Out with the Old, In with … Nothing

By Patrick Twohy

Sometimes one finds nuggets of info gold hidden in the dusty fine print of government publications. That’s why I’ll sift through texts like the Local Notice to Mariners that the Coast Guard publishes every week.

Occasionally, I discover that some aid to navigation has been reported missing, or that dredges will be deepening some channel. Recently, buried far down in the copy, I came across an item that will sadden some old time West Coast mariners:

REPLACING SAFE WATER BUOYS WITH V-AIS- PROPOSED CHANGE
The U.S. Coast Guard is proposing to remove the following Safe Water Buoys and replace them with Virtual AIS (V-AIS) Aid to Navigation:
LLNR 360 - San Francisco Approach Lighted Whistle Buoy SF

The text is pretty dry, something about replacing some doodad with some other whatchamacalllit. But in fact, what’s being proposed amounts to a historic change.

Let’s break it down.

A Safe Water Buoy is an aid to navigation that says, in effect, “There’s nothing here.” That in itself seems pretty nonsensical, doesn’t it? Why would a mariner need a mark (that might itself be a hazard!) to say there’s nothing dangerous around it?

The answer is that a Safe Water Mark provides an important reference point where no other indicator exists.

One such is about a dozen miles outside the Golden Gate, where, for 125 years, the Coast Guard has stationed a guide for navigators searching for the narrow passage ships must follow through reefs to safely reach San Francisco Bay.

From 1898 to 1976, that mark was a ship — Light Ship San Francisco. The vessel was a vital lifesaver, given the hundreds of ships lost over the years on the shoals and rocks that gird San Francisco Bay’s entrance.

The Light Ship San Francisco, actually a series of ships over the years, anchored in a position that would allow navigators to set a safe course from it straight to Alcatraz through the treacherous San Francisco Bar channel.

But after more than 70 years on station, Light Ships off San Francisco came to an end. The last Light Ship at the Bay’s entrance was retired in April 1971, to be replaced by a buoy.

Nevertheless, Bay sailors, more than 50 years later, still remember the ships that once marked a safe arrival for mariners. A race that uses the mark as a turning point is known among sailors as the Light Ship Race, or sometimes the Light Bucket Race, maybe because the ship that once held that spot looked a little unsailorly.

Over the years, the buoy has lost some of its shine, including the red ball on top that is a designated part of a Safe Water Buoy — with red and white vertical stripes topped by a red ball.

Now the Coast Guard is proposing another change. It wants to replace the buoy with … nothing.

Or rather, to replace the physical buoy with nothing. The mark would appear henceforth virtually on electronic charts as part of the Automated Information System, or AIS, that is used by mariners worldwide.

But out there on the water, instead of the friendly lights of a ship or even the reassuring sound of horn that is part of today’s buoy, mariners will have only its ghostly image on their screens.

So let’s hoist a mug of grog to the old ships, and even to the venerable buoy that replaced them, in thanks for the decades they spent saving sailors’ lives and guiding them to the safe haven of San Francisco Bay.