THEN THERE WAS LIGHT

Four-season boater, Gilbert Park, hunts down the perfect marine spotlight

Using my boat all year round, I tend to see all kinds of conditions and on one particularly dark and windy February night, when I found myself coming up a buoyed channel, things got a bit awkward. I couldn't see a great deal but it won't be a problem, I thought.

I'll just stay away from the edges of the channel on my plotter and use the lights on the channel markers. Then all of a sudden, there was a bang as I hit a glancing blow on an unlit port marker! The marker was fine and there were only minor scrapes on my boat, but it was at this point that I realised I had to do something to make dark winter cruises that bit safer.

LIGHTING OPTIONS

There are plenty of alternatives available if you need extra visibility at night. They span everything from a pair of torches connected to the handrails with bicycle handlebar clips (about £20 all-in) to thermal and low-light cameras linked to your MFD for between £1,000 and £4,000. But could I really justify that kind of cost for night nav when it's generally something I try to avoid? Probably not, so I adopted the middle ground and looked at spotlights instead.