Important Navigation Marks

Apologies for the internet silence but we've had very little internet connection availability for some days so here is our next bit of blog.  We hope you enjoy it.

Raspberries to ROBIN!!!!!  There will be more photos of us coming up later.....we are both having a good time but missing all our family and good friends.

CARDINAL MARKS

Apologies to the sailors among our readers, you'll know all about these.  This is for the non sailors who may find it interesting or in the case of Robin it may be totally boring!!

The sea is a wonderful place to be when you are on holiday with time to consider the weather.  Shall we sail today or shan’t we?  Is there a 6 in the weather forecast?  However if you make your living by seafaring  e.g.  being a fisherman or a ships pilot or if you are a volunteer with the RNLI, your choice as to when you set sail can be severely limited.  Basically you need to be out there to make a living so it is important that everyone who goes to sea can understand the navigation marks that are placed out there to help them.  All the worlds’ major nations have therefore signed up to an agreement (IALA) that sets out the standard navigational marks that are used almost world wide.  Red marks (buoys) are port marks and green are starboard as well as lots of other standard colours and designs to indicate other important things such as submerged hazards e.g. rocks or wrecks.

Chris has become obsessed with one such marker buoy called a Cardinal.  Cardinal marks correspond with the cardinal points of the compass i.e. North, South, West and East and they are placed by the coastal authorities to indicate the presence of a submerged obstacle such as a rock or a sand bank to stop ships going aground.  They are always coloured with black and yellow hoops and have day marks on top so that in bad visibility they can be identified by the shape of their top marks.  The order of the B/Y hoops identifies the type of cardinal.  BYB is East, BY is North, YB is South and YBY is West.  They are like keep left signs in the street.  If you see a North Cardinal buoy, you keep north of it because the obstruction is to its south.  Likewise if you see a W Cardinal you keep west of it and so on.

 

A floating E cardinal buoy

 

A huge W Cardinal Mark

 

When sailing the south coast of the UK you’ll see cardinals quite often but here in Brittany there are so many dangerous rocks everywhere that they are found like swarms of bees.  We entered a port called Benodet and there were eight in the space of about two miles.  Quite often they are aimed at keeping ships away from danger so when you approach them in a small boat like April Dream you’ll be dwarfed by them.  They can be tall and very heavy floating objects, chained to the seabed or they can just be a painted pole stuck in the mud to keep small boats out of trouble.  We saw one coming down the Raz De Seine which was a 40ft high concrete tower looking like a Wasps Rugby shirt.

 

A huge Port Hand Mark guiding ships into l'aberwrach

 

 

A Port Mark at Morgat

The sheer ruggedness of the Brittany coastline and the ferocity of the sea in these waters during bad weather is legendary and so the scale and design of the marks that the Bretons use is quite often massive.  Tonnes of concrete or stone used where we in UK waters might use a floating buoy instead.

 

Lighthouse at the Raz De Seine

Can you imagine this in a gale!!