Around the harbour

Port of Victoria entry instructions 

Of course, when a vessel enters Victoria Harbour it's expected that the captain will have checked their charts and noticed that the main part of the harbour is an aerodrome. 

To keep everyone out of the flight paths, there's a line of yellow buoys along the south side of the harbour. The drill is that you keep the yellow buoys to port, such that they act as a highway centreline. The north side of the harbour has a few white buoys. Non-powered vessels (kayaks, etc.) are expected to use the north side, but are not strictly relegated there. Here's a screen shot from the Navionics web app. I've gone over the green lines outlining the airodrome, as they were very faint. The purple lines show the roadway for power vessels. The little harbour ferries can go on either side.

Here's the new sign on the new fixed beacon at the harbour entry, off Shoal Point in the above diagram (Coast Guard station in the background):

 

Gearing up for a spill

I've seen a number of different spill response vessels around the harbour recently. This is the most colourful.

Like a bird on a wire

Starlings over boat work at the Point Hope shipyard:

It must get right hot in there! At least their sanding dust, etc., doesn't fly around the neighbourhood. Yes, there's a ship under there!

New navigation aids

The Canadian Coast Guard recently renewed all of our fixed navigation aids.

Here's the old one by the Songhees rock:

The old one is a round pillar with a concrete base.

Whereas the new structures are more utilitarian, square:

Sitting on pilings instead of a concrete base in this case.

And here's the old one on the other side of the entrance to the Inner Harbour (remember, Red-Right-Returning):

It's a round pillar atop a square concrete pad.

The pad was replaced by another pad  in this instance, I guess because it was more accessible at low tide, but the top got squared off:

Painted planes

Victoria has a number of floatplanes that have been specially painted. Here are two:

This one is painted to look like an Orca:

The weeds in the foreground are wild fennel. Grows everywhere here.

While this one celebrates Canada's 150th:

(the flag is on a passing ferry)