Every week, we present you with a question about your boating license. To help you validate your knowledge, or to discover new and unexplored areas. This week, we take a look at a question on navigation lights.
Three-colour traffic lights
When under sail, a sailboat must carry red, green and white coloured lights:
- a red one on the port bow
- a green on the starboard bow
- white on the back
Each red and green light represents a sector of 112.5°, with white representing the complement.
These three lights can be separated and distributed on each side of the boat. But there are special cases, depending on the size of the yacht.
For yachts under 7 m and those under 20 m
A sailboat less than 7 m long can replace these three colored lights with a single white light at the masthead, visible from 360° over the entire horizon.
Similarly, on a sailboat less than 20 m long, the three lights can be combined in a single light, this time tricolored, placed at the masthead so as to be visible over the entire horizon.
All our solutions for the navigation lights of pleasure craft are summarized in this link .
The answer to our question is that this single traffic light tells us that the sailboat is 20 m or less.
Different for motorboats
The concept of 12 m only applies to motorboats, not sailing boats. For sailboats, it is possible to replace the white light on the jib, which shines 240° forward, and the white light on the stern, which shines 120° aft, with a single white light at the masthead, which shines 360°.
