Time to put the buoys to bed

November is the time on the Lakes when all the recreational boaters, except for a few hardy souls, have pulled their boats from the water. It is also the time of year when navigation buoys that cannot withstand the forces of ice start to be removed or replaced with winter markers. It can be quite a challenge to find a calm day to grab the large steel light buoys and get them back to shore.

Weather buoys (known as ODAS buoys), as well, cannot survive the crushing forces of lake ice of a Canadian winter and must be removed. Because these buoys tend to be further offshore and installed with sensitive meteorological instruments, you really need to watch the weather* in order to get a moment to retrieve the buoy. More often than not, the suitable moment occurs during the night.

*Watching the weather doesn't mean just listening to the forecast, but monitoring the weather station reports to the west of the area you want to work as well as the weather onscene. In most cases, this means you need to get close to the work area in order to be there when there is a break in the weather. You can't sit in port and wait for calm weather because the calm weather might only be an hour or two before the wind changes direction and blows even stronger. By the time you get underway and to the work area, you've lost your weather window.