Every week, we present you with a question about your boating license. Whether you're looking to validate your knowledge or discover new and unexplored areas. This week, we tackle a question on buoyage.
Identifying the cardinal
The buoy is yellow and black. In maritime buoyage, this is a cardinal buoy. They are used to indicate the presence of danger to mariners. There are 4 cardinal buoys, each indicating a cardinal point: North, South, East and West. The yellow and black colors are backed up by a visual indication in the form of two cones on top of the buoy.
This buoy has cones pointing downwards, so it's a southern cardinal. Faced with a south cardinal, I go south. In fact, this buoy delimits a danger to its north. If I'm heading East, I have to leave this cardinal on my port side. This is not the case in this photo. The yacht passes on the wrong side of the buoy. It's too late to tack without hitting the buoy, so we'll bet on answer C, but more likely, the skipper has checked the tide times and the height of water above the danger - at least, we hope so.
