A Buoy in South Lake Tahoe Homewood

Buoys in Lake Tahoe

The West Shore at Lake Tahoe is a popular favorite for many Tahoe homeowners. This part of the lake is comprised of a series of small areas and neighborhoods along the lake shore. The West Shore is the part of Lake Tahoe located between Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe.

When driving from Tahoe City, the first community is Sunnyside and then Homewood. Both of these communities are popular for their year round activities. The close proximity to the lake provides summer activities including easy boat and beach access (Tahoe Park Beach) with buoys available.

Tahoe Park is within walking distance to Sunnyside Resort (lodging, lakeside dining, boating, jet ski, sailboats, stand up paddle board rentals) and the best local breakfast at the Firesign Cafe. Homewood Ski Resort is a smaller ski hill but a popular favorite with the gorgeous lake views.

The next communities while heading South along Lake Tahoe would be the gated community of Fleur de Lac, then Tahoe Park, Alpine Peaks and shortly after, Talmont Estates. Many homeowners in this area are drawn to the easy lake access with the buoys, piers and access to a private marina.

Those of you looking to rent a buoy (mooring), most of the marinas provide this service although there are a few private buoys for rent; there’s an important company located in the city of Homewood where you can rent a buoy to use it in South Lake Tahoe. This company offers really good services and is known as B.J.’s Barge Service.

Tahoe South, where you’ll find Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine Lake in North America; deep and wide, bluer than blue and surrounded by the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s an alpine paradise with spectacular scenery and a gigantic helping of things to do year-round, including water sports and winter sports, bike trails and blackjack, family fun and nightlife, all with a unique, Tahoe South spin.

A buoy is a floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with the sea wave.

Types of buoy

Sea mark – aids pilotage by marking a maritime channel, hazard and administrative area to allow boats and ships to navigate safely. Some navigational buoys are fitted with a bell or gong, which sounds when waves move the buoy
Lifebuoy – used as a lifesaving buoy designed to be thrown to a person in the water to provide buoyancy. Usually has a connecting line allowing the casualty to be pulled to the rescuer
Submarine communication buoys – used for release in case of emergencies or for communication
DAN buoy – has several meanings:
- A large maritime navigational aid providing a platform for light and radio beacons
- A lifebuoy with flags used on yachts and smaller pleasure craft
- A temporary marker buoy used during Danish seine fishing to mark the anchor position of a net.
- A temporary marker buoy set by danlayers during minesweeping operations to indicate the boundaries of swept paths, swept areas, known hazards, and other locations or reference points.
- A temporary marker buoy set to mark a man overboard position.
A Buoy in South Lake Tahoe Homewood

Large Navigational Buoy (LNB or Lanby buoy) is an automatic buoy over 10 m high equipped with a powerful light monitored electronically as a replacement for lightships.
Sonobuoy – used by anti-submarine warfare aircraft to detect submarines.
Surface marker buoy – taken on dives by scuba divers to mark their position underwater
Decompression buoy – deployed by submerged scuba divers to mark their position underwater whilst doing decompression stops
Shot buoy – used to mark dive sites for the boat safety cover of scuba divers so that the divers can descend to the dive site more easily in conditions of low visibility or tidal currents and more safely do decompression stops on their ascent.
Safe water mark or Fairway Buoy – a navigational buoy which marks the entrance to a channel or a nearby landfall
Emergency Wreck Buoys – Emergency Wreck Buoys provide a clear and unambiguous means of marking new wrecks. This buoy is used as a temporary response, typically for the first 24 – 72 hours. This buoy is coloured in an equal number of blue and yellow vertical stripes and is fitted with an alternating blue and yellow flashing light. This has come about due to the collisions which occurred in the Dover Straits in 2002 when vessels struck the new wreck of the MV Tricolor.
Lateral marker buoy
Mooring buoys – used to keep one end of a mooring cable or chain on the water’s surface so that ships or boats can tie onto it
Tripping buoys – used to keep one end of a ‘tripping line’ on the water’s surface so that a stuck anchor can more easily be freed
Weather buoys – equipped to measure weather parameters such as air temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction and to report these data via satellite radio links such as the purpose-built Argos System or commercial satellite phone networks to meteorological centres for use in forecasting and climate study. May be anchored (moored buoys) or allowed to drift (drifting buoys) in the open ocean currents. The position is calculated by the satellite.
Tsunami buoys – anchored buoys that can detect sudden changes in undersea water pressure are used as part of tsunami warning systems in the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and Indian Oceans.
Spar buoy – a tall, thin buoy that floats upright in the water.
Profiling buoy – specialized models which adjust buoyancy so that they will sink at a controlled rate to 2,000 meters below the surface while measuring sea temperatures and salinity. After a time, typically 10 days, the buoy returns to the surface, transmits its data via satellite, and then sinks again.
Ice marking buoys – used for marking ice holes in frozen lakes and rivers, so that snowmobiles do not drive over the holes.
Marker buoys – used in naval warfare, particularly anti-submarine warfare, is a light-emitting or smoke-emitting, or both, marker using some kind of pyrotechnic to provide the flare and smoke. It is commonly a 3-inch (76 mm) diameter device about 20 inches (500 mm) long that is set off by contact with seawater and floats on the surface. Some markers extinguish after a set period and others are made to sink.
Lobster trap buoys – brightly colored buoys used for the marking of lobster trap locations so the person lobster fishing can find their lobster traps. Each lobster fisherman has his or her own color markings or registration numbers so they know which ones are theirs. They are only allowed to haul their own traps and must display their buoy color or license number on their boat so law enforcement officials know what they should be hauling. The buoys are brightly colored with highly visible numbers so they can be seen under conditions when there is poor visibility like rain, fog, sea smoke, etc.
Wave buoy – used to measure the movement of the water surface as a wave train. The wave train is analyzed to determine statistics like the significant wave height and period and wave direction.
Target buoy – used to simulate target (like a small boat) in live fire exercise by naval and coastal forces, usually targeted by weapons (medium size) like HMG’s, rapid fire cannons (20 or so mm), autocannons (bigger ones up to 40 and 57 mm) and also anti-tank rockets.
Wreck buoy – a buoy to mark a wrecked ship to warn other ships to keep away because of unseen hazards.
Self-locating datum marker buoy (SLDMB) – A 70% scale Coastal Ocean Dynamics Experiment (CODE)/Davis-style oceanographic surface drifter with drogue vanes between 30 and 100 cm deep. This particular surface drifter is designed specifically for deployment from a U.S. Coast Guard vessel or airframe for search and rescue. Since the SLDMB has a very small surface area above the ocean surface and a high underwater surface area, there is very little leeway in response to the direct forcing of winds and waves.
The space buoy is a common element in science fiction that refers to a stationary object in outer space that provides navigation data or warnings about that particular area.
Buoy racing is the most prevalent form of yacht racing.