Most visiting boats never test their navigation lights until they need them, which is the worst possible moment to discover the stern light has a dead bulb and the tricolour flickers. France adds a wrinkle the rest of us are not used to: the boat itself is regulated, not just the way you drive it, and a control by the Gendarmerie Maritime can include a look at whether your lights actually work. Get the kit right at the dock and you never have that conversation.
The good news is that the rules are not French inventions. France applies the international Collision Regulations like everyone else. The wrinkle is the equipment side, the Division 240 safety framework, which expects the lights to be present and functional, not just theoretically fitted.
What COLREGs actually require for a small boat
Strip away the jargon and the requirements for a typical cruising yacht or motorboat are short.
Under power, a vessel under 12 metres can carry a single all-round white masthead light combined with sidelights, or the more usual setup of separate red and green sidelights, a white steaming light forward, and a white stern light. A power-driven boat under 20 metres may combine the masthead and stern lights into one all-round white if it chooses, but most cruisers run the conventional set.
Under sail, you show sidelights and a stern light, no white steaming light, because that white light is what tells other vessels you are under power and therefore the give-way assumptions change. A sailing boat under 20 metres may combine sidelights and stern light into a single tricolour at the masthead, which is brilliant offshore for visibility and battery economy, but you must never show the tricolour and the deck-level lights together, and never the tricolour under engine.
At anchor, every boat shows a single all-round white light where it is best seen. There is no separate rule for sailing versus power vessels at anchor: one white light, visible all round.
The numbers that matter: visibility ranges
COLREGs Rule 22 sets the minimum range your lights must be visible, and for small boats the figures are modest but specific. A vessel under 12 metres needs sidelights visible at 1 mile, a masthead light at 2 miles, and a stern light, all-round white or anchor light at 2 miles. Vessels of 12 metres and over but under 50 metres need slightly greater ranges on the masthead light, but the all-round white stays at 2 miles.
Those ranges assume a clean lens and a bulb at full output. A salt-hazed lens or a sagging voltage can knock a 2-mile light down to half a mile, which is why the French equipment mindset, that the gear must work, not just exist, is a sensible discipline rather than bureaucratic fuss.
What France adds: Division 240 and the control
Division 240 is the French regulation governing safety equipment on recreational craft, in force in its current shape since June 2019. It does not rewrite COLREGs, but it sets out what a boat operating in French waters must carry and keep serviceable, and it applies to foreign-flagged boats cruising the coast. Functional navigation lights sit inside that expectation alongside flares, lifejackets and the rest.
When the Gendarmerie Maritime stops a boat for a control, they check papers and equipment. The detail of what they look at is in our guide to boat documents france gendarmerie maritime, and the broader equipment list is covered in division 240 safety equipment visiting boats. A dead nav light is not usually the thing that gets you a fine, but it is the kind of small fault that signals a poorly kept boat and invites a closer look.
LED or filament: the real trade-off
Almost every new fitting now is LED, and for good reason, but there is a catch worth knowing.
LED navigation lights draw a fraction of the current of old filament bulbs, often a tenth or less, which matters enormously when you are running lights all night at anchor or on passage off a single battery bank. They also last for years rather than a season. For a visiting boat trying to manage power without shore connection for days, LED is the obvious choice, and it pairs naturally with the power discipline in our boat refrigeration france notes.
The catch is certification. To be legal, a navigation light must meet the relevant standard, and a cheap unbranded LED bulb dropped into an old fitting may not produce the correct beam pattern or visibility range, even if it lights up. Buy complete certified LED fittings, or certified drop-in LED bulbs designed and approved for that specific fitting, not a generic automotive bulb that happens to fit.
The kit a visiting boat should carry
Lights fail. Plan for it.
- Spare bulbs for every filament fitting you still run, in a labelled box, because a tricolour bulb and a sidelight bulb are rarely the same.
- A handheld waterproof torch with a white beam, powerful enough to show your position to a vessel that has not seen you. This is your last-resort backup the COLREGs explicitly allow for small craft.
- A multimeter or at least a continuity tester, so you can trace a dead light to a bulb, a connection or a switch rather than guessing.
- Self-amalgamating tape and a tube of marine sealant for the connections most likely to corrode, which are always the ones at the bow.
- Contact cleaner for the bayonet fittings and bulb holders that green up in salt air.
Keep all of this with your wider boat spares kit france rather than scattered round the boat.
Where small boats get the rules wrong
Three mistakes turn up again and again on visiting boats, and all three are easy to avoid once you know them.
The first is showing a steaming light under sail. The forward white masthead light says you are under power, and flying it while sailing tells everyone the opposite of the truth, which changes who gives way and can put you in the wrong in a close-quarters situation. The switch comes off the moment the engine does.
The second is the combined deck-level light and tricolour confusion. A boat that wires its tricolour and its lower sidelights to one switch, or forgets and runs both, shows other vessels a light pattern that means nothing in the rules. Keep them on separate switches and treat the tricolour as a sail-only, offshore choice.
The third is the anchor light hidden by the boat's own gear. An all-round white light blanked by a radar dome, a wind generator or a flag halyard is not visible all round and does not meet the rule, however bright it is. Walk a full circle round your boat with the anchor light on and confirm you can see it from every angle, because the vessel motoring through the anchorage at night is relying on it.
A five-minute drill before you ever sail at night
Before the first night passage of a trip, run the full set in daylight at the dock. Switch on steaming, sidelights and stern light together and walk the pontoon to confirm each is lit and the right colour from the right angle. Switch to the anchor light and check it is visible all round, not blanked by the radar or a flag halyard. If you have a tricolour, confirm it and the deck lights are on separate switches and never come on together.
I do this on the first calm evening of every cruise, and roughly one year in three I find a fault: a corroded earth, a bulb on its way out, a sidelight lens crazed by UV. Finding it at the dock costs ten minutes. Finding it in the shipping off Cherbourg at two in the morning costs a great deal more. France will not usually fine you for a dead light, but the sea does not care about the rules, and a boat that cannot be seen is a boat in real danger.
