The Best Boat Navigation Lights

If you want the bow sorted once and then forgotten, this is the light. attwood rates it at 2 nautical miles and builds it for boats up to 65.6 feet, which covers nearly every trailer boat, center console and small cruiser out there. It carries USCG CFR 183.81 certification along with ABYC C-5 and A-16 compliance. You don't have to cross-check your hull length against a chart. If your boat is under 20 meters, you're covered.

The round housing holds red and green in one fixture, so you drill one hole and run one pair of wires. On a bow that's already crowded with an anchor roller and a cleat, that matters. A pair of separate sidelights means two mounts, two seals and two chances for water to find its way in. One fixture is one thing to keep sealed.

LEDs are the whole reason to replace a working incandescent light. A typical incandescent bow light pulls somewhere around 1.5 to 2 amps, while West Marine puts LED fixtures under half an amp. On a night run home with the chartplotter, the VHF and the bilge pump all sharing one battery, that's real. It also means no bulb to burn out on you halfway through the season.

Installation is where this one earns its keep. The deck-mount base sits low and flat on the foredeck, with no tall stalk to snag a line. attwood builds the housing in stainless steel, which is the right call for a fitting that spends its life getting rinsed with salt spray and then baked in the sun. Owners replacing an aging light generally report a straightforward swap.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The deck mount is the catch. If your bow light currently sits on a vertical bracket on the pulpit or hangs upside down under a molded overhang, this round base won't drop into those holes, and you'll be filling and rebedding. Measure the surface and look at the hole pattern before you order.

The LED module also isn't a bulb you swap at the ramp. When the fixture eventually dims or fails, you replace the whole thing. That's the trade you make for a sealed light, and it's the normal deal across this category.

Perko has been making this bow light in more or less this shape for decades, and that's exactly why people keep buying it. If your boat came from the factory with a Perko, there's a good chance the replacement lands on the same footprint. Owners of older runabouts consistently report a clean swap with no new holes. Some report having to drill anyway, so pull the old light and check the pattern before you commit.

The chrome-plated top over a polymer base is a smarter split than it looks. The zinc alloy top takes the chrome and the sunlight. The polymer base doesn't corrode where it meets a wet deck. Perko points to the plated die-cast base as the reason these hold up in coastal and offshore use. And it simply looks right on a boat with chrome rails and stainless hardware, which counts for something on a hull you care about.

It's certified for power-driven vessels under 39.4 feet, which is the 12-meter line in the COLREGS. Under that length, the Coast Guard Navigation Center calls for sidelights visible at 1 nautical mile and a white light visible at 2. Above 12 meters you need sidelights rated to 2 miles and a masthead light rated to 3, and this light is out of its class. Check your registration before you order.

One detail worth knowing: the lens can be opened and reversed. Plenty of people mount a bow light upside down under a molded pulpit, and owners report flipping the lens to keep red on port and green on starboard. If that's how your boat is built, this is one of the few lights that handles it without a custom bracket.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It comes with 12-volt bulbs, not LEDs. That means higher current draw, a filament that will eventually give up, and a housing you'll have to open sooner or later. If you're counting amp-hours on a long night, this isn't your light.

Owner reports also point to the seal as the weak spot over years of service. A cracked lens or a tired gasket lets water into the housing, and it isn't obvious from the outside until the light goes dim or stops working entirely. Pull it apart once a season and look at the gasket while it's easy.

Salt water is what kills navigation lights, not the LEDs. Hella builds the NaviLED PRO as a sealed unit rated IP68, with a UV-stabilized lens and a housing meant to shrug off the vibration of a hull pounding into a chop. There's no gasket for you to re-bed and no bulb socket to corrode green. For a boat that lives in a slip on the coast, that's the entire argument.

The lens matters more than the LED, and that's where your money goes here. Practical Sailor's long-term evaluation of LED navigation lights found that lens clouding from UV exposure, not LED failure, was the usual reason a light stopped meeting its rated visibility. A yellowed lens still glows. It just doesn't carry two miles anymore. Hella's warranty names lens yellowing specifically, which tells you what the company expects to fail first.

It's rated at 2 nautical miles for both the port and starboard sides, so it satisfies the sidelight requirement for anything under 20 meters, including boats in the 12-to-20-meter band where a 1-mile light won't do. Boating Magazine makes a good point that gets skipped: the horizontal cutoff matters as much as the mile rating. A clean edge is what tells another skipper which way you're actually pointed.

Low draw here is a bonus rather than the headline. Hella lists low power consumption for extended battery life, which in practice means you can leave the nav lights burning through a whole night passage without watching the voltmeter creep down. If you anchor out, fish after dark, or run home late, that adds up across a season of use.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It's the most expensive hardwired bi-color here, and the extra buys you sealing and warranty coverage rather than more light on the water. Two nautical miles is two nautical miles. If your boat trailers home to a garage and only sees fresh water, the attwood does the same legal job.

The listing is also thin on mounting detail, and Hella sells this line in several housing and mount configurations. Confirm the fitment against your pulpit or hull side before you buy, and be ready to fabricate a bracket or fill old holes.

Hella Marine backs the NaviLED PRO series with a five-year warranty against saltwater corrosion and lens yellowing.

Your bow light only covers the front of the boat. You still need white light showing aft, and if you're going to sit at anchor after dark you need an all-round white light too. This Aqua Signal pole light handles the stern job on a small boat and pulls straight out of its base when you're running in daylight or trailering home.

The removable pole is the reason to buy this style over a fixed fitting. A permanently mounted stern light on a small open boat is something you'll eventually hit with a rod, a cooler or a fender. Pulling the pole out and dropping it in a rod locker takes about three seconds. The socket stays put and stays wired, so there's nothing to re-connect the next time out.

Aqua Signal rates it for vessels up to 12 meters with 1 nautical mile of visibility, which lines up with what the Coast Guard Navigation Center asks of a stern light on a boat that size. The LED is rated at 20,000 hours, so the honest expectation is that the plug contacts and the lens will age long before the light itself does.

It's a plain black housing, and that's fine. On a bass boat or a center console, a white pole light is a tool, not trim. Owner feedback on this style of light tends to focus on the socket connection rather than the fixture, which is a good reminder to keep the contacts clean and to cap the base when the pole is out.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Its rated visibility is 1 nautical mile. That's what the rules ask of a stern light on a boat under 12 meters, but it falls short of the 2-mile all-round rating many vessels need for an anchor or masthead light. Read Rule 22 against your own boat before you treat this as your only white light.

The pole is 24 inches, which is right on an open boat and short on one with a high transom or a raised outboard. Set too low, the light sits in the glare of your own cockpit and hides behind the engine. Measure from the socket location to the top of your powerhead before you order this length.