Helmet Fire - sorry for the delay in replying but I have been away camping in a rather damp Cornish field
Our SOP for night wet winching (person in the water or small vessel, raft etc) would be to establish the hover with the casualty in the 2:30 position and hand control to the radop/winchop using the Hover Trim system since he is the one who can see what is happening under the aircraft.
The Sea King has an auto hover (4 axis with rad-alt hold) and the height can be wound up and down as required (Mk3 to 70', Mk3A to 199') if the downwash is affecting the survivor/vessel. The hover trim controller is by the cabin door and gives 10% pitch and roll control authority to the radop/winchop to manoeuvre the aircraft and operate the winch.
The rearcrew would be on white light throughout and the white light hover flood lights would be on to illuminate the casualty - the pilots might be on NVG or white light depending on conditions.
With more than 10 -15 kts of wind, the downwash is behind the cockpit so a combination of NVG and white light is usually appropriate (the steerable landing lamps allow you to see more of the surface information) and when we are practicing manual recoveries (pilot flying with the cyclic autopilot modes released) this is usually the configuration that allows you to provide the best service but not everyone (often depending on experience levels) is always comfortable with this, preferring to use the radop/winchops patter and the Low Velocity Indicator (LVI or hovermeter) to assess rates of movement. The LVI is, bizzarely, better in the analogue Mk 3 than it is in the digital Mk3A!
With lower wind strengths, the downwash tends to envelop the aircraft in a recirculating ball of spray rendering the NVG useless and white light not much better (all the light is reflected back from the fast moving spray, like when you put your landing lamp on in the cruise and realise it is raining but much worse) so it is back to the LVI and patter again.
The instrument hover is a relatively slow process since great care must be taken not to develop rapid rates of movement, especially backwards, and it is quite possible to become disorientated on a gloopy night - hence our SOP to utilise the hover trim as the radop/winchop has generally good visual references throughout.
We pretty much operate to the Swiss concept of ops, again the luxury of 2 pilots means one can always stay on NVG and there can be a safe handover of control whilst the other degoggles/goggles up. I do encourage pilots to get to a stable, close hover on NVG before transferring to white light but that is often just lack of confidence by junior pilots in their NVG hovering, especially close to cliffs, and is soon sorted with some practice.
We also do a lot of high hovering on NVG (1000 to 1500') for FLIR searches which again makes for an interesting scan and the value of the LVI cannot be overstated - it is very easy to end up going backwards at 20 -30 knots when your hover references are such a long way away if you don't scan the LVI regularly, especially during a protracted search when fatigue and boredom set in.