A large buoy that washed up on Wells Beach gets towed back to sea [Video]

WELLS — In the pitch black hours before dawn two weeks ago, Geoff Payson heard the “indescribable” growl of something grating against the rock jetty at the end of Wells Beach.

Payson and his neighbors are accustomed to all kinds of things washing ashore after storms like the one that hit southern Maine early this month. But this, he said, was different: a 9,000-pound, red-and-white striped steel buoy had broken free from its mooring at the end of Wells Harbor and was bobbing in the violent tide.

It took the buoy a couple of days to park itself on land, said Sue Mitchell, Payson’s neighbor. She noticed the buoy firmly planted on the beach the morning of April 11.

“It was like, ‘Oh my god!’ ” Mitchell said. “The buoy is on the sand.”

Payson and Mitchell were in a crowd of at least a hundred people gathered on the beach Monday morning …