Billia Croo marker buoy changes

There are soon to be changes to the marker buoys at EMEC’s Billia Croo wave test site.

The Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) will be carrying out various maintenance activities around Orkney in July using the vessel NLV Polestar. As part of that they will be carrying out work at EMEC’s wave test site at Billia Croo to install a new cardinal buoy and move another to a new postion.

EMEC laid a new sub-sea cable at Billia Croo last year to create a new test berth. The marking of the site will now be improved to include that new berth which will shortly be used by Finnish company Wello Oy to test their Penguin wave energy converter.

The work that the NLB will be carrying out is to move the northern cardinal buoy and introduce an additional western cardinal buoy.

The new positions for the buoys are (WGS 84):

• Northern Cardinal Buoy is moved to         59º 00.00N 003º 24.33W
• New West Cardinal installed at                     58º 59.50N 003º 25.33W

Stuart Baird, EMEC’s Operations Director said “The introduction of the new buoy and change to existing position does not impact upon the current inshore channel between the offshore test area and the test area adjacent to the shoreline as marked by existing buoyage.”

“Navigational charts will be updated to include these new buoy positions and EMEC will be distributing revised awareness charts for local mariners”.

To see the changes please click here. (Not to be used for navigation)