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For many years I was in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, and on night patrols (as well as when I'm in my personal boat at night) we always rig the boats to avoid any bright lights coming into the cockpit, mandating only red (used by our eye's cone cells) for instruments and chart reading (although ironically some chart markings are obscured in red light) and thereby preserving our rod cells (which are much more sensitive but cannot see red) for lookout, night vision duty. It's the same for fighter pilots on night missions, acclimating in a red-lit room.
However, boats (and airplanes) do not have, nor rely on, headlights (plane landing lights excepted). The backscatter of even excellent headlights (I have always used Cibie e-codes on my earlier cars, and have Euroheadlights on my latest 240's) is enough to impair night vision, and cutting down the dash lights to improve your night vision for driving is only a very marginal benefit at best.
To really appreciate the potential of a human's (even old geezers' like us) night vision, you have to spend a few hours out in the middle of a body of water (without much shore lighting) to realize what you can eventually see. And then use a handheld search light (to see a buoy's markings, for example) to find that night vision vanish.
However, on my dash (with the soft blue-faced gauges I showed in my post's picture), I keep my lights dimmed half-way, and I find that it's a good balance between visibility and avoidance of distracting light. Note that I'm not saying anything about true night vision, but rather that a bright dash can be a distraction that draws your attention from the road ahead. While I can still glance at my instruments without any effort in case my charging or cooling system, etc., suddenly acts up.
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