Thanks to Westport Island resident Robert Maynes, the U.S. Coast Guard knows where a missing buoy ended up. Maynes spotted nun buoy No. 18, which normally marks the southern tip of Barters Island, under the Westport Island Bridge in the early morning August 7. 

The bridge normally does not have a channel marker, and Maynes reported the bright orange buoy to the Coast Guard in Boothbay Harbor.

“Seems to me there’s one of two ways this particular buoy could get there,” Maynes wrote in an email to the Wiscasset Newspaper. “One, it could be one of those very rare migratory buoys. But since we’re north of Townsend Gut, and it’s a little early for the buoys to start their annual migration, I’ve pretty much ruled this out. Second, someone with a whole lot of moxie, patience and I’d guess decent hauling gear, moved it from where it was to where it is.”

According to Petty Officer Juan Garcia, stationed in Boothbay Harbor, the report was forward to the USCG Aid to Navigation Team in South Portland.

On August 7, Coast Guard Petty Officer Sean Hagerty of the Aid to Navigation Team confirmed the buoy under the Westprt Island bridge was indeed buoy No. 18. After some maintenance is done on the Aid to Navigation team's boat, the Coast Guard will replace the buoy and repair any damage. They warn boaters to be careful until that work is completed.

Until the Coast Guard inspects the buoy, nothing is known about how the buoy moved. When asked if it could have drifted on its own, Hagerty said "anything is possible. I hope we don't find out that it was moved," he said.

When Maynes, an experienced mariner, was asked later if the buoy could have floated to the Westport Island Bridge he said, “That would be impossible.”

The buoy provides boaters with the same type of information drivers get from street signs, stop signs, road detours and traffic lights. It is a criminal offense to cause any damage or hindrance to the proper operation of any aid to navigation.

“A misplaced buoy creates two problems,” Maynes wrote in his email. “First, anyone on the river that’s not familiar with this particular river would naturally assume they’d need to keep this buoy to their port side when heading south. This would, at the wrong time of the tide, put them smack on some rocks that live under that bridge. Second problem, and this is more likely to happen, the ledge that this particular buoy is supposed to be guarding is now unguarded, so some unsuspecting mariner could shoal up there real easy.”

The Coast Guard issued a radio warning to mariners that buoy No. 18 has moved. The radio warning will be repeated until the buoy is restored to its previous location.