A Bright Finish - Multi LED fixture

We hesitated to purchase any light that was not Coast Guard certified for our evaluation. But when an email from a parts retail supplier literally arrived the day we were headed out on the water, announcing the arrival of a new LED navigation light, we stopped by to pick it up. The NaviLight uses an array of 16 tiny individual bulbs to complete the required arc of illumination. This fixture was also portable, requiring just 3 AAA batteries.

Mutli-bulb LED fixtures are not new in the transportation and retail world. You see them in brake lights on cars and lighted signs for businesses. Some larger boats even have multi-bulb LED fixtures, but they cost hundreds of dollars. Our NaviLight setup cost about $100 for both the bi-color and white light, so we hoped that investment would prove valuable. And to our delight, it performed very well – a real surprise since the product targets the operators of small marine craft like tenders, dinghies and paddle craft.

On average, this fixture outperformed every light fixture we evaluated. At close range, one observer stated that the lights were "big", meaning their aura was large. And at 3 NM, another observer stated that the red and green LEDs were almost as bright as the large government maintained red and green lighted Aids to Navigation.

A note about color

There are four critical factors that determine the distances at which light can be seen: the intensity of the light (candlepower), its color (chromaticity), the height of the light above the water, and your height above the water. Green is the easiest color to see at night. Red is used for navigation lights because its wavelength is the longest of all colors and it is easily recognized by the naked eye.