Channel marker

The red and green signs, floating or fixed, that fence the navigable channel.

Markers come as buoys afloat and daybeacons on piles, in two teams: red triangles and nuns with even numbers, green squares and cans with odd. Between a red and a green is the channel; outside the pair is the gamble.

Numbers count up heading in from open water, so the sequence itself tells you which way the rule runs. Returning, red stays on your right.

The markers are the road lines. Outside them the Grand Strand turns to sandbar fast, and the Waterway adds its own yellow shorthand.

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Put the words to work

Vocabulary is easier at the helm.

The free South Carolina boater safety course teaches all of this in twelve chapters with a sixty question practice exam, and when you are ready for the water itself, one form gets you rental quotes from local operators.

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