well over
60 M. Most of the lamps are 120 Vac. The ships are under IEEE-45, USCG (Code
of Federal Regulations), and ABS (or other certification organization)
rules.

On ships and tugs ("ocean going tug/barge"), the port, starboard, stern,
masthead, and range lights are redundant, with two lights in a vertical
assembly. Both lights have the wiring and filement monitored, and if the
primary light fails, the spare can be switched on.

On smaller masts, 6" to10" pipe, the "upper red", "middle white", and "lower
red" NUC lights are usually sigle, and mounted off the mast to the side.
Anchor lights are also mounted off the side if there is not room on top.
Where the mast is large, mounting two lights is theusual method.

Most of the ("ocean going tug/barge") barge lights are powered from local
batteries with solar panels, and have six lamps with automatic lamp
changers. One light that is not in the rules, is a small directional blue
light, facing aft at the bow (usually behind the range light). The tug pilot
uses this light to locate the boy of the barge at night.

Whether Red over green is necessary, on a sailboat, is up to the master. I
had not though of doing it on my '77 Hunter 30, But I do have all Aqua
Signal series 40 lights, the brightest 12 volt light commonly available.

Pete Albright