The changes to daylight savings time means more rows in the dark for us Morning Masters rowers. Whether you are a rower, coxswain, or steering a sculling shell you need to be aware of those giant metal red and green buoys out there on the river. They are not lighted so you should know of their general location as you navigate up and down the river.

This info has been neatly drafted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. I have included links to the Navigation Maps of the areas that we typically travel during practice. In addition, everyone should have attended the fall TRRA Safety Meeting and possess a standard level of river safety and navigation knowlege as it pertains to the Allegheny River and its traffic patterns.

If at any time you have been put into a situation and feel unsure about coxing, rowing, or steering it is your responsibility to use common sense and sound judgement to express this to your coach and boatmates prior to leaving the boathouse. Do not proceed onto the river and "wing-it" so to speak.

As far as the buoys are concerned - here are the maps. What you are looking for on there are the green and purple diamonds. The green diamonds represent the green buoys and the purple diamonds represent red buoys. The general rule is to stay "Right of RED" when going upstream and "Left of GREEN" when going downstream.

The masters women typically travel a consistent pattern upstream to Lock/Dam #2 (near the Highland Park Bridge) and return downstream past the end of Herr's Island. For this traffic pattern you will notice that there are 5 red buoys in the upstream direction (1 prior to the 62nd St. Br. and 4 after) and 3 green buoys downstream (all prior to the 40th St. Br).

Please take a few minutes to view the maps below. Clicking on an image will open a large readable version of the document.

Read More...