News Navigation 2.0: New Online Boating Guide

NSW Maritime has stepped up its ongoing campaign for safer waterways, launching a new web-based resource to help improve boaters’ understanding of water-traffic rules.

NSW Ports and Waterways Minister, Paul McLeay said the online resource had been developed to better improve safety and help boaters with vessel navigation and different rules for day and night boating.

“We’re moving boating safety into the 21st Century,” said McLeay.

“This online guide offers boaters an interactive experience to help them with a range of practical navigation information, such as how to understand and use daytime and night-time navigation buoys and marks. It also provides a guide to waterway rules.

“Using animation, boaters can choose to view navigation marks from a variety of angles and views and then adjust the visibility to see these marks in both daylight and at night.

“They can also manipulate a variety of vessels, including motorboats, larger vessels and sailing vessels, to view their navigation lights at any angle,” he said.

The Minister said the online safety guide would be particularly useful for boaters interested in increasing their safety knowledge for night-time boating, by gaining a better understanding of the various colours and configurations of lights.

“This system of lights and shapes is based upon long-standing international maritime rules for safe navigation and it is important that every skipper understands their responsibilities,” said McLeay.

“Boaters can test their knowledge of the basic safe-boating rules by responding to a series of different scenarios in the interactive quizzes, which are linked to full explanations of the boating rules in the NSW Maritime Boating Handbook,” he said.

The online navigation guide is the result of a partnership in safety between NSW Maritime and Britain’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

The Vessel Navigation Interactive Guide was adapted from online education modules developed by the RNLI and reproduced on NSW Maritime’s website with their permission.