Buoyage — Which side you pass
Reading notes · Buoyage
A cardinal names the clear water; a lateral tells you which side of the channel you are on. The direction of buoyage, and why the same red can changes sides.
Open the interactive chapter →The same material with the chart, the drawings and the exercises.
What «pass it» actually means
The mark is the instruction
You know all twelve marks now, and not one of them has told you what to do.
This part is about the ten that tell you a side — the isolated danger and the new danger are not here, because you do not pass those on a side: you go round them.
A mark is not the danger, and it is not a warning in general. It is an instruction, and it is exact: there is a side you may pass and a side you may not.
This part is that one question, four times over. And it has a catch in it that catches nearly everybody — you will meet it in topic two.
The cardinal names the water · topic 1
«North cardinal» does not mean «go north»
This is the mistake almost everyone makes first, so it is worth making it here where it is free.
A north cardinal does not mean «steer north». It means the clear water is north of it — and if you are already north of it, you are in the clear and can go wherever you like.
The mark is named after the water. It is not named after your course.
Move the boat, not the mark
Drag the boat round. Watch the verdict underneath change as she crosses into the clear quarter and out of it again.
The quarter never moves. You do. That is why «which side» is not a fact you can memorise about a mark.
Nothing is scored here.
Which way the channel runs · topic 2
The same buoy, two different answers
Look at the red can in this channel. Two boats are going to pass it today, and it is on opposite sides of each of them.
Nothing about the buoy changed. It did not move, it did not repaint itself. What changed is the direction the boat is going.
This is the only place in the whole course where one object means two different things depending on which way you are pointed, and it is where most people come unstuck. The fix is one sentence, and it is on the next screen.
Turn her round and look again
Turn the boat round. The buoys stay exactly where they are — watch which side of her they end up on.
If you ever find yourself trying to remember «red on the left», stop: left of what? That is the question the arrow answers.
Nothing is scored here. Turn her a few times.
The channel itself · topic 3
A real one, on the chart
This is the channel into Stennick Haven, off the chart you will use for the rest of the course. Everything you have practised is in it.
The safe water mark at the seaward end, then the pairs: No.1, No.2, No.3, No.4. And the direction of buoyage printed across it.
It is enlarged so the marks are far enough apart to steer between. It is not to scale, and the frame says so.
When the channel splits · topic 4
Two ways in. One of them is the one they mean
Sometimes a channel forks, and one of the two branches is the one the authority wants you to use — deeper, or better marked, or simply the main one.
These two say which. They are the laterals you already know, with a band of the other colour round the middle.
They are not a new pair to memorise. They are a red can and a green cone carrying one extra piece of news.
The two that do not push you anywhere · topic 5
Two that do not send you anywhere
Every mark so far has ended in a side: pass me here, not there. These two do not, and that is the whole of this topic.
The safe water mark means what it says — navigable water all round it, so either side will do. You have already met one: it is the doorway at the seaward end of Stennick Haven.
The special mark is not in the go-here-not-there business at all. It marks a feature — an anchorage, a cable, a spoil ground — and the chart says which.
Knowing that a mark is NOT giving you an instruction is worth as much as reading the ones that are.
And in America · topic 6
And in half the world, the red is on the other side
Everything in this module has been IALA region A: Europe, Africa, most of Asia, Australia. It is the one you are learning and the one you will use.
There is a region B — the Americas, Japan, Korea, the Philippines — and there the red and green are the other way round. Red to starboard coming in.
Do not learn region B now. Learning two opposite rules at once is how you end up sure of neither. Learn this one until it is automatic; the day you charter in Florida, you look it up and it takes a minute.
And the one thing worth carrying: the cardinals do not change. A south cardinal is a south cardinal everywhere on earth.
What you can do now
Ten marks that tell you a side, and now what to do about them. The other two — the isolated danger and the new danger — do not: you go round those.
A cardinal names a quarter of clear water, and you steer to be in it. A lateral marks the edge of a channel, and which edge depends on the direction of buoyage — which is printed, not guessed.
What is still missing is the half of it that only happens after dark. Every one of these marks has a light, and at night the shape and the colour are gone. That is what comes next.
Open the interactive chapter →The same material with the chart, the drawings and the exercises.