Category Archives: Reprint

DOTC Opens Bidding for P246-M Lighthouse Repair Project

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This article appeared in the Business Mirror (Philippines). Take a look at why they are refurbishing old lighthouses:

Lighthouses serve as aids to navigation, working as visual guides to ports and harbors especially for fishermen and even for larger types of vessels already equipped with global positioning system.

Any more questions why Canada’s lighthouses cannot be retained?

The amount in the title is 246 million Philippine Pesos (PHP) or about $5,904,000 Canadian Dollars (CDN).

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Published in the Business Mirror (Philippines) on Thursday, 02 August 2012 20:17 Lenie Lectura / Reporter

“The DOTC is inviting providers to participate in the open and transparent bidding process for the P246 million procurement of aids to navigation equipment,” said the agency in a published bid notice. (The amount is 246 million Philippine Pesos (PHP) or about $5,904,000 Canadian Dollars (CDN).)

The government will procure in bulk the lighting and other component of this project to efficiently utilize its funds.

The civil works for the project will be bid out separately.

The DOTC and the PCG will repair and upgrade 194 lighthouses. Lighthouses serve as aids to navigation, working as visual guides to ports and harbors especially for fishermen and even for larger types of vessels already equipped with global positioning system.

In particular, the PCG listed lighthouses in the following areas where repairs and upgrade should be carried out at the soonest time possible. These are the lighthouses in Northern Luzon, National Capital Region, Southern Tagalog, Palawan, Bicol, Western and Eastern Visayas, Southwestern, Northern and Southeastern Mindanao. Continue reading DOTC Opens Bidding for P246-M Lighthouse Repair Project →

Reprint – Finders Keepers

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Finders keepers
Published: 31/07/2012 with permission from the Aberdeen Press and Journal

Earlier this month, we revealed that the Northern Lighthouse Board was selling off three lighthouses near Stonehaven, Lossiemouth and Thurso, with price tags ranging from £75,000 to £270,000 – along with a foghorn at Girdleness, in Aberdeen.
All the buildings, once a beacon for sailors and fishermen, would be ideal for those willing to spend some time and money creating an unusual home.

Rua Reidh Lighthouse, on the other hand, is ready to move in to. The keepers’ accommodation, at the foot of the tower, has been run as a successful home and holiday accommodation for years.

This B-listed home sits in a stunning location, on the cliff edge at Melvaig, around 12 miles from Gairloch on the west coast – officially named as the happiest place in the UK last week – and overlooking the Isle of Skye to the south-west, Harris to the west and Lewis to the north.
It is for sale at offers over £325,000.
Building of the lighthouse was started by David Stevenson, one of the famous family of lighthouse engineers, in 1910. Two years later, it was helping steer boats safely through the seas. Continue reading Reprint – Finders Keepers →

Reprint – A Light on the Past

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A light on the past

with permission from Rosalind Duane, North Shore News, August 05, 2012

Elaine Graham remains the only resident among the historical buildings at Point Atkinson Lighthouse. Photograph by: NEWS photo, Lisa King

ELAINE Graham was raised in the slums of London, far from the multi-hued green of nature.

“There was nothing on my street when I was growing up,” she recalls. “I had lots of play-friends, loads of kids to play with, but there wasn’t even a geranium on a windowsill.”

Many years later, Graham is now surrounded by 75 hectares of the largest first-growth stand of coastal-elevation trees in the Lower Mainland. Her home is nestled among the remaining structures at the base of Point Atkinson Lighthouse, which stands on a craggy promontory at the edge of Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver.

She has spent half her life here, and is eager to tell the story of her neck of the woods.

Graham moved to the Point Atkinson Lighthouse station with her husband Donald and two young sons in 1980. Donald became the last of the lighthouse keepers at the site (along with senior keeper Gerry Watson) when the lighthouse was automated in 1996.

The Grahams stayed on in one of the two keeper’s houses, she as a park attendant and he as a groundskeeper. Continue reading Reprint – A Light on the Past →

Reprint – Christmas Tree Lighthouse

Art, Florida, History, Light, Lighthouses, Ornaments, Ornaments, Reprint, Travel, , , , , , ,

Do you want to save a lighthouse? Do you like lighthouse Christmas ornaments? This article might appeal to you. It appeals to me because it is another way to raise money to save a lighthouse. If you look on this website, there are many more ideas too.

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Christmas tree lighthouse

Reprinted with permission from Tim Croft of The Star

First published July 26, 2012 11:58 AM

Lighthouse ornament

The St. Joseph Historical Society (Port St. Joe, Florida) is encouraging folks to put a touch of lighthouse under the Christmas tree this year.

As part of a fund-raising effort in its quest to save the Cape San Blas Lighthouse from the wrath of Mother Nature, the Historical Society is selling a gorgeous brass-and-silver colored replica of the lighthouse in the form of a Christmas ornament.

Cape Blas lighthouse

Each ornament costs the Historical Society $10 – Cape San Blas Lighthouse is emblazoned across the top-front of the ornament, St Joseph Historical Society on the lower back – to produce.

Members of the SJBHS are selling each ornament for $20, with the other $10 going directly toward the fundraising pot to save the lighthouse. Continue reading Reprint – Christmas Tree Lighthouse →

Reprint – Our Ocean Backyard – Invasion from the Sea

Asia, Beachcombing, Environment, Fisheries and Oceans, Fishing, Foreign, Government, Information, Japan, Lighthouses, On The Job, Reprint, Tsunami, , , , ,

As a lighthouse keeper, we watched every Winter and Spring for “Asian” debris to wash ashore around our lighthouse. Mainly we were interested in the glass fishing floats, but we came across hundreds of items every year, and this was in the years 1977 – 2001. Every piece of this debris was usually coated with goose-neck barnacles and other marine life which came from who knows where.

Now we are terrified of a few marine animals on a barge, or motorcycle coming ashore from the tsunami debris? Please read the article below and come to your own conclusion.

In my opinion, debris, with marine life, has been coming ashore around the world. How do you think isolated islands get populated?

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Our Ocean Backyard by Gary Griggs – Article #111

INVASION FROM THE SEA

A 66-foot long concrete and steel floating dock washed onto the Oregon coast near Agate Beach in early June. The Japanese consulate in Portland confirmed that the dock was one of four used by commercial fishermen for unloading squid and other catch at the port of Misawa, that had been ripped away from the coast during the March 2011 tsunami. It took about 15 months for the floating structure to make the roughly 5000-mile trip across the north Pacific, traveling about 10 miles a day. 

Scientists from Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center discovered that the dock contained an estimated 100 tons of encrusting organisms, or about 13 pounds per square foot. These included several species of barnacles, as well as mussels, starfish, urchins, anemones, worms, limpets, snails and algae – dozens of species. 

Although most of the individual species are unique to Asia, this smorgasbord of marine organisms is similar to what you might find on a wharf or piling along the coast of California.  Continue reading Reprint – Our Ocean Backyard – Invasion from the Sea →

Government Contracts to Paint Lighthouses

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The title is a tiny bit misleading. The government is not contracting to paint the lighthouse (is not doing the job themselves using government personnel as in the olden days) but is contracting out to private persons to do the work previously done by government workers.

An interesting article on the Peggys1 Cove lighthouse in Nova Scotia says:

 

Peggys Cove lighthouse crumbling
Province, feds negotiate while structure suffers

 

However, dealing with the problem is not as straightforward as sending someone the tab. Peggys Cove is owned by the federal government, which is currently getting out of the lighthouse business. The Nova Scotia government is in negotiations to take over the site, but no date has been set for completion of the talks.

So who is going to paint Peggys Cove, and many other abandoned lighthouses?

One of the commenter’s on the above site made the following reply:

Here’s the link for all those interested in bidding. Go create an account on Merx and bid away your $400.00 to paint it.

http://www.merx.com/English/nonmember.asp?WCE=Show&TAB=1&State=1&hcode=DSmmOnl5zU6FVjU16CWLSQ%3D%3D

Now that Merx site is very interesting. It shows Canadian Public Tenders for jobs the Canadian Government puts out for bids. I searched but could not finds anything lighthouse-related, but maybe you will have better luck. Let me know if you find anything.

There are some interesting jobs available, but one thing comes to mind. What has happened to the Public Works Department of the Canadian Government? They used to do all the painting and construction projects..Does Public Works no longer exist?

Aha! I found it! It is now called Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC). They pay me my pension, but do they do anything else? Check out PWGSC website and see if you can find out.

Not much there about painting old lighthouses. Lots on procurement and disposal though. So I guess they just buy stuff and dispose of it when no longer needed. Is any reader working for PWGSC that can better fill us in on the workings of PWGSC?

So, unless the community is going to do the work and pay for the job itself, I guess Canadian lighthouse are headed for a dim future (pun intended).

FOOTNOTE:
1 Peggys Cove (2009 population: approx. 46), also known as Peggy’s Cove from 1961 to 1976, is a small rural community located on the eastern shore of St. Margarets Bay in Nova Scotia’s Halifax Regional Municipality.- Wikipedia

Docent Duty at a Lighthouse Plus a Book Review

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This post is very interesting. It comes from a lady, Kathleen Ernst, who with her husband performs docent duty1 on an automated lighthouse in the United States. She has also written a historically-accurate non-fiction crime novel about the same lighthouse. I asked her permission to reprint the article 2 in full for you, which was given freely, so it is reprinted below for your enjoyment. What a retirement job!.

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Docent Duty by Kathleen Ernst

My husband Scott and I are recently back from our 4th stint as docents at Pottawatomie Lighthouse in Rock Island State Park, WI.  

Rock Island is situated off the northern tip of Door County in Lake Michigan, and Pottawatomie is the state’s oldest light station.

The current lighthouse, built in 1858, was magnificently restored by the Friends of Rock Island in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.  It sits on top of a bluff on the northern end of Rock Island, over a mile from the boat landing and campground.  There are no roads on the island, and it takes two ferry rides to get there.

As docents, we give tours to guests from 10 AM to 4 PM each day.  Since Scott and I both love history, and telling stories, it’s a great gig.  We’re also responsible for housekeeping chores.


Otherwise, we get to live at the lighthouse.  How cool is that?

There’s no electricity or indoor plumbing.  (That’s Scott filling an Igloo at the old pump, in the rain.)  But we have a fridge and stove powered by bottled gas, and we get to sleep in the keepers’ bedroom.


We have lots of quiet evenings.  Lots of time for an impressionable writer to ponder stories of long-gone keepers, and to imagine the lighthouse as it once was.



So it was pretty much inevitable that I would write a book about the lighthouse.


In The Light Keeper’s Legacy (coming in October [2012]), my protagonist Chloe Ellefson is invited to serve as a guest curator at Pottawatomie Lighthouse.  She’s excited about the job and eager for some solitude in such a beautiful, remote place.  Needless to say, since this is a murder mystery, her time on Rock Island isn’t quite as peaceful as she’d hoped.

 Writing the book let me explore some new personal issues for Chloe, who is struggling to figure out what she wants from life.  And it let me write an homage to the strong individuals who lived on Rock Island in the 19th century.  The Light Keeper referenced in the title is Emily Betts, a real  and totally awesome woman who served as Assistant Keeper at Pottawatomie.  (In the National Archives photo below, that’s Emily barely visible in the doorway.)

 

The book also showcases the complexities of managing natural resources over the years.  And it let me share a very special place with readers—some of whom will, I hope, decide to visit Rock Island and support ongoing restoration projects.


 It doesn’t get much better than that.

http://kathleenernst.com
http://sitesandstories.wordpress.com
http://facebook.com/kathleenernst.author

1 docent: A person who acts as a guide, typically on a voluntary basis, in a museum, art gallery, or zoo.

2 The article was originally displayed on the Ink Spot blog which describes itself as a corps of crime fiction authors, so if you like crime fiction then check out their webpages.

Reprint – Taiwan – Twelve Lighthouses to Brighten Up Visitors’ Travels From June 30

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I still do not know all, but on August 19, 2011 I wrote How many Countries in the World Have Manned Lighthouses? 

Today, June 07, 2012, I found an article that states that Taiwan has 34 lighthouses, and according to my friend Lighthouse Ghost, at least one of these is manned, Pengchia. Below is the article from the China Post, Taiwan edition:

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Penchia Islet lighthouse

TAIPEI–Twelve out of the 34 lighthouses in Taiwan and its outlying islands, including three known as the “Northern Taiwan Triangle,” will be opened for public visits on June 30, as the end of an era in lighthouse management draws to a close.

The Directorate General of Customs (DGOC), which is under the Ministry of Finance, supervises Taiwan’s border facilities and opens several lighthouses for public visits every year to mark Tax Day and introduce people to Taiwan’s lighthouse culture, said Hung Kuo-ching, head of the DGOC’s Department of Maritime Affairs.

This year will be a little different, however, because it will be the last time people can see the lighthouses carrying the DGOC sign, Hung said. Continue reading Reprint – Taiwan – Twelve Lighthouses to Brighten Up Visitors’ Travels From June 30 →

Mise Tales Eight

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For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.

 

I love lighthouse wallpaper. I have never heard of Pinterest, but combine the two and you get something like the photo at the left. The Pinterest  name is derived from “pin your interests” – sort of a neat idea. Anyways, this is a display that someone made of lighthouses, with links to their sources. Quite nice!

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new Zealand house photos

OK, you like lighthouses. What if you had lots of money? What would you build? A couple in New Zealand built a house that resembles a lighthouse . . . well, a little bit! Take a look. There are two sources; the first copied from the second, but unless you can read Russian, the first is better!

Lighthouse In Marine Style In New Zealand

Бегущая по волнам: 3 маленьких дома в настоящем морском стиле из Испании и Новой Зеландии (Running on the waves: 3 small homes in the nautical style from Spain and New Zealand – translated by Google Translate). The website is called Design Remont in English.

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Reprint – DFO Shutting Down Coast Guard Radio Stations, but Prince Rupert’s Will Be Expanded

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I wrote an article on January 04, 2012 entitled MCTS To Lose Staff To Save Money. After that date, the department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO or F&O) have changed their plans. They are now closing whole stations instead of a removing a few men! The news article below is well written and explains what is planned for the BC coast. If all goes through we will have only two (2) MCTS stations on the whole BC coast, relying on mountaintop repeaters to reply to ships at sea.

I can also see soon that their plans will include again trying to de-staff the lighthouses. Pretty soon the whole BC coast will be bare of any support for boaters!

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By Alan S. Hale – The Northern View
Published: May 18, 2012 4:00 PM
Updated: May 18, 2012 4:59 PM

The Coast Guard communication monitoring station in Prince Rupert will be even more important to ensuring the safety of seafarers. The Prince Rupert station will be one of only two “modernized” coast guard stations in the entire province – the other one being in Sydney. Continue reading Reprint – DFO Shutting Down Coast Guard Radio Stations, but Prince Rupert’s Will Be Expanded →