Craighill Keeper’s bLog

The “Lighthouses For Sale” article and video is online now and I presume it aired in Baltimore in the last couple days (anyone see it?). Cool stuff! For how much they video taped me and interviewed me, I’m amazed at how short the clip is even though I knew it would be (having, you know, watched the news before). It turned out great! http://www.wbaltv.com/news/17102511/detail.html the video link is under the picture (of a lighthouse that is someone else’s - and they have nice hardwood floors!). Hopefully I’ll get the video to embed on the site as well. Enjoy!

Tune into WBAL 11 on August 6th or 7th (I’ll get the confirmed date shortly) for a news segment that will feature our little old lighthouse on the Bay! I took a news crew out Friday morning (after yet another boat mishap, but many thanks to Michael’s Bay Marine for fixing the seized steering right up and making it on time). Naturally, I love showing off the lighthouse and was thrilled to take them out. I just hope I answered the questions well and did the piece justice! I guess we’ll see when it airs. I learned a few things to keep in mind for future interviews (no matter how many times you are asked the same question, remember how you answered it before!). They liked getting different ‘takes’ in different locations and I think I answered some questions better in some locations than others because like the scenery changing, I veered to different answers each time since I was thinking, “I already answered this, you must want more information!”. You’d think what little YouTubing I’ve done would have taught me a thing or two - not only on sticking to the story on retakes, but also not speaking so fast and without pauses that there’s no where to cut the film. My apologies to whoever has to edit that!

The weather cooperated beautifully, unlike the rest of the weekend, and we had no trouble getting out and tying up without getting wet. We were even able to take a quick spin down to the Baltimore Light and shoot some exterior video for the piece. I noticed they have a big new sign advertising their website on the railing. I had only been putting ours up when we’re out there, afraid it would rip and shred in storms, but we ended up putting it up over the weekend and leaving it up. Fingers crossed it handles the weather okay. It survived Sunday’s storm…

Which brings me to the rest of the weekend…. We headed up as a family Saturday afternoon after the farmer’s market and put the boat in the water at Bill’s Boats around 2 PM, where we always do. We had planned on going to the lighthouse to get as much done as possible, maybe eat dinner out there, and then head to the sailboat over at Old Bay Marina before sunset and spend the night there before going back out on Sunday. Many boaters were coming into Bill’s for a drink and food and escape from the rough waters they warned us about as we put the boat in the water. I could tell by the wind and forecasted wind that it would be rough that afternoon and calm in the morning, but of course, you don’t really know how rough until you get out there. We hadn’t even made it past the last channel markers by Millers Island light before we began debating turning around and driving over to the sailboat! Wow, it was a churning mess out there. We had already determined we would head straight around North Point to Old Bay and skip the lighthouse, knowing tying up would be darn near impossible.

We wrapped my camera bag in a rain parka and pulled the inflatable “emergency raft” (the dinghy to the dinghy) out of the seat and laid it over our bag full of clothes and my laptop(!!). And we forged on. It took us over two hours to make the trip and included gallons of bay water splashing over and on our heads. By the time we reached the sailboat, we were all drenched to the core. Exciting stuff! That’s probably the roughest outing our little boat has made, but it survived and so did we. Besides, it was made for that kind of stuff. It just handles kind of squirrelly in the waves because it wants to either surf them or veer sideways from them. So we took the trip very slowly.

Sunday morning couldn’t have ordered up a more perfect setting. The winds had died, the water was perfectly calm, and we zipped out to the lighthouse in 15 minutes. Access was a piece of cake and even the kids had no trouble shimmying up the new ladder. We hung our sign proudly from the railing in a permanent way and I intended to get pictures of it from the water when we left, taking our time to finally get some good photos of the new paint job as well with my good camera, which I haven’t used yet out there. Kent cleared the gutters (inches of fossilized crud in them!), fixed the wood around the lantern door so the weatherstripping I had installed Friday made more of an impact, and the kids cleaned the deck and railings as I continued the job of painting the posts behind them. Things were humming along smoothly until I stood up for a break and walked around the deck and peered to the southwest.

Ruh roh!! Storms had popped up seemingly out of nowhere and looked too close to try to risk making a break for it and running to shore. I still had an open paint can, supplies were scattered out in use, and we’d have to pack up and likely cut it too close. We determined it was safer to stay put and ride the storm out. Besides, I’d always wanted to be in the lighthouse during a storm and now opportunity knocked.

The only problem was the boat. Without a boat lift (still), I was terrified it would break free of its ropes during a strong storm. I whipped out my iPhone (hey, 3G works out there!) and checked the radar. The first thing that popped up on the screen was “Severe Thunderstorm Watch Until 8 PM”. 8 PM?! We were planning on leaving at 3 PM! It looked like there was a strong band nearly on top of us (red radar blobs) with a break before another one. We decided to ride out the first one and see if we had enough of a break to run to shore before the next one. I ran down the ladder and verified the boat was secure.

Wow, was that ever exciting! The wind completely changed direction and howled while rain pelted down so hard, we had to close the front door and stop watching all the lightning in amazement. “Bam!” The plywood boarding up the outhouse blew off - we battled the wind and rain to pull it inside the lighthouse. Tyler (my son) kept running down to the basement to peer out the porthole and make sure the boat was still there. And then suddenly, silence. We thought maybe we could run then, but I looked behind us and ominous clouds were still bearing down on us, so I said no, we had to wait a little longer. Another line went through. One rope (out of three) broke off the boat. I could see the lines rubbing on the ladder and worried they would fray. Those elastic ropes are awfully cool, though. They’re sheathed in intertwined elastic roping with a thick rope in the middle and never frayed or broke. Whew!

Oh yeah, did I mention our creative docking has evolved over the years?! Not only are we now using a rubber multi-chambered inflatable boat, but I’ve resorted to elastic lines and caribbeaners for quick tie-ups and less strain on the glued rings on the boat (since many have ripped off). Since the boat and the lines held up through this gale storm, I think we may have a winner! With one slight adjustment - no matter how much of a hurry we’re in to leave, we should still have one person fish the springy line back up through the eyelet and drop it into the boat. We all locked up and raced to the boat to get back before the next line of storms, so I had to pull the line through. The outer sheath bunched up and got stuck in the eyelet, so I pulled harder and harder until it finally broke free and slingshot back at me, with the beaner hitting me square in the cheekbone! Ouch!

So needless to say, I didn’t dawdle to get a picture of our cool sign newly hung for good. Darn! We raced back, the seas had temporarily calmed until just before we reached the channel markers, and we had the boat up on the trailer and out of the water before the rain poured down again. Whew! We were also present to identify a few prominent leak spots. Next time out, flashing over the range light housing and downspouts to redirect the gutter runoff out to the bay instead of into the basement…. We also didn’t set off the bug bombs as we left like we meant to. Life can be very unpredictable in the middle of the Bay!

Next time: Finish painting the exterior of the Watch Room and the main roof over the keeper’s quarters, as well as the railing (wow, the bird poop cleans off fresh paint so much more easily!). Install pipes for downspouts. Flashing over range light housing. Install dock bumpers on ladder… Set off bug bombs, get picture of sign!

In search of: flat platform work raft that can be towed out behind our boat (or has a small outboard) so we can paint the caisson and finish stringing guide wires around it…. Can double as “floating dock” access platform for bringing volunteers/visitors out. Volunteers!

I love our neighbors to the south at the Baltimore Lighthouse. Just having “lighthouse neighbors” is a really cool thing to be able to say. They’ve visited us and I’ve visited them. We even came up with a plan to flash light signals to each other at night as a game to see if we could see each other. Unfortunately, being owners of such unique and close-together watertop historic properties also means we’re competitors - competing for donations of goods and dollars, volunteers, media attention, etc. Not all of those can be shared at the same time.

I guess this is one case where having the only lighthouse with a nuclear generator in its history trumps being the first caisson on the Chesapeake (the fact that the aesthetic design improved over the years probably helps too). As I mentioned before, I nominated our fair lighthouse for new Jeld-Wen windows in this year’s competition. I eagerly anticipated being chosen as a finalist and fantasized about what a tremendous leap forward getting new windows and a door would be for the lighthouse and the organization! I mean, that would fast forward our restoration by at least a year or two, not to mention make working in there during the sweltering heat of summer more manageable! I had no idea who else entered.

I spent a weekend writing up answers to the follow-up questionnaire received after the initial nomination and bundled in historic and current photos. Then waited. I never received a reply indicating they had received my submission. I never received a form letter stating, “Sorry, but you were not chosen at this time. Please try again next year.”

So I was shocked to tears when I received a forwarded email soliciting votes for another lighthouse and quickly went to their site where I scanned the 12 finalist lighthouse photos, looking for a spark of recognition of the one I’ve become so intimately familiar with. Nope, not there. I scanned again… that’s when I saw the Baltimore Light.

I’m proud of them and definitely encourage everyone to vote for theirs. The lighthouse is beautiful with unpainted wood and gorgeous architecture throughout and lovely stewards. Yet, the sting is there. I’ve tried so hard to do this non-profit thing right, scared to death yet propelling forward towards opening the light to public tours and worried about falling on my face due to lack of support. Every time it rains or powerful storms roll through (as many have over the last several weeks), I worry about what else needs to be bought or paid for to stem the potential new leaks. We don’t have the most romantic and well-recognized light like Thomas Point. We don’t have the prettiest caisson. We’re hard to access. We’re out in the water where only fisherman and people who grew up in the small fishing villages even know we exist. Raising money and support has been hard, especially with bigger more well-known lights in the immediate area.

So right now I just want to cry with the painful disappointment of not being good enough to make the list. Oh yeah, and re-add new windows and doors to the budget and fundraising plans. Because I don’t think we can wait another year for something that definitely isn’t a sure thing.

Congrats to our neighbors, though, and best of luck!

Just like when Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s crypt to much fanfare, I eagerly anticipated opening the privy (outhouse) on the Craighill light. It had been sealed shut for more years than I’m aware. Of course, unlike Rivera, I expected to find nothing inside, only hoping for a stable floor. I was delighted to find the full bench seat still intact after Hobie and Tony, volunteers with the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society, pried the boarded up doorway open. I held my breath and waited as the last nail came out and the ‘door’ was wiggled out. “There’s a skeleton in there!” they joked! Nope, nothing - just a bunch of paint dust. With a couple upward whacks of the hammer, the seat even lifted up, revealing the drop to the water below. Too cool!

Memorial Day weekend got kicked off with a great volunteer effort provided by the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society. We accomplished a ton in 7 hours time. I’ve nominated the lighthouse for a donation of windows and doors through JELD-WEN’s lighthouse program and as part of a follow-up questionnaire, needed to provide detailed measurements of all the windows and the door. Hobie and Tony set to work doing that before the task of opening the privy. Meanwhile, other volunteers set to work scrubbing and scraping in prep for painting the keeper’s quarters with the paint my husband and I hauled up the day before after moving the ladder that had been hanging under the inaccessible hatch (shown in the dead osprey picture in the previous post) to the platform in order to provide a stable boarding system.

The guys managed to wiggle and work the hatch until it was able to close. One of the hinges rusted through the strap and will need to be re-welded or replaced, but it’s functional and I was able to install a lock clasp finally with some help cutting a notch for the hinge to fit through the gap. Security - check! I also secured the ladder to the platform and reorganized cables which will be useful for pulling boats along the outer diameter of the lighthouse - at least on one side. Next time, I’ll add loops to the cable to make clicking the boat in quickly easier.

Al, Jeff, Sherry, Anne, and Donna painted the keeper’s quarters and part of the railing and she looks beautiful with her new facelift! Cathy (not me - Captain Howard’s wife) scrubbed and cleaned out the extremely full gutter trap. An amazing effort by all that accomplished a ton in one day! Huge thanks to Captain Howard and his boat, Audacious, for safely transporting the volunteers and getting them on and off the lighthouse. Nobody fell in!

Of course, I left with a list of things still needing to be done and things to buy to keep out there (like face masks). The day was perfect except for the ants, which are as bad as ever. I was attacked just prior to disembarking after I slung my son’s backpack around my shoulder forgetting he had left a banana in the front pocket. I wondered what was poking out of the backpack all over and pricking my arm. I looked down to find my arm covered in those tiny ants! Pest control… absolutely necessary next time!

Thanks crew for a job well done! I’m impressed some of them came all the way from Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the day of exhausting manual labor, but hopefully found it well worth it. Everyone was impressed that the lighthouse had a basement.

[Full Photoset]

For as long as I’ve been visiting the lighthouse (six years now), a family of osprey have lived on a platform at the base of the lantern dome. I’ve never messed with them and they’ve never messed with me aside from perching on the ledge of the keeper’s roof and staring at me one night while I babysat the boat. We were both annoyed by the other’s existence on the lighthouse (they’re messy and I’m intruding), but learned to just ignore each other. Well, and I was left to clean up their messes of sticks and fish bones and heads and of course, the ever-present poop.

I tried to get out to the lighthouse two weeks ago, but the water was too rough to attempt to tie up and board. As an aside, when oh when will summer really begin and the weather cooperate?! As I circled the light with two friends, a completely unexpected and horrifying sight caught our eye. A giant osprey was caught mid-railing facing out just to the left of the winch between the double davits and obviously dead in a spread-eagle pose. How in the world did that happen?! He had to have dove straight down and out to get caught like that, but knows the lighthouse since it was his (or her) home, so something else must have been at play. The high winds we’ve had? I have no idea. I wasn’t able to get up and do something about it at the time, so I hoped mother nature would lend a helping hand and somehow pry it out before the next trip out.

No such luck as we went out Friday with a plan for access prior to the volunteer day with the Chesapeake Chapter of the US Lighthouse Society. The bird was still there, still stuck, but had slipped to the base of the railing and was dangling over the edge.

I had been wondering since ospreys mate for life what the mate would do? Would it stay? Would it go? What about the babies that were sure to be born soon? My questions were answered yesterday during the volunteer day. I made my way to the lantern gallery to find a mess of sticks all over the deck. The platform the nest had been on was completely clean. Weird? Did the mate have a fit and knock its own nest down, eggs and all (I found two broken in the mess of sticks). Was some other sinister force in play that killed both of them? I contemplated the mystery and those questions while bagging all the sticks for removal.

I can’t imagine the storms were responsible for this tragedy? I mourn for the birds, but am going to rush out and get a Bird-X Peller Pro and stick some spikes on the platform. The original inhabitants have moved out and now it’s time to claim the structure for humans — while hopefully keeping it a lot cleaner!

RIP Osprey Family. I’ll always wonder what happened to you!

Remember when we took a Chesapeake Bay Magazine journalist and photographer out to Craighill for a day? The feature article is finally available in the May issue - which has already gone out to subscribers, but doesn’t appear to be available yet for newsstand purchase. Soon! Author Marty LeGrand’s piece about local lighthouses and the challenges and successes of off-shore ownership paints a fantastic picture. The photographs by Tamzin Smith accentuate and enhance the tales, particularly the images showing how difficult it is to access our little caisson in the Bay. Don’t miss this issue!

I’m heading out to Thomas Point tomorrow for a day of bird poop scraping and sweeping. Always fun! I look forward to getting out to Craighill soon to check on it after the winter and do the same endless task of bird poop cleaning. We’re also working out resolving the difficult access issues so we can get volunteer crews out over the next couple months for lead abatement and painting. Stay tuned!

If you’re in or near DC, I’ll also be selling books and doing a book signing at Argia’s restaurant in Falls Church next Sunday, April 27th. Come on by!

If you purchase the book through the link below, I’ll even autograph your copy! Plus, this means more proceeds from the book will go directly into the lighthouse restoration (and make-it-safe) fund! Total cost is $25 with shipping. Thanks!! I hope you enjoy it! I really worked hard to dig up some photos that weren’t found in other books. It’s almost lighthouse/boating season! We should start ramping up posts and updates here soon.

In Colonial times, as the Chesapeake Bay and larger rivers became vital shipping channels, the need arose to mark Maryland’s dangerous shoals and waterways. Lighthouses sprang up throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, including wood-framed cottages placed upon screw pile foundations that stood offshore in the unforgiving waters. Most of these unique structures did not survive, lost tragically to ice that also occasionally claimed the lives of the keepers who faithfully tended them and rescued mariners in trouble. With the advent of electricity and GPS, many beacons succumbed to vandalism and neglect, leaving a fraction remaining.

Tomorrow’s the day! Finally, the publication date for the Maryland’s Lighthouses book will arrive tomorrow. I believe it will be available in most common book store chains (Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc.). However, I will be doing book signings and have also bought a batch of 200 to sell individually and all net profits from that batch go into the lighthouse fund. Stay tuned for details! I’m a little nervous now that my baby is going to hit the public stands. I hope everyone enjoys it and gets something out of it! I know it was an eye opening and enjoyable research project to undertake and I hope I did those lights justice.

The Holidays bring a chance to become overloaded with all sorts of wonderful Holiday tasks.  It is important in such times to keep focused on other more nautical pursuits.  For this reason I and fellow engineer Eric Kampert (Coast Guard Academy Graduate and Eagle salor) ventured to Curtis Bay Coast Guard Yard last week with the Public Sector Ports Coaltion of Baltimore (soon to be Baltimore Port Alliance) to tour the barque Eagle and to also set up contacts with yard personnel for potential efforts to restore Craighill. 

The Eagle is the Coast Guard’s training tall ship and frequents Curtis Bay every 2 years for a refit.  As you can see from the photo the 295 foot long 1,816 ton vessel was magnficiently perched in drydock for this years work.  The tour conducted by the captain described all details of the ship from its 1936 construction to its current sailing regimen.  It also encompassed everything from the exterior to the engine room.  When asked how long Eagle could continue to act in her role as both training vessel and ambassador to the world the Captain remarked that as long as the ship is maintained she can sail indefinitely.  Remarkable.

Unfortunately the person which we needed to speak to regarding Craighill work was not available.  But left a message and will be conversing with her soon.

Hi, Im Chris Overcash, newest member of HPP’s Board.  I hope to be able to bring my knowledge and talent to the table to help the vision of a restored Craighill Light become a reality.  I am an engineer and artist as well as avid bay sailor and am glad to be aboard.

All hail a regular sleep schedule again! Ok, I am, at least. The deadline for the Maryland Lighthouses book in the Images of America series was due first thing yesterday morning, so I stayed up all night the night before putting what I thought were the finishing touches on, which ended up being far more time-consuming than I expected! So I revised the text manuscript and resent it this morning feeling much better about it. Stay tuned on publication! I still have to go through the proof stage.

I began feeling like completing the book was going to kill me - at least trying to juggle it and work and run the Craighill efforts all at the same time. I am really glad I did it, though. I now feel rather knowledgeable about the history of all Maryland lighthouses, no longer caught up in the myopic world of the one I deal with on a regular basis. I also have the geography of the Maryland portion of the Chesapeake Bay firmly seared into my brain and will hopefully never get lost. Heh.

I made some interesting observations during the research portion that I wasn’t sure how to deal with and I wanted my facts to be accurate, so ended up being vague in some portions. For example, the Bloody Point Bar explosion - the wires from the tender to headquarters spelled one of the Guardsmen’s names as Mitchell. All newspaper clippings spelled it Mighall. Now, I know newspapers are notorious for misspelling names, so when I ran across the first one, I figured they got it wrong and planned on sticking with ‘Mitchell’. Then I ran across another article, and another using ‘Mighall’. How can three newspapers spell it wrong? Did one take the spelling from another? I doubt it - they have to ask people how to spell the name, right? So I just said, “two young Coast Guardsmen barely escaped before the explosion when their launch didn’t float freely..” or something to that effect.

Point Lookout’s keeper Ann Davis was listed some places as taking over after her husband’s death and others after her father’s death. So I just gave her name, but not relation.

The other difficulty I had was explaining how caissons were built in plain layman terms, particularly since there were two methods - sinking by weight and the pneumatic method where a pump was used and men dug from a working chamber. Remember, I was using images along with the text and had no images for the early caisson construction. The National Archives had slews of images from the construction of Point No Point and Holland Island (both, I believe, using the pneumatic method). So I hope it’s accurate and makes sense. I read engineering encyclopedias to help myself get a grasp on the process. It was like putting a puzzle together because none of the images at the National Archives had captions or were in any particular order, so I had to try to sort them out and determine which phase of construction they were showing, complicated by the fact that Point No Point’s caisson was lost down the bay and had to be retowed and set and I didn’t know if the photos were from before or after that happened. Fun stuff! (hmm.. and now that I think about it, I think I forgot to mention that tidbit in the book! Darn word count restrictions!)

I wish I had made it to the Naval Academy library and the Maryland State Archives (ordered some images online). I still plan on making trips there at some point because I want to collect as many Craighill images as I can and frankly, there weren’t many at the Archives or the Coast Guard Historian’s Office.

So anyway, I have all these digital historic images and plan on putting them online at some point. In order to write the book and thread all the histories together, I built myself a website on my laptop so I could click a lighthouse name and see what images I had for it and its status (active, standing but not active, no longer standing, relocated) and architectural type. I also took notes of interest and transcribed newspaper clippings when I ran across something I wanted to remember. Some of the text documents from the USCG files are also transcribed. I think it would make a great (but far from complete) resource for people wanting to know more or see historic images, particularly of the many lighthouses that no longer exist (man, you should see the Brewerton Channel Range Lights! Gorgeous!) so I plan on putting it up some time soon. I need to clean it up and reprogram some of it for a live website instead of locally first. Digital library! That’s the phrase of the day.

Okay, here’s a teaser! Leading Point - aka Brewerton Channel Rear Range Light