What is a fairway, and which side do you keep?
A fairway is the navigable channel through a harbour, river, or approach—the water kept open and often marked for through traffic. In a narrow channel or fairway, Rule 9 requires you to keep as near to its starboard outer limit as is safe and practicable.
Related terms
How it works
The fairway is where the guaranteed water is: dredged or naturally deep, usually buoyed with lateral marks, and shared with vessels that may have no other water available. Rule 9 organizes that sharing—traffic keeps to the starboard side of the channel, so vessels meet port-to-port instead of head-on in mid-channel.
Rule 9 also protects the traffic that cannot leave the channel: a vessel under 20 metres or a sailing vessel must not impede a vessel that can safely navigate only within the fairway, crossing is allowed only where it does not impede such traffic, and anchoring in a narrow channel is to be avoided whenever circumstances allow.
Fairway, channel, and the rules’ wording
Bowditch describes the fairway as the main thoroughfare of shipping—the open, navigable part of a waterway. The Navigation Rules use “narrow channel or fairway” as one phrase without defining either term precisely, so what counts as narrow depends on the vessels involved: a channel generous for a dinghy can be critically narrow for a laden coaster.
On the water
- Entering a buoyed river channel, you keep near the starboard-hand marks and leave the middle for oncoming traffic.
- A 12 m yacht holds back rather than force a coaster out of the only water deep enough for her.
- Looking for a lunch stop, you anchor in the bay outside the fairway—never between the channel buoys.
Common mistake
The middle of the fairway is not the safe lane. Rule 9 puts through traffic near the channel’s starboard edge, and a fairway is one of the worst places to anchor—avoid it whenever circumstances allow.
Remember it
In a FAIRWAY, play fair: keep right, don’t block, don’t park.