The third leg of our three-part mission is civic service. In
addition to the public boating course we teach, members of America's
Boating Club of Lake Murray are responsible for maintaining the reference light
system on our home waters of Lake Murray. We also check and report the
status of all shoal markers on the lake annually to the S.C.
Department of Natural Resources.
Among our members we also have certified inspectors who
participate as part of a national Vessel Safety Check Program.
Another important activity is our
cooperative charting program in which we report corrections and
additions to navigational charts and other publications of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Members of ABC Lake Murray are responsible for maintaining the reference light
system on our home waters of Lake Murray. If you spot a light not
functioning or otherwise damaged, please email us at
ReferenceLights@lmpsonline.org.
For details on where to find Lake Murray Reference
Lights and how to use them to maneuver on the lake at night,
check out our GPS coordinates and flash
sequence description for the reference lights.
Members of ABC Lake Murray participate as certified inspectors in a nationwide
Vessel Safety
Check Program, offered by the United States Power Squadrons and the
U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
This effective, proactive and preventative safety
program is unique to the recreational boating community. It insures
that key marine safety equipment is present, is within prescribed
functional limits, and is compliant with federal, state, and local
regulations.
The Vessel Safety Check Program provides the certified
inspectors an opportunity to discuss with the recreational
boater, the purpose of the marine safety equipment, to clarify various
federal, state, and local regulations, to emphasize specific safety
procedures and practices, to answer any boating related questions and
to encourage additional boater education.
For more information about inspections conducted by ABC Lake
Murray, visit our Vessel Safety
Check webpage.
"Cooperative Charting" refers to an agreement
between the United States Power Squadrons and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
an agency of the US Department of Commerce. The
agreement was first executed in 1963 and revised in January
1971 and again in 1983. The current agreement is "...to
produce accurate and up-to-date nautical and aeronautical charts
and related products and to preserve geodetic control stations
in the National Geodetic Reference System (NGRS)
through the use of well-trained volunteer observers."
The program is aimed at providing NOS (National Ocean Service, a NOAA division) with pertinent
information about current conditions in waters charted by
NOAA, especially those which are frequented by recreational
boaters. NOAA is limited in providing their own
hydrographic information because of budgetary constraints imposed
by Congress in recent years. More cooperative charting (CoCh) information can be found at the members section
of www.usps.org.
Lake Murray Power Squadron participates in
four CoCh projects as part of our civic service mission:
Lake Murray reference light maintenance, Lake Murray
shoal marker inspection, NOAA Chart 11527 Upper Cooper
River Adopt-A-Chart and less often in geodetic mark recovery.
Every month on a moonlit night ABC Lake Murray members can be found
out on their boats inspecting the 33 reference lights for proper
operation. One inspection during the summer is conducted
as part of the Lake Murray moonlight cruise boating
activity. Each fall members perform a detailed maintenance on every
light that includes burned out lamp replacement, lens
cleaning, checking alignment, servicing the solar unit battery and
solar panel and clearing vegetation growth. Sometimes the
colored lens needs replacing because of target practice or
other vandalism. Servicing all the lights takes a few days and
requires travel by both land and water. ABC Lake Murray also
purchases and maintains a stock of the special maintenance items.
Thank you to the members who volunteer, providing this valuable service in
keeping the Lake Murray reference lights operational as night time navigation
aids. Any member interested in helping or learning about maintaining the
reference lights is encouraged to contact us at
ReferenceLights@lmpsonline.org.
Although Lake Murray is not a NOAA or Corp of
Engineers charted lake we still report each reference
light activity to the District 26 Cooperative Charting
Chairman on NOAA Form 77-4. LMPS receives credit for each
report toward a year end evaluation of our CoCh
activities. USPS grades each squadron on both the quantity and
quality of the reports submitted.
ABC
Lake Murray members also inspect shoal markers on the lake,
reporting damaged, missing, mislabeled, duplicate numbers or off-station markers
to S.C. Department of Natural Resources, which
is responsible for maintaining the shoal markers. These
reports also are submitted to USPS for CoCH credit and to
the Lake Murray Association, Fishunt Maps and our
Lake Murray Flotilla friends at the USCG Auxiliary.
Adopt-A-Chart is a CoCH program where one
or more NOAA nautical charts are "adopted" by a
squadron to survey and report corrections to NOS. ABC Lake Murray
adopted Chart 11527, the Upper Cooper River, and annually surveys
30 sections of the 22-mile charted area, citing the condition of 74 charted navigational aids and other chart features in reports submitted to NOS
that are published in the the
Local Notice to Mariners (LNM) publications. Needed corrections revealed through
these reports then appear in the next edition of the chart.
Another USPS sponsored CoCh project is the
recovery of National Geodetic Survey (NGS) geodetic
control marks, those small brass discs seen embedded in
concrete monuments that provide the base geographic
framework for mapping and charting, boundaries and
property lines, and setting precise positions of space craft and
satellites. LMPS has not participated every year but perhaps
a Saturday Search Party can be planned this year once
there is an outbreak of cooler weather.
CoCh is indeed active at ABC Lake Murray. It is an opportunity and obligation to
help keep our boating waterways safe and well charted. But the best part is just
another reason to go boating.
