Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Back to the colour chart for the three Belfast buoys

TBSteve's Flickr photo of the three (repainted) buoys

I’m sure the three buoys in the park beside St Anne’s Cathedral and the University of Ulster’s Belfast Campus were glad they’d had a paint job and been spruced up ahead of their moment in the mainstream media limelight this morning.

Good Morning Ulster covered the strangely coloured buoys just before half eight - starts about 1:56:05 on iPlayer - interviewing Belfast Harbour Master Captain Kevin Allen as well as Captain Robert McCabe from the Commissioners of Irish Lights who donated the buoys to Belfast.

The big news is that none of the three should ever have been painted blue! At some stage the conical one switched from its original black to the dark blue colour. And the flat pale blue one really should be red.

Robert McCabe wryly commented:

“If they [mariners] see a blue buoy they’ll have a little chuckle and say ‘thank God it’s on the land and not out at sea’ ”

According to the report, Belfast City Council will be correcting their mistake and repainting the buoys the correct colours, once they’ve consulted the experts on Pre-1979 Lateral System Buoyage! Maybe it’ll not cost so much second time around? (Update - you can read some more on the BBC News online article.)

In the meantime, I’ll patiently wait for BCC to answer Friday’s follow-up email to the information they originally provided.

(Thanks again to TBSteve for permission to use his Flickr photos.)

1 comment:

Brabazon said...

Some similar buoys recently appeared on a roundabout on the Bangor ring road. Must remember to have a look and see what colour they are (at the minute)...