Phragle makes a very good point on HID's. They do run at 22,000-24,000 volts. Umm maybe retro fitting my boat sounds like a bad idea now. Plus the bulb it self dose run really hot.

Only problem I see with retro fitting a LED bulb in there is the Lumen power of lets say a halogen, H3, 55 watt bulb VS. LEDS. The halogen H3 has aprox 1500 lumen power.

H3 retro fit LED bulb has only 9 low power LEDS with 70 Lumen. The Day time running lights I put in my Escalade as like 70 and there dim as hell (only 300 or so Lumen)...

It would have to be some high power ass LED's in the docking light ports to even make a chance of seeing anything at night.

Food for thought...

OK...If you want to get techincal, the light itself, the reflector and the lense have a much greater effect on precieved light output than bulb size i.e: I have seen a good quality light with a 35 watt halogen bulb seriously out perform a cheap light with a 100 WATT halogen bulb. so thats something to consider. you also have the fluting aspect. There are 4 basic types. (no docking light specific patterns that I know of) 1. pencil or spot which shine a focuse beam of light straight ahead a long distance with very little side lighting spread. 2. Driving, this has a decent distance but not as great as a pencil, this has pretty good spread/width 3. the pencil/driving combo, it doesnt shine qite as far as a pencil or as wide as a driving but is a good compromise between the two. Cibie was one of the first to succesfully pull ths off with the super oscar, look at older picks of european rally cars, they all have a bank of the on the front. 4) fog, this has awide spread with very little distance as the beam patter is capped down to light the road right in fron of you instead of the fog in the air.

As far as the light thats put out by hid's these piks are the lights I put togethe, they are cibie super oscars with the lincoln navigator hid's on my machine bases. They are really the best lighting system I have experienced in my years of off road racing though I have been away from the scene for about 8 years so I dont know what they have come up with since. for docking lights as someone else mentioned with hid's there will be a heat issue as you will have to seal the system from water intrusion and that sealing system will more than likely retain a lot of heat.