Texas Water Safari canoe light suggestions

This question has been asked a few times over the years, so hoping to both redefine it and update suggestions.

The safari is a multi-day, unstaged marathon-with up to 4 nights of paddling. Since a death in 2012, support rules were slightly relaxed to include food and medicine-but lights and batteries must still be onboard at the start of the race (you can offload spent batteries).

While I assume plenty of people use attached flashlights, the standard custom setup invlolves both remote battery and switches. 10aa lithium packs are switched daily. The remote light does not attract bugs to the paddler, and does not cause paddle blades to flash each hump (side change). Lights are stowed during the day to avoid snagging-lots of trees and plenty of portages. I suspect some even use spring loaded mounts.

anyway, figured modifying a host for a remote battery and switch should not be hard. Could also use a 3x3 or 2x5 or 5x2 (about 2 cr123's) battery to get a more common voltage (any advantage to higher volts?).

any suggestions (such as cheep mostly waterproof hosts, advantages of one battery over another (example -runtime of 5x1.5v over 2x3.7v) are appreciated. I do have som lines on racers who make these, but honestly they are probably members here as well.

Race is bearly over 11 months away, time is ticking .

A small off road light pod, wired up to a pack of 18650s, or small lawn mower battery.

How about the typical Bike light setup?
With light head and external battery pack?
Quite easy and cheap to get, additional packs, too.

Watertight enough (and when you fall, the not fully submersible light is one of the least problems)

Head mounted lights are considered a medical problem. Paddles with flash during humps, and give the stern paddler a migraine (at best), not to mention bright flashes will ruin night vision.

i am considering both handle bar and head mounted external pack bicycle lights-with he understanding that I will need to make a mount.

tryng to find info on canoe forums, but this race is somewhat unique-which might influence some of the lighting decisions. (Such as it will probably have 3 maybe 4 nights of use, and as for lighting-you get nonoutside support (it must work and you must carry all your batteries). Finally issue, due to log jams, the race potentially could have several miles of night time portages (probably should pack headlights for these...)