Coast Guard, Army National Guard Team Up To Remove Stranded Buoy

How do you get a stranded 12,000-pound buoy off the beach?

U.S. Coast Guard personnel and helicopter crews from the Connecticut Army National Guard teamed up Thursday morning to remove the massive Pollock Rip channel buoy from the beach at Great Point, which washed up in mid-November

The huge buoy was hoisted by a Chinook helicopter and was transferred to Nantucket Harbor, where it will stay until the Coast Guard cutter Ida Lewis can come to Nantucket to retrieve it.

Crews from the Ida Lewis made it to Nantucket early Thursday to assess the buoy on. the beach. Their arrival was followed by a Blackhawk helicopter - which landed on the shore - and the Chinook from Connecticut which hovered over the buoy while Army National Guard soldiers attached a line. A crew from Station Brant Point, along with the Nantucket Harbormaster's office, also assisted during the operation.

This is the third time in the past six years that one of the Coast Guard’s large navigational buoys has washed along Nantucket's eastern shoreline after storms, necessitating a retrieval operation by Coast Guard and Army National Guard soldiers. The Great Round Shoal buoy - which looks similar - washed up near Quidnet in 2018 and again at Great Point in 2022.