Today’s blog is going to be a little technical, so you may want to grab yourself a coffee or a stiff drink, depending on your inclination.
Well, it was back to class last night to learn about Canadian aids to navigation. Yes, we’re talking about buoys here folks. And I’ve learned that we (ie. Canadians) pronounce this as “boys”, not “boo-eys” (sorry Dad).
If you’re like me, then you had no idea that the various buoys that you see floating in the water are a complex communication system. With different colors, top marks, shapes, lights and even sounds all with their own meanings.
Just to give you a taste of what I’m talking about, the following is a list of the types of buoys that you might encounter:
- fairway
A Fairway Buoy at Tremadog Bay in the UK. Author Sue Morgan. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. - isolated danger
- port hand
- starboard hand
- port bifurcation
- starboard bifurcation
- cardinal buoys (of which there are four: North, South, East and West)
- cautionary
- anchorage
- mooring
- information
- hazard
- control
- keep-out
- scientific
- diving
- swimming
As an example, we’ll talk about a fairway buoy. This buoy is meant to indicate safe water, mark land, channel entrances or centres. It should be passed on the port side. Some characteristics of a fairway buoy are:
- Red and White vertical stripes
- White light, or unlighted with a spherical top. If lighted will flash either short-long-pause at six second intervals (Morse-code A) or long at 10 second intervals.
- may have a red spherical topmark
- lettered (no numbers)
- may contain white reflective material.
Got it? There will be a quiz later.
Now if all of this doesn’t seem complicated enough, well, in order to determine which side of certain buoys to pass on, you need to know at any given time whether you are travelling upstream or downstream in your boat. That seems easy enough if you’re in a river, but what if you’re on the ocean? There is an arbitrary determination that “generally” travelling clockwise around North America is upstream.
OK, now I promised you a quiz and I don’t want to disappoint. So, here we go:
Question: How on earth am I going to memorize all of this?
Note: there will be bonus marks if you provide an answer that I can actually use đŸ™‚
