Common Buoys & Markers on the Water in Washington

 

This is a white cylinder buoy and it says no wake on it. You'll commonly see this in all the lakes in our area and they kind of are spotted around the lake and so. When you are between the no wake buoy and the shore you want to make sure that you have NO WAKE. In most cases this means that you are going about five to six miles per hour but it will depend on the boat that you have. You just want to keep it really calm through there so that you're not disturbing the shoreline other boats in the area or swimmers along the dock.

 

These markers will mark the borders of the channel that you should be traveling through. When you see these, you want to be thinking about staying between them and in some cases you're just going to see one marker. You need to think about which marker goes on which side. If you're traveling from the sea into the lake or up towards the river system, this would be called returning  meaning you would want your red buoy to stay on your right side. For example, coming from Lake Union into Lake Washington, the red buoy is going to stay on your right side and green would be on your left. An easy saying to remember is "Red Right Returning" meaning the red markers will always be on your starboard side.