If you have already come across the new blue and yellow wreck marking buoy you might have been thinking you’d been at sea a little too long and were seeing things, but in fact what you were seeing was the new method that we in Europe who use the IALA system of buoyage have introduced for the initial emergency marking of wrecks.

This will be the emergency response measure for a new wreck which is considered to be a danger to navigation. It is envisaged that this new style buoy will be on station for 24 to 48 hours after a dangerous wreck occurs until the appropriate cardinal and lateral buoys in accordance with the IALA Buoyage system have been established.

This change to the procedure for marking a new wreck has come about as a result of collisions such as those that occurred with the wreck of the “Tricolor” which sank in the Dover Straits in 2002. The buoy has the following characteristics:

• A pillar or spar buoy, with size dependant on location.
• Coloured in equal number and dimensions of blue and yellow vertical stripes (minimum of 4 stripes and maximum of 8 stripes). 
• Fitted with an alternating blue and yellow flashing light with a nominal range of 4 nautical miles (the range may be altered depending on local conditions) where the blue and yellow 1 second flashes are alternated with an interval of 0.5 seconds. B1.0s+0.5s+Y1.0s+0.5s= 3.0s
• If multiple buoys are deployed the lights will be synchronised
• The buoy may use racon Morse Code “D” and/or an AIS transponder.
•  If fitted with a top mark this will be a standing/upright yellow cross.

Whilst news of this new buoy may not seem very exciting, it is a very rare occurrence for a new buoy to be added to the existing selection that have not been changed or added to for almost as long as I can remember.