As part of a class he is taking, Brady conducted and reported on an “observational study” that I’ve excerpted below. (For additional info on the Swanns Fire that Brady refers to (click here.)
I would hypothesize that nearly 40% of boaters on the water don’t fully understand the markers and their meanings.
The particular beacon I have chosen to observe is notorious for being misinterpreted. This is the green # 5 marker in the St. Georges Creek. It is located near the Rt. 249 Bridge in Piney Point which leads to St. George Island….
I have decided to observe 20 boats on Saturday and 20 boats on Sunday to garner my results. I chose the weekend days to access the non-waterman and fisherman boat traffic one would expect to see during the week. Those boaters have a keen knowledge of the local waterways, so I would not get the same results as I am expecting from the weekend boaters. Also, I have decided to not include personal watercrafts (jet skis), canoes or kayaks in my observation study since those vessels draw so little water the channel markers are largely irrelevant to their operators….
The rule of thumb to remember when approaching a channel marker is, ‘red, right, returning’. In other words, pass a red marker on your starboard (right) side when returning to port. Generally, if the mouth of the body of water on which you are traveling is behind you, you are returning. The green marker I am observing should be passed on the right because you are leaving port. This marker confuses a lot of boaters, probably due to the fact that most are traveling under the bridge, which leads to the Potomac River. When entering a new body of water the marker sequence resets, as far as returning/leaving is concerned. I have witnessed “experts” misinterpret this marker along with countless other boaters. A quick side story happened when the historic Swanns Hotel was afire and burning to the ground several years ago. Emergency responders came from all directions; land, sea and air. Two such responders were Maryland Department of Natural Resources officers traveling by boat. They sped through the bulkhead under the bridge, into the creek, and around the left side of the green # 5 marker. They slammed into the submerged oyster bar, rendering their vessel ‘hard aground’. They had to roll up their pant legs, get overboard and manually push the boat off of the bar. Of course this drew sarcastic applause and jeers from the 30 or so onlookers who had gathered atop the bridge to witness the old hotels’ demise. This proves that many boaters pass this marker on the wrong side. If the tide is low, as it was when the naive officers encountered this area, you will run aground. It is very shallow inside of this marker. Of the 20 boats I observed on Saturday, only three of them passed on the wrong side of the marker. I was actually surprised it was so few. This fraction constitutes 15% of the boaters I observed that day who didn’t properly negotiate the channel. On Sunday, the first 19 boats I observed all passed the marker correctly, boat number 20, however, did not. I was beginning to think my hypothesis was getting blown completely out of the water, so to speak, until the twentieth boat failed to execute proper passage. As it was, 5% of the boats on Sunday improperly passed the marker in study, giving me a median result of 10% of boaters I witnessed who did not correctly navigate through the channel. This percentile is significantly lower than I was anticipating it to be. I was expecting 30%- 40% of the boaters to misread the marker and pass on the wrong side. As for the 10% I observed, they were fortunate that the tide was abnormally high during my study so no damage was inflicted on any of their boats, as none of them struck the oyster bar as best I could tell from my vantage point.
My suggestion for a simple solution to this situation would be for the Coast Guard to add an arrow to the markers in these confusing areas, directing boaters towards the channel. Problem solved!
I found a boaters’ website that conducted a poll on folks’ understanding of channel markers. Six per cent of the respondents admitted that they did not understand markers. Maybe one of the respondents to the poll summed it up best on how to deal with it:
