I'm glad you found my poor attempts at filming entertaining, Quinton. My cheap camera does not do justice to the beauty of America.

Thanks Bob. I'm fine except for a broken leg! On the mend now but it makes you think of the times I bashed myself sailing the boat single handed. So easy to make one silly slip after one silly lack of concentration.

You are very welcome. Roger

Ha Ha! I've dropped many clangers in my sailing life. Just lucky to come through unscathed.

Hi Million Dollar ( I wish!) , they are just regular NOAA charts available for free from their website. You can download them and use them on an iPad or similar or do what I do and use them through activecaptain.com which then gives you a mass of information on marinas, bridges, hazards and loads more. Most GPS Map consols use them together with Navionics charts or similar. The USA is brilliant in this regard. In the UK we have to pay big money for the same coverage although our charts are also very good.

You are quite correct. In practice I find I can see the shape of the mark first a few hundred yards/metres off, and then the colour. Then much closer I can see the name or number and finally the yellow mark. By that time I'm committed to passing it on the right side (hopefully!) when I can see the shape of the yellow mark. So in practice the yellow shapes were not of much use. The boatsafe webpage is a good site but it may be a good idea to state that it is only for US waters. The rest of the world has red left returning.

Your video was referring to the ICW. Boatsafe was the first site I happened onto that described the ICW marking with images. When you were in the rock pile (4:48), I saw a nun and I could barely make out the triangle in your video. A quick look through my binoculars would allow me to confirm what it is long before I got to it. Any time I plan my daily route, I try to become as familiar as I can with the area markings especially when I see a confluence. Changing shoals makes me extra cautious. If I remember correctly, the little River #2 you mentioned had a #2 with a ICW mark for the main channel and a #2 without one for the Calabash Creek. It is important to know that the ICW convention is red right returning from NY to TX. The thing I noticed about Beaufort, SC, is the buoy you mentioned at 0:50 is for the Port Royal Reach Channel, #41. This is for the dredged channel to the NW. You are coming from the NE where the markers are in the #240 range. Changing from #244 to #41 was the clue that you had a changing channels markers scheme. The buoyage didn't reverse. It was proper for the channel it was marking. It just happened to not be the channel you were on.