Amsterdam skipper receives fine for boat with excessive Christmas lights
By Simone Jacobs
After trying to create a festive atmosphere on his canal boat, a skipper in Amsterdam was arrested and fined for having too many Christmas lights on board.
Boat of Christmas spirit earns fine in Amsterdam
While transporting visitors to the Amsterdam Light Festival, where there are many dazzling light displays visible on the canals, a boat with what the nautical authorities considered excessive Christmas lights earned its skipper a fine. Tour boats are only allowed a limited number of lights according to regulations.
"The official rules are that you are only allowed to have navigation lights: a red and a green light for port and starboard, and a white light at the front and back, so you can see where the boats are going," Fran Heijn of the United Shipping Companies Amsterdam explained to NH Nieuws. However, until recently, the city allowed Christmas lights on boats as long as navigation lights were clearly visible, lights did not flicker and decorated boats did not enter the IJ.
Stricter enforcement of boat light rules in Amsterdam
Several shipping companies have reportedly received notice that the rules on boat lighting are being enforced more strictly this year. Amsterdam Alderman Melanie van der Horst maintains that strict enforcement is necessary to ensure safety on the water.
"In some cases, the Christmas lights make the navigation lights of boats difficult to see, or even completely invisible," said van der Horst. "This jeopardises the flow of shipping traffic. In such cases, the police or enforcement officers on the water can intervene to switch off the lights."
Heijn doesn’t completely agree with this reasoning, arguing that extra Christmas lights aren’t necessarily unsafe during the Amsterdam Light Festival. "During the Light Festival, all the boats sail in the same direction; it's one-way traffic. You know exactly where they're going, and they're all travelling at less than 6 kilometres per hour,” he explains. “You really don’t need to [restrict Christmas lights] for safety reasons."
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Editor for the Netherlands at IamExpat Media. Simone studied Genetics and Zoology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa before moving to the Netherlands, where she has been working as a writer and editor since 2022. One thing she loves more than creating content is consuming it, mainly by reading books by the dozen. Other than being a book dragon, she is also a nature lover and enjoys hiking and animal training. Read more