Can I get a Spanish boating licence if I am colour-blind?

Published on 28 September 2026 · By Ricard Prehn, professional recreational skipper (PPER), Spanish Yacht Captain (capitán de yate), Yacht Captain up to 200 GT, GMDSS General Operator and sailing instructor for over 27 years

Can a colour-blind person get the PER or the PNB?

Yes. Colour blindness does not stop you taking the course, passing the exam or getting the licence. What can change is the medical certificate: if your colour vision prevents you from reading lights at sea correctly, the licence lets you sail by day without limits and at night only if you are not alone on board.

I get asked this more than you might think, usually by people afraid of paying for the course and ending up without a licence. That is not the case: colour blindness affects when you can sail on your own, not whether you can hold the licence. And most leisure sailing, especially at the start, is done by day.

What exactly does the law say about colour blindness?

Royal Decree 875/2014, Annex VIII (section 1.4, "light sense and colour vision"), does not accept colour blindness or other colour-vision defects that prevent correct interpretation of light signals, and the restriction it sets out is daytime-only sailing or night sailing not alone.

In other words: the medical centre checks whether you can tell colours apart. If you cannot tell them apart well enough to read lights, it does not refuse the certificate, it adds a condition. You can read it yourself in the consolidated text of Royal Decree 875/2014 in the Spanish Official Gazette (Annex VIII, section 1).

If I have a recent driving licence, do I skip the colour test?

No. With a driving licence obtained or renewed less than two years ago you do not need a full new medical, but the law still requires a colour-vision check, especially green and red, at a drivers’ medical centre (art. 22.7 and 22.8 of RD 875/2014).

In other words, the law takes red and green so seriously that it is the one thing they check again even if you skip the rest. Where to get it, what it costs and when to get it is in our article on the maritime medical certificate; note that it expires after 90 days.

Why buoys are shaped like cylinders and cones

In Spain (IALA region A), when entering harbour you leave the red, cylindrical marks to port and the green, conical ones to starboard. On charts and diagrams they are drawn as a rectangle and a triangle. It is not decoration: the shape is there so you can identify the mark even if you cannot see its colour, whether because it is against the light, because the gulls have turned it white or because you are colour-blind.

The problem comes at sunset. At night you cannot see the buoy: only its light, red or green. And there the shape no longer helps. That is why the restriction applies to night and not to day. The rest of the system is explained in our IALA buoyage guide and in cardinal marks, which, incidentally, are black and yellow with white lights and do not depend on red and green.

The eye sees green better than red

Even if you are not colour-blind, your eye does not see all colours equally. For the same energy, green looks considerably brighter to us than red: the eye is most sensitive to yellowish green and its sensitivity falls quickly towards red. And at night the gap widens, because as the eye adapts to the dark it shifts towards green and blue (the so-called Purkinje effect) and red fades first.

This has two very practical consequences on board. First: a distant red light, from a buoy or the side of another vessel, can be harder to spot than a green one; do not assume there is nothing to port just because you see no light. Second, the other way round: because the dark-adapted eye barely uses red, cockpit torches and chart-table lighting are red. They let you read without losing your night vision.

Why do red and green matter so much at night?

Because at night at sea almost everything is read by the colour of lights: the red or green light of a buoy tells you which side to leave it when entering harbour, and another vessel’s sidelights tell you where she is heading and who must give way. By day the shape of the buoy gets you out of trouble; at night you only see the light.

If you see the green of a vessel crossing your path, she is seeing your red and it is up to you to act according to who has right of way; if you see her red, it is usually the other way round. A mix-up here means a collision. It is explained, with another simulator, in navigation lights.

What about the Navigation Licence?

The Navigation Licence also needs a medical certificate, but it only allows daytime sailing anyway, up to 2 miles from a harbour or shelter. In practice, the colour-blindness restriction takes nothing away from what the Licence lets you do.

If what you want is to drive a small motorboat or a jet ski by day close to the coast, the Navigation Licence (€139, in one day) works just the same whether you are colour-blind or not. If you want to make passages or sail at dusk with your crew, the PER is the one for you.

Tips if you are colour-blind and go sailing

• Learn the shapes, not just the colours. Can to port and cone to starboard when entering; the cones on cardinal marks; the sphere of safe-water marks. By day it is your best tool.
• Plan to reach harbour in daylight. Work out sunset time and leave a margin: a night entry is exactly what the restriction is meant to avoid if you are alone.
• At night, take someone who sees colours well and tell them what to watch for: buoy lights at the harbour entrance and other vessels’ sidelights.
• The chart and the plotter help, but they do not replace your eyes. On the chart every light has its abbreviation (Fl R, Fl G…), and AIS or radar give you clues, but not every vessel carries AIS.

Sources: Royal Decree 875/2014 (art. 7, art. 22 and Annex VIII, section 1.4); IALA maritime buoyage system (region A) and Topic 5 of Altair’s PER syllabus. This article explains the rules; if you have doubts about your own case, the medical centre makes the decision.