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the lights of home
I live on Salt Spring Island (a small island) and work on Vancouver Island (the big island) so every weekday, I take the ferry home.
Here's the ferry route:
The ferry leaves the big island, at the bottom of the map, and heads North, passing between the group of three small islands and the larger island (Piers Island), until it reaches the landmass at the top of the image (Salt Spring Island), where I get off and drive home.
The bit between Piers island and the little islands is a weird lumpy bit of seafloor. There is a narrow safe passage, called Gosse Passage, that winds around the various tiny rock islands and underwater hills. Gosse Passage is 17 meters deep or thereabouts; only the little ferries that go to various small islands take it, not shipping vessels or the massive ferries to the mainland. The passage is marked out by a set of bouys:
This is U9, which has the characteristic Fl G 4s Nm (Flashing Green once every 4 seconds, visible for 4 Nautical miles)
U9 is the light the ferry goes closest to, and the cormorants' favourite. It has four supports from the float up to the light. The cormorants line up on each level, tidily spaced out by the supports: twelve at the bottom and four at the top. It's like a seabird-flavoured wedding cake with a green light on top, muttering to itself.
This is U10, which has the light characteristic Q R 1s 4Nm (Quick-flashing Red 1 second, visible for 4 Nautical miles)
It's less popular than U9, but I've seen a dark lumpy shape on the base a couple of times; I think some seal finds it a good place to laze about in the sunlight
This light is not a floating bouy, it's a little lighthouse kind of thing on the tip of Clive Island. If it has a formal name besides "Clive Island Marker,", I don't know it. It has the characteristic Q G 1s 17.4 4Nm (Quick Green flash 1 time per second, 17.4 meters above average sea level, visible 4 Nautical miles away)
.... which means that that time I made a papercut of the comorants standing around the beacon on Clive Island, they were apparently giant Dire Cormorants approximately five meters tall! It definitely does not mean I possibly made a error estimating the size of the marker, nope. It's, uh, a metaphor. The giant cormorants represent, uh ... even bigger cormorants! That you can ride on! Art can do anything! Yeah!
This is U12. It has the characteristic Fl R 4s 4Nm (Flashing Red once every 4 seconds, visible for 4 Nautical miles), so it's sort of the inverse of U9. I don't know anything about U12; it is far from the ferry route.
Those are the lights of home.
In North America, as you sail away from the continent in a channel, the standard way to mark channels is with green markers on the right and red markers on your left. The usual way to remember this is Red Right Return - when you are return to land, the red markers are on your right.
It's impossible to have things be that tidy when marking out channels between islands - which one counts as the return? - but I'm happy that for whatever reason, for me personally the Red Right Return leads me home. It's like Home reaches out for me across the waters.
Here's the ferry route:
The ferry leaves the big island, at the bottom of the map, and heads North, passing between the group of three small islands and the larger island (Piers Island), until it reaches the landmass at the top of the image (Salt Spring Island), where I get off and drive home.
The bit between Piers island and the little islands is a weird lumpy bit of seafloor. There is a narrow safe passage, called Gosse Passage, that winds around the various tiny rock islands and underwater hills. Gosse Passage is 17 meters deep or thereabouts; only the little ferries that go to various small islands take it, not shipping vessels or the massive ferries to the mainland. The passage is marked out by a set of bouys:
This is U9, which has the characteristic Fl G 4s Nm (Flashing Green once every 4 seconds, visible for 4 Nautical miles)
U9 is the light the ferry goes closest to, and the cormorants' favourite. It has four supports from the float up to the light. The cormorants line up on each level, tidily spaced out by the supports: twelve at the bottom and four at the top. It's like a seabird-flavoured wedding cake with a green light on top, muttering to itself.
This is U10, which has the light characteristic Q R 1s 4Nm (Quick-flashing Red 1 second, visible for 4 Nautical miles)
It's less popular than U9, but I've seen a dark lumpy shape on the base a couple of times; I think some seal finds it a good place to laze about in the sunlight
This light is not a floating bouy, it's a little lighthouse kind of thing on the tip of Clive Island. If it has a formal name besides "Clive Island Marker,", I don't know it. It has the characteristic Q G 1s 17.4 4Nm (Quick Green flash 1 time per second, 17.4 meters above average sea level, visible 4 Nautical miles away)
.... which means that that time I made a papercut of the comorants standing around the beacon on Clive Island, they were apparently giant Dire Cormorants approximately five meters tall! It definitely does not mean I possibly made a error estimating the size of the marker, nope. It's, uh, a metaphor. The giant cormorants represent, uh ... even bigger cormorants! That you can ride on! Art can do anything! Yeah!
This is U12. It has the characteristic Fl R 4s 4Nm (Flashing Red once every 4 seconds, visible for 4 Nautical miles), so it's sort of the inverse of U9. I don't know anything about U12; it is far from the ferry route.
Those are the lights of home.
In North America, as you sail away from the continent in a channel, the standard way to mark channels is with green markers on the right and red markers on your left. The usual way to remember this is Red Right Return - when you are return to land, the red markers are on your right.
It's impossible to have things be that tidy when marking out channels between islands - which one counts as the return? - but I'm happy that for whatever reason, for me personally the Red Right Return leads me home. It's like Home reaches out for me across the waters.
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It seems to be an Old World/New World difference, with completely backwards senses relative to each other. O.o
At least aviation is standardized worldwide, and uses red right returning for running lights. (The right wingtip has a green light and the left one has a red light, so if you see a plane that appears to have a red light right of a green one, it's "returning" to you.)
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This is gorgeous. Ferries around the islands are so soothing. Do you canoe or kayak?