Here’s the latest on the latest buoy to wash up on a Hilton Head beach

The green buoy that washed up on a Hilton Head Island beach Sunday belongs to the U.S. Coast Guard and is used by mariners as a navigation marker, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said Tuesday.

The green buoy is about 6 feet tall and now rests on a Port Royal Plantation beach on the north side of the island. It’s only identifying marks read “31 A.”

It is the property of the Coast Guard, Petty Officer Eli Teller said Tuesday.

“It is fairly common” for a buoy to go missing, Teller said.

Once a missing buoy is reported, the Coast Guard sends a message to a team to begin the removal process, Teller said. The green buoy should be picked up in two days, he said.

The mystery of who the buoy belongs to may have been solved, but that didn’t stop one area boater from conducting a mini investigation of her own.

Bluffton resident Lynda Rankin started looking over a navigational chart put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There, she found the exact spot where marker 31 A should be — the middle of the Beaufort River, near Fort Fremont.

“I just thought it was kind of fun to figure out where it was,” she said.

Hilton Head is becoming something of a refuge for wandering buoys.

A large, red buoy washed up on South Forest Beach in September. That was Coast Guard buoy No. 8, which had come from the mouth of Port Royal Sound. It was removed after about a month and taken to the Coast Guard station in Charleston.

Red buoys are used to mark the right (starboard) side of the channel.

Green ones mark the left (port), according to Maritime Logistics Professional.

This story was originally published July 17, 2018 at 1:48 PM.