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Pharologists Ted and Jo Panyatoff are back aboard so you can be certain we are seeing lighthouses this week. Yesterday we saw Curtis I Light, Indian I Light and the Rockland Breakwater Light before crossing the bay to the Fox Island Thorofare to see Browns Head Light and the “Spark Plug” at Goose Rocks. Most of this was in the fog so those lighthouses proved especially reassuring. We never did see the Owls Head Light. Conspicuously absent from several of those lights were their fog horns which the Coast Guard has taken one step further into obsolescence. The Coast Guard’s new MRASS system has been put into effect requiring the mariner to key the microphone on their VHF radio 5 times on channel 83A to start the horn sounding. I have yet to figure out why this was necessary but someone in the Coast Guard brain trust down in D.C. thought it was a good idea. I have always said that GPS chart plotters and VHF radios are one twenty five cent fuse away from quitting at any moment. Then what? We keep a 50 lb. sack of spuds on the foredeck just for such an occasion. A deckhand with a strong arm and a well calibrated Aroostook Kennebec can sound the way ahead at least 100′. Plenty of time to hear whether the potato makes a splash or a thud. “Thud….ready about?” You get my point (if there is one). Sometimes the old tried and true is hard to beat. And that is why lighthouses are so important to keep alive. And besides that the preservation of lighthouses brings all kinds of people together and that kind of light is the finest kind.
I hope you have a great day. Be well. Do good.
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