Red, Right, Returning

as I was taught to sail

I learned to sail as an adult at Mystic Seaport here in Connecticut, USA. There I learned the saying that you keep the red buoys to your right when going upstream or returning from the sea. For some reason, this mantra has been percolating in my head lately although it’s quite a while since I soloed my Dyer dinghy down the Thames River here in New London (in which case I would have had the red buoys on my left as I sailed downriver to the shore).

This topic was further heightened when my local paper, The Day, had a front page headline yesterday that said “Harbormasters look to sink Coast Guard plan to scrap buoys.” The article goes on to say that the Coast Guard is looking for public input and there is a link included where I could make my views known online. The proposal is to get rid of buoys altogether and use a ‘modern approach’ to navigation. The crux of the problem is stated by one of the harbormasters who notes that not everyone has GPS.

So once again technology is trying to take over. But in researching this story, I was surprised to learn that what I had been taught would not have served me had I returned to the Isle of Man to sail. Buoys are regulated worldwide by the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) Buoyage System created in 1979, and it splits the world into two regions, A and B. The split seems a bit strange to me, but suffice it to say the regions are completely opposite as to port and starboard colors. By the way, for those of you who are not boaters, port is the left side and starboard is the right side. So Europe is in Region A, while America is in Region B; therefore, in the Isle of Man I would have to say green, right, returning.

Enough about buoys, though. I also had a transatlantic moment this morning when I watched the video that Tina Brown posted on her Substack “Fresh Hell.” She had a marvelous discussion with British journalist Lewis Goodall about the role of journalism and the current situation on both sides of the sea. The podcast is called The News Agents and I am now going to join Tina in adding it to my morning routine.

As I said to a loved one recently, the most intelligent people are the ones who are able to know when they don’t know—and in this day and age to quickly look up new information and store it in our memory banks. With my 80th birthday approaching this summer, perhaps I’ll treat myself to a trip to the IOM. But I’ll let someone else take the helm if I decide to go sailing!

RESIST ALWAYS

TTFN