But what is the meaning of this black cone sent on this sailboat?

May 09, 2023

Each week, Bateaux.com offers you a question about the boat license. To validate your knowledge or to discover unexplored areas. This week, we tackle a question about the rules of the road.

A sailboat can sail with its sails, but also with its auxiliary engine, or even with both. When it starts its engine, the steering rules for motorboats apply to it. It then loses the privileges of a sailboat and must react like a motorboat.

To show that you are sailing under motor, even if you have set one or two sails, like this sailboat under mainsail only, you must indicate this to the other users by sending an inverted cone into the mast.

Even if the mainsail carries and helps to make progress, from the moment the engine participates in the propulsion of the sailboat, it becomes a motor vessel and is no longer preferred. Rule 25 of RIPAM, International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, states: "(e) A vessel under simultaneous sail and propulsion shall display a cone-shaped mark, point down, on the bow in the most visible place." And this even if the sail is wearing or not.

For this question, the correct answers are B and D.