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Show Aids To navigation For Every Boating Career Early in every boating career, the importance of various aids to navigation comes through loud and clear. Why? because these day markers, buoys, lights, ranges and similar devices take the place-on the water-of street signs, highway markers and roadmap symbols. sym-bols. ALONG COASTS, rivers, lakes, waterways, channels and harbors, aids to navigation naviga-tion serve as markers and guides to help the boater locate position and avoid hidden hid-den dangers. They range all the way up to lighthouses, Texas Towers and sophisticated electronic devices and systems such as radio beacons and LORAN... All designed for one purpose: aiding boaters, recreational as well as commercial. AIDS TO navigation assist the skipper in making land from the open sea. They can lead you through harbors, and through rivers and channels. Aids provide a continuous chain of charted marks for coastal piloting. In short, they are indispensable to safe boating. Most common is the day marker, also the red and black buoys, which flank the United States coastline. Through an arrangement of colors, shapes, numbers, lighting and other characteristics, these aids in-'struct in-'struct the boater on how to proceed. THEY HAVE been placed along coastal waters in a lateral system, proceeding southerly down the Atlantic Coast; in a northerly direction direc-tion along the Gulf Coast; in a northerly direction on the Pacific Coast; in a westerly and northern direction on the Great Lakes except Lake Michigan where they are southerly. Since all channels do not lead from seaward, these are arbitrary guidelines established es-tablished for a consistent system. . FOR EXAMPLE, as your boat proceeds in from seaward or open water, black markers or buoys mark the left side of the channel. Red markers or buoys mark the right side. Thus, the handy saying "red right returning" applies as you proceed landward. land-ward. Proceeding along the U.S. . coastline, red markers or buoys always will be found on the landward side. THERE ARE a number of special-purpose buoys that aid the boater's navigation and other piloting uses. For example, vertically striped, black-and-white buoys mark the fairway or mid-channel. Red and black horizontally banded buoys mark junctions in the channel or obstructions. obstruc-tions. A white buoy denotes a safe anchorage. Because of their many styles, shapes, and color patterns, pat-terns, the Coast Guard Auxiliary Aux-iliary recommends- that boaters keep aboard an up- to-date chart which interprets the meaning of these informational infor-mational aids. AT NIGHT, lights play a major part in the aids to navigation system. Buoys or daymarks commonly are lighted with either green, red, or white lights, and the con-slant con-slant or flashing lights each give a navigational message. The aids to navigation system sys-tem represents a language that every boater should fully; understand, to help insure safe boating. Full instuction on day and night aids and how to interpret them is available in the boating skills and seamanship course offered free to the public by the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. For further information contact your local Coast Guard office, 524-5155. |