I have been looking for a marine fog light for the past year - just a simple portable LED fog light that could be mounted on the boat, just in case the fog rolls in while I'm out fishing. I know a radar reflector will help, but most boats don't have radar anyway. I have checked everywhere online and come up with nothing. Any opinions are welcome - is this a good idea or bad.
Marine fog lights
- Thread starter 2xeagle16
- Start date
I think that a fog light will be of little value. It won't really help you see and it will be of marginal use to other boaters as it will only point in one direction and other boaters could be coming from any direction. In the PAC NW, a good percentage of the boaters who venture out in the fog do have radar and I think a radar reflector would be far more useful. Certainly all the very large boats have radar. You can buy an LCD radar (Furuno 1623) for around $1500 US new and can often get a used one for a lot less. I'd save my money for a radar of my own. Once you have one, you'll never venture out w/o again.
Hit em Hard
Member
Seadna is right. I would never want to go back to fishing in the fog without radar - or even more importantly running in the fog.
spring fever
Well-Known Member
Absolutely-x3-classic example this year off Winter Harbour -thick fog-I have 2 chart plotters on board plus radar etc. The satellites for the GPS went down for 4 hrs-nice to have that radar and compass!!! Amazing number of guys get the biggest thrill out of their electronics and love updating them even though their old ones are perfectly serviceable- a 16 mile radar is perfectly adequate for most guys safety needs and should be pretty reasonable .
The fog light would be round in shape so you could see it from any angle. The purpose of the light is to be seen by other boaters - not to see where I'm going. It's the other boats without radar (the majority of boats) I'm concerned about - even the boats with radar have a hard time seeing small boats.
I agree that it's the other guys you should be concerned about - especially the ones that blast around with no radar. I just doubt the light (even and all around) will be useful. In thick fog, the light won't penetrate very far. I fish A LOT in the fog out of Neah Bay and out on Swiftsure. Many of the commercial boats are out there and they have their big lights running all the time. Even with 1000's of candle power bulbs pointing right at me, I can't see them until they are close.
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