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Richard de Grasse of Islesboro is a Coast Guard veteran and retired U.S. Merchant Marine officer.
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) proposal to remove inshore buoys in favor of using GPS electronic displays for inshore navigation is the most ridiculous, unsafe nautical idea I’ve ever heard from my USCG alumni!
After high school I enlisted in the Coast Guard and soon ended up in the electronics shack and on the bridge of buoy tenders and ocean-going cutters. I became acquainted with some very “salty” skippers under incredibly challenging offshore sea and wind conditions where charts, buoys, radar, GPS and all worked together to assure safety of the ship and crew.
After serving in the Coast Guard, my mate Kathy and I began our offshore sailing adventures aboard our 34.5-foot Tartan sloop with the idea we would eventually retire to our seaside home on Islesboro. We sailed our sloop Endeavor throughout and across the Atlantic and Caribbean visiting more than a dozen countries. Every country we visited, even impoverished Haiti, had installed buoys and published charts marking important channels and unseen underwater hazards.
All manner of voyagers from small boat sailors, fishermen and merchant mariners trust local nautical charts and buoys to mark unseen underwater hazards. I believe that, without local buoys and detailed charts, small boat sailors will avoid going out in unpleasant conditions and venturing into unmarked harbors. Charts showing buoy locations are essential along the coast of the United States including Penobscot Bay in Maine.
During my career in the Coast Guard and as a Merchant Marine officer, I’ve used every form of offshore navigation available to determine our position from sextant to shipboard electronics including loran, sat-nav, GPS and radar. Taken together they ensure the vessels’ safety. A daily position is important offshore in deep water where the sea covers underwater hazards. When approaching the coast, especially under difficult weather and sea conditions U.S. Coast Guard cutters typically have several individuals on the bridge at one time, including a dedicated navigator.
Navigation inshore along coastal waters is a different story. Hazards are everywhere: reefs, shoals and even wrecks, most of which are underwater and cannot be seen from the helm. A modern-day coastal operator depends on U.S. Rules of the Road — Red to the Right Returning from Sea — Coast Guard buoys and other redundant visual references around the boat for safe navigation and maneuvering among other boats and narrow curving channels. Local hazards such as boat moorings, fishing boats and local boats, are not shown on charts or on GPS. Many shorthanded sailing and small power vessels including fishing vessels have an outside helmsman steering by compass, and GPS continually observing nearby conditions including USCG buoys.
Buoy locations and charting becomes essential when the seas and wind picks up. Difficult weather, especially local fog, means the operator must always look ahead to ensure safe passage. A Coast Guard buoy seen on course ahead is reassuring.
I cannot imagine members of the merchant marine/sailing brotherhood supporting such an unsafe U.S. Coast Guard action as removing buoys and subsequently deleting their location from the thousands of United States nautical charts and GPS displays. The cost of reprinting U.S. charts and changing the GPS display software alone will be expensive. Without buoys as aids to navigation serious groundings will certainly follow.
Meanwhile the rest of the world sets buoys and notes their location on their country’s nautical charts. How foreign sailors will approach the United States coast with no buoy aids to navigation remains to be seen.
The removal of buoys as inshore aids to navigation is an action proposed by the Coast Guard bureaucracy to save money without, it appears, regard to necessary changes to the thousands of U.S. nautical charts and diminished nautical safety. The Coast Guard should continue to support anchored buoy and charting based on years of maritime experience given vessel operation, size, and safety.
