Dave Selby
Get your HB pencil ready – it’s time to update your charts
The East Coast is not like the South Coast, which is just one of the reasons that charts of the East Coast aren’t much use on the South Coast. South Coast charts aren’t much help on the South Coast either. What’s needed is local knowledge.
For example, on the South Coast the main hazards to navigation are sea-school boats practising man overboard in harbour entrances, but you won’t find these on charts. Buoyage is different too.
On the East Coast a red and white striped safe water buoy has a very specific meaning. If it’s on land, it indicates where water used to be. If by happy coincidence it’s afloat, it’s in water, which is great for the buoy but highly inconvenient for anyone approaching in a boat, as it’s exactly where you want to be: there may be safe water three inches either side of it; there may not.
However, if it’s not there at all it could be one of four types, known as Types A, B, C and D, or sometimes Types 1, 2, 3 and 5; that’s eight in all. Type A/1 is the most problematic: that’s the sunk kind, which means you could hit it. A better hope is to encounter Types B/C/2/3 which aren’t there at all, as they’ve either been stolen or are in a scrapyard in Essex. A Notice to Mariners advises that Types B/C/2/3 are not mutually exclusive.
Type D or 5 (don’t ask me what happened to Type 4) is in a seaside promenade park, and no particular danger to navigation unless it’s lit at night. However, it’s instructive to note that park-type safe water marks are often to be found hard by a dinghy full of crocuses and a huge anchor, which just goes to show how little they are to be relied upon. There is one other type of East Coast safe water mark, which I almost forgot. This is known as Type E or Type 4 (so that’s what happened to Type 4), which is somewhere else; not a concern unless you’re near it in the dark. Finally, if you see a red and white striped pole you’re outside a barber shop.
On the South Coast, as explained earlier, the red and white safe water mark in a harbour entrance designates a maritime exclusion zone set aside for manoverboard practice. As it’s obscured by sea-school boats it will help if you learn how to recognise a sea-school boat.
First, take a bearing on the boat, and triangulate using the obliquity of the elliptic (covered elsewhere). If this places it on land, try again – have you adjusted for variation, deviation, dysfunction, BST and BLT? This time, with the aid of sightreduction tables and the smart bloke next to you, you’ve pinpointed the sea-school boat wallowing in close proximity to the safe-water mark in the middle of the fairway. If your calculations place it in a bunker that may be some way off the fairway, and could also be correct, but may not be.
What you need is absolute certainty. You spot a boat pinned against what may be the safe-water mark behind. This will give an indication of the direction and force of the tidal stream, but is it a sea-school boat? Look again. Just two on board? Possibly a husband and wife? No, this is just a couple out enjoying themselves in the Solent.
A genuine sea-school boat will be immediately recognisable by the fact that there are more on board than on an Ibiza booze cruise. Don’t be confused; it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re off the Costa Blanca. If they’re all wearing confused expressions and brand new sea clobber that’s more than likely a positive ID. Mark this on the chart. It doesn’t matter whether it’s one of the East Coast, South Coast or Mediterranean, but you must use an HB pencil. Anything else would be unseamanlike, bordering on imprudent and possibly a failure.
Now sniff the air. Students will most certainly be undergoing a mid-life crisis even if they didn’t have one to start with. This is something you can smell. Take a closer look, using binoculars if you have any; otherwise eyes will do. Is someone pointing one way? Is another person pointing somewhere else? Does one of them have a boat hook in their hand? Look too, for buckets in the water tied to fenders. If no one’s wielding a boat hook, that explains why two people are pointing in different directions; the boat hook’s in the water. Well done, you are in dangerously close proximity to a South Coast safe-water mark, an area to be avoided at all costs.
Far safer to turn sharply and head for France; avoid areas with scallops.
‘If you see a red and white striped pole you’re outside a barber shop’