NANTUCKET, Mass. - Army aviators from the 1st Battalion (General Support), 169th Aviation Regiment, Connecticut Army National Guard assisted the U.S. Coast Guard earlier this month in recovering a navigational buoy that washed up on Nantucket.
The buoy, which was recovered Sept. 8, is classified as a lighted buoy, green in color and marked 21A. It washed up on the shore from its original resting location within the Nantucket Sound Channel, east of Martha’s Vineyard, in January. It makes up one of 5,640 federally maintained aids to navigation in the region.
To extract the buoy, a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter first picked up a recovery crew from Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod and landed the crew on the island. Once on site, the Coast Guard crew worked with Connecticut Army National Guard crew chiefs to prepare the approximately 13,000-lb. buoy to be sling loaded. Following these preparations, a CH-47F Chinook helicopter swooped in, lifted the buoy from the beach and transported it out to a Coast Guard vessel offshore, which recovered the buoy.
Chief Warrant Officer Five Michael Kermode, senior aviation logistician assigned to the 1109th Theater Aviation Maintenance Group, piloted the Chinook that returned the buoy. Despite years of aviation experience, this was his first buoy recovery mission.
“[The Coast Guard] told us that the buoy broke loose and ended up on Nantucket,” Kermode said. “[They] gave us the weight, gave us some pictures of it and then we came up with an [operation order] for it. [The Coast Guard] provided the slings, the riggers, the people shoveling [to dig out the buoy and prepare the load for transport]. One of [our] full-time flight engineers was on the ground to certify the load. I never even saw the load until hovering over top of it.”
However, the move wouldn’t be that simple. As Kermode began to lift off with the buoy hooked up to the sling, it didn’t budge and remained stuck on the shore. Unbeknownst to the aircrew or the recovery team on the ground, a portion of the buoy’s anchoring chain lay dormant beneath the sand. The crew had to drop the sling and circle back to reattach once the recovery crew had removed the chain.
“Once they cut the chain, that was an easy pick after that,” Kermode said. “I don’t think it could have been done better. I flew in, I picked it up, put it down and moved out. One of the smoothest missions I have done in a long time … the Coast Guard are very easy to work with, they provide the slings, they did the manual labor, nice guys.”