And know how to read the spar buoys are suffer the consequences...
Near my place there’s a set of markers that in “normal” conditions don’t really matter except for the Sophie and Doris or other deep drafting vessels. But...they do mark ledges. As I sit on my porch this morning I watched a nice old wooden cruiser go right between the red and black spars on the southeast corner of Bear. People make this mistake ALL THE TIME. That’s a confusing set of three markers to be sure. A red spar close to shore by Bear; a black spar to the east of it AND a light buoy with an accompanying black spar to the south. Too many boaters assume either a) the triangle of buoys marks a hazard so go around all of it (wrong), or especially going north/south, go between the red and black because it’s marking a channel (also wrong). There actually is a ledge to the north of the red/black pair so going between them takes you exactly where you aren’t supposed to go....
The correct course is to either go west of the red (close to Bear) — (Remember: go south and west of red markers) or around to the east of the black spar on the other side (go north and east of black spars). But that’s if you’re going north/south. If you are going east/west, you should go between the light buoy/black spar and the other two markers to the North. Going between two black spars there is especially confusing but that’s why we have maps and GPS...
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