BOTH INTERNATIONAL & INLAND A 45-meter vessel is pulling a 210-meter tow. Which lights is she required to exhibit?
A) two masthead lights forward and no after masthead light
B) a masthead light forward, and two masthead lights in a vertical line aft
C) three masthead lights aft and none forward
D) three masthead lights forward and one aft
Is it not D?
The USCG exam question pool (or the question in the pool circal 2010) agrees the answer is D.
Interesting. Can someone help me understand why?
Does the question not exactly match the page I clipped from the rules, did I miss something?
And if it does match, what in the rules page requires an aft masthead light?
C. Says three mast lights aft and therefore would be incorrect. Your observation on the aft mast light is correct and that is the source of all the confusion. The USCG has D. as the correct answer. All of the answers seem wrong to me and that is why I asked for help in the community.
The aft mast head light is optional and not “required” on a vessel of 45 meters. Many of my students are having trouble with this question and I believe it should be edited or removed from the pool. I believe all of the answers are incorrect.
Thank you for the reply.
Are they confusing the aft masthead light with that of a ship? I see the confusion when one could presume that a mast light is not the same as a stern light.
i.e. the answer does not specify the aft light as being on a mast as are the three forward facing lights
Ah, well true, I didn’t consider that, but this raises another question for me.
Where there aren’t “forward and aft” lights (i.e. if we don’t have the optional masthead light on a vessel under 50 metres), where is there a distinction specified between forward and aft masthead lights? What’s it forward or aft of? I’ve looked through the annexes, and assume I’ve missed something, since I haven’t spotted anything that indicates where a light must be on the forward / aft axis, other than, an aft light being aft of a forward light. On that basis, C would appear to me to be equivalent to “three forward and none aft”. What did I miss?
(Also, the question says “required”, not “would be appropriate”. I’m gonna bitch about that as a badly written question at best!)
See rule 23 - on a vessel 50 meters or more, the distinction between the fore and aft masthead lights are height, distance between must be at least half the length of the vessel, the aft light being higher. When I got my license the height difference was specified as 15 feet or more for a ship.
I understand that Akbjr, but that’s if there’s two masts with lights on. I don’t see that that tells us anything about a single mast with lights, as would be permitted for a 45m vessel. The fact that the guidance relates one mast to the other seems meaningless, and hence inapplicable, if there’s only one.
If we were all to compile a list of badly written questions on the USCG exams it would be a long list. In many exams there is the answer that is correct and then the answer they want to hear which may or may not be the same. At any rate one question is not going to make or break anyone who knows the material. So you just finish the exam and send an inquiry suggesting how a question may be better worded. I did that and they were quite responsive.
That question sucks on a few levels, besides for the photo showing TWO lights aft, to a WAFI at least “masthead light” is all the way up the mast, you can’t really have two or three of them.
Around here we seem to have some unofficial lights too, since I was a little kid tugs were obvious because of the bug lights (yellow lights) as deck lights and now some of them seem to have 2 bright spotlights aimed back at the barge.
I remember several questions when I tested which required careful reading. D is correct because it is referring only to lights required for the tow. No other type of light is mentioned. When I was in navigation school Capt. Page hammered into our heads that one must read carefully to understand what are referred to as trick questions.
P.S. my apologies for response #8, badly written
Just so, one of those aft lights is the stern light that is on anyway. I guess on a tug you don’t actually put it on the stern, it would either be obscured by a barge or get removed by the tow line or both.
