BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 8, 2025
The United States Coast Guard proposal to remove inshore buoys in favor of using GPS electronic displays for inshore navigation is the most ridiculous, unsafe nautical idea I’ve ever heard. During my career in the Coast Guard and as a Merchant Marine officer, I’ve used every form of offshore navigation available to determine our position from sextant to shipboard electronics including loran, sat-nav, GPS and radar. Taken together they ensure the vessels’ safety. Hazards are everywhere: reefs, shoals and even wrecks. I cannot imagine members of the merchant marine/sailing brotherhood supporting such an unsafe U.S. Coast Guard action as removing buoys and subsequently deleting their location from the thousands of United States nautical charts and GPS displays. Without buoys as aids to navigation serious groundings will certainly follow. ~ Richard de Grasse, Islesboro, Coast Guard veteran and retired U.S. Merchant Marine officer