Well, firstly, there's generally no need, given that any reasonable navigator carries a compass, thereby allowing the direction to be determined. With two or more known lights in sight, a simple resection gives the vessel's position.
However, some lights are set up to give rapid indication of whether the vessel is on the right heading in one of two ways:
- Leading lights which are in the same direction when approaching from the correct direction (e.g. into a harbour), and
- sector lights which show different colours according to direction, allowing vessels to correct a course which would intercept an obstacle.
No timing is required for either of these to work.
The presupposition to the question is probably that VOR solves a problem for aircraft navigation, so there ought to be a solution to the same problem in marine navigation.
The flaw in that reasoning is that there is no marine equivalent problem: radio receivers are almost omnidirectional (by design), but light receivers (our eyes) are very directional. So, the problem that VOR solves is one that simply doesn't exist for lighthouses.