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Buoyage: red, green and the four cardinals
Buoyage is a set of rules you understand once and then never look up again. The effort pays at night over an unfamiliar harbour entrance, which is exactly when there is no time to look anything up.
IALA A, the base rule
In Europe, Africa, Australia and most of Asia, region A applies: entering, red is to port and green to starboard. In the Americas, Japan and Korea region B applies, and it is the other way round.
Lateral marks
Red is can shaped, green is conical. You can still tell them apart when the colour is lost against the light. At night it is the character of the light that helps, the rhythm, not the colour alone.
Cardinal marks
The four say on which side of a danger the safe water lies, named after the compass point: you pass a north mark to the north of it. The topmarks are the aid, two cones: both points up is north, both down south, points apart east, points together west.
Isolated danger and safe water
Black with a red band and two black balls: isolated danger, safe to pass on all sides. Red and white vertical stripes with a red ball: safe water, often the landfall buoy off an entrance.
What this has to do with insurance
Grounding is one of the most frequent hull claims, and it rarely happens in open water but in entrances and over shoals. After a grounding the boat should be surveyed even if it seems tight: damage to rudder, shaft and keel bolts often shows weeks later, and by then the connection is harder to prove.
