Hand Held Radio & Flood Light Recommendations

We recently purchased our first boat. Is it recommend that we have a hand held radio and flood light on board and if so, what are some recommendations in terms of what to buy and where to purchase?

Defender is having a special sale through Active Captain for a floating handheld VHF with GPS and DSC for under $150. It even has a built-in flashlight.

There are some real nice LED hand held spot lights available now. LED is the way to go. My opinion on a hand held radio especially in an emergency is ease if use / intuitive. When someone that is not familiar with the radio needs to make an emergency call you want them to be able to do so quickly and easily. Adding GPS and flash lights and all sorts of other gizmos just muddies the water. KISS works for me.

Eddie said:

We recently purchased our first boat. Is it recommend that we have a hand held radio and flood light on board and if so, what are some recommendations in terms of what to buy and where to purchase?

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I think a hand-held VHF is a good idea. I don't have one. A waterproof VHF with integrated GPS and DSC is even better. My Mom has one that she uses for Kayaking.

A handheld spotlight can be useful. I have one. I have used it once. It came with a prior boat. I didn't go out and buy it. If you plan on going into unfamiliar anchorages, moorings, or marinas at night it can be useful. If you aren't, it will simply take up space. I would suggest that you use the boat for a bit first before you buy a bunch of stuff that you may never use.

dhays said:

I think a hand-held VHF is a good idea. I don't have one. A waterproof VHF with integrated GPS and DSC is even better. My Mom has one that she uses for Kayaking.

A handheld spotlight can be useful. I have one. I have used it once. It came with a prior boat. I didn't go out and buy it. If you plan on going into unfamiliar anchorages, moorings, or marinas at night it can be useful. If you aren't, it will simply take up space. I would suggest that you use the boat for a bit first before you buy a bunch of stuff that you may never use.

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I too have an older hand held spotlight. It plugs into a 12v cig lighter socket, that I installed specially on the Flybridge for it. I have used it a few times, when it was new, just to demonstrate its brightness to myself. It has huge candlepower! I have moved it several times, to get access to the stuff way back in the FB locker. Good that it was inexpensive.

On a recent RCMSAR rescue, a similar handheld, plug in light was put to good use finding and keeping a close eye on the tow that we rescued in the dark, in very foul weather.

Icon and Standard Horizon are two names I trust to make a good handheld radio. I like radios that run on regular AA batteries. Each time I want to use a chargeable one, it needs charging. Some radios use rechargeable AA batteries which might be the best of both worlds.

I have a few hand held VHF's and I agree that ease of use is much more important than have lots of bells and whistles on them. Get one that floats. Standard Horizon is my favorite.


As to the hand held spotlight, I have had one on my boat for many years and use it several times a year. It's great when we're raising the anchor at night because I can see the areas on the chain that I painted to show how much chain is out.


I buy the rechargeable 1,000,000 candlepower models for around $20. They last for a few years then I toss 'em and buy a replacement. They are super bright, pretty sturdy and quick to point at whatever you want to illuminate. Much faster than trying to aim the stupid spotlight on the boat.