He’s in our part of the world now, the northwest of England, so particularly interesting. He made a right cock up of identifying the River Lune No.1 west cardinal buoy which meant he missed the tide to get into Glasson Dock and had to anchor out for the night.
Cardinal buoys are, as many of you will know, yellow and black and have two cones on the top which help to identify them as North, South, East or West marks. The two cones point up on the North marker and down on the South marker – very logical.
On the West marker the top cone points down and the bottom cone points up. On the East marker the top cone points up and the bottom cone points down. There’s no apparent logic to this so they are more difficult to remember and various mnemonics have been suggested: Because the West top mark looks like a bobbin you’re supposed to think ‘wind wool’, west. Eh?
I prefer to think of the West top mark as the shape of a woman as outlined by the hands of wolf-whistling admirers - waist equals west, simple. You may use that with my compliments, Timothy.
By the way, the term ‘cock up’ comes from the brewing industry. If a vat of beer is declared substandard in some way and has to be disposed of, the discharge stop cock is put in the ‘up’ position and the beer runs off down the drain. A cock up in anyone’s language, I’d say.
