10 tips for making safe passage at night

Standing on shore and looking out over the water at night can be intimidating; the inky blackness, interrupted only by the occasional wave reflected off the moonlight.

Given how much we’re used to enjoying boats in daylight, the thought of having to make a night passage can be quite intimidating.

However, if the weather’s on your side, and the call of a better location is strong, crossing a body of water in the dark can have its benefits. The key, though, is planning to ensure you have the support and resources needed to make the passage safely.

Here are boatsales.com.au’s top tips to tackling the night moves without any trouble.

1. Slow down. Open water doesn’t have visual guides like a well-defined road, boats don’t have headlights and water-borne hazards often don’t declare their presence. Slowing down gives you more time to react to any hazards.

2. Ensure it’s lights out on the boat. Light pollution can severely affect your vision in the dark, and any ambient light flooding from the cabin or topsides will cause your eyes to adjust for the glare. Use headlamps that show a red light; your eyes are less sensitive to that part of the light spectrum, so re-adjusting to darkness once they’re switched off is faster than for white lights.

3. Keep a towel handy. Back-lit instrumentation that turns on with the running lights casts a surprising amount of light, and the easiest way to extinguish it is to cover it up with something. Cardboard cut to size, and fixed over instruments with electrical tape will yield a flip-up cover for gauges that need occasional monitoring.

4. Keep a watch. Establish a crew roster so there are at least two people topside at all times, with remaining crew members resting up below. The watch rotation depends on how many people are on board; with three crew, a staggered roster of two hours on and four hours off ensures adequate rest for everyone. Each time a replacement crew comes topside, brief them on what has happened since they’ve been below.

Scanning the water ahead, the watch should be able to pick out other boats, the odd big wave and more. Lights up off the water could indicate you’re approaching a large vessel, or they could be on land. Bounce your observations off each other to confirm that what you’re looking at is what you think you’re seeing. Other craft moving on the water may eventually cross your heading, and their progress needs to be monitored.

6. Don’t look at the stars. Yes, on a cloudless night the sky is nothing short of amazing, the Milky Way, planets, moon and the odd meteor providing a spectacular 360-degree show. But nature’s spectacle comes at a cost; looking up is a fast, proven path to falling seasick.

7. Think safety. If someone ever has to venture forward out of the cockpit, ensure there are at least three crew topside; if someone ever goes over the side you’ll need at least one person to steer the boat and the other to keep an eye on the crew member in the water.

8. Lights on the water can be deceptive. At night, points of light you’re steering towards don’t seem to grow in size the closer you get. It means that beacons you’re driving towards, such as flashing channel markers, can appear quite quickly out of the darkness, so you’re best to keep them slightly to one side of the boat. Should someone ever go over the side, remember, you’ll see lights on land at the top of every wave, but lights in the water will only show when the waves carrying them are synchronized with the boat.

9. Know your beacon lights. Cross-referencing your location with marker buoys, identified via a dead tree chart, will help with navigation, particularly if your chartplotter is in the sin bin for casting too much light pollution.

10. Carry a powerful spotlight. Once you make your destination, you’re potentially going to have to pick your way past all sorts of hazards such as sea walls, jetties, mooring buoys and other boats. Having a spotter on the bow picking out the hazards and calling instructions to the helm, minimizes the risk of a collision.