We have experienced the worst storm yet on our watch.  Physical damage, system failures are everywhere.  The following details are an account of the problems that the storms have caused.

The winds and rain have been steadily growing in strength over the last few days.  Just after midnight on the 4^th of January the real trouble began.  A loud noise in the back of the lighthouse was heard and investigated.  Nothing could be seen at night.  At about the same time the television cable parted so the TV and the Internet were down.  The telephone also went down at the same time and we noticed that we had no water.  By 4:30 am the city electrical power went out so we were without electricity, communications and water.  I had purchased a two and a half gallon container of drinking water for emergencies so we had that available but we had no way to flush the toilets or clean up.

The only system still working were our cell phones with enough battery strength for some limited talk time.  All the heat in the lighthouse is electric except for the Franklin stove in the bedroom.  This had been unusable until about two weeks ago when we were allowed to get it fixed.  This provided the only heat we had so we camped out in the bedroom.

When the daylight was available we surveyed he damage outside.  The loud noise that I heard was caused by a tree limb that had fallen on the boathouse.  It damaged the roof and broke a couple of windows and was now hanging on the electric wires that go from the lighthouse to the shop.  Another limb had fallen near the flagpole without any serious damage.  The water was out because of the telephone pole in the garden that hung the water line had blown down.  The water pipe was broken on the shore side and a city meter reader had discovered this.  He turned off the water at he meter to keep the water from running onto the beach.  When the water pipe came down a tension cable snapped and cut the insulation on the phone line and shorted out the wires.  We assume the communication cable parted at the same time.

George Petit a friend and volunteer said that he thought that the last time the water line fell was about twenty years ago.  My research showed the line was down in December 1990.  However the water flow was not interrupted.

We had some physical damage to lighthouse property including a section of the garden fence blowing down and one of the redwood benches was totally destroyed.  A second bench was broken but probably repairable.

When the electricity went out I called the Humboldt Bay Coast Guard Station and reported that we were dark.

Early in the morning I called Linda Cox on the cell phone to report the damage and to find out whom to call for the various problems.  At that time I had phone calls to the lighthouse forwarded to my cell phone.  When the power came back on about noon I called the Coast Guard by radio and reported that we were back on line.

On January 5^th at about 2:00 PM the telephone was restored.  We were now down to the cable being out and most impotently we still had no water.

During the storm we had several calls from concerned friends in town.  We would like to thank George and Cheryl Petit for bringing us water and George brought his chain saw to remove the limb from the electrical wires.  Jim Norton brought us a fresh supply of drinking water and Kirk and Susan Roberts went to the store for us and let us refill our big jugs with water at their house so we could flush.  Dave Hopkins called and got an update on our situation and Linda Cox was always available with the information that we needed to get things fixed.

After a week we still had no cable or Internet service or water.  On Tuesday the lighthouse committee visited us but most of the suggestions we got were well intended not practical or workable.  For example we were told to use seawater to flush the toilets but this would kill the organisms in the septic system and exacerbate the problem.

Late that night we had another electrical failure and a lot of rain.  The tower was flooded and without electricity we could not use the wet Vac.  All the towels that we use to sop up the water before were wet and needed to be laundered. Without water this could not be done so we did not feel it was wise to use the cloths drier.  As a result of all this the tower was totally flooded.  When the electricity came back we used the wet Vac but it could not keep up.  Sally who had now gone five days without water, a shower, or using the bathroom with more than one flush a day, no Television and no Internet, she just snapped.  She lost it and just kept saying over and over again, “Why won’t they help us?”  I called Sean Smith to tell him that we could not continue this way.

On Wednesday night we went to a motel so we could do laundry, shower and regroup.  When we went back to the lighthouse and saw that the water was still down, the cable was still down and the serf was up.  We did a couple of errands.  We hoped the tide would go out enough so we could get across.  By this time we found Brian O’Callaghan and several RHS people using the ATV to bring up water to the lighthouse.  Will Caplinger with the city was there and so was Sean Smith.

Sean inspected the tower and confirmed the water problem we were having.  He also said that this might be a good time to use our airline tickets that we could not use last summer and he could get people to stay at the lighthouse one night at a time.  We did call the airline and after Sally paid $420.00 full fair last summer we could only use the tickets for an additional $1,620.00.  We did not go.

Sally had an airplane ticket to go for a three-day weekend to meet her new, about to be, daughter in law in Iowa.  I was going to take her to the parking lot with her suitcase on the ATV but it was inoperable.  So she walked.  I called George Petit who is Mr. ATV fixer man and he found the problem and fixed it on the spot.

During this entire storm time we did what we felt was the best things to preserve the lighthouse as much as possible.  I turned off systems like the water heater until water is restored, we closed the shutters on the windows that had them and laid one of the redwood benches on the ground so the wind would not damage it further.  We brought all the wood that would fit in the Franklin stove to the ATV room.  The rest of the wood on hand will not fit in the stove without being cut shorter or split.  We have stopped cooking and using dishes that need to be washed to save water.  We have been eating sandwiches or frozen food that we can cook in the microwave when the electrical power is working.

At 5:00 PM Saturday the cable and Internet was temporarily fixed.  They will do a permanent fix when the water poles are redone.  We are now into the third week without water. 

Taking a departure from our traditional Crescent City postings we would like to include a trip to one of our favorite places, Port Townsend, Washington.

A little over thirty years ago Randy had borrowed a camping trailer from a friend and set out on the great American adventure.  Traveling up to Wyoming from Denver he went to Yellowstone National Park and then up into Montana, across Idaho, into Washington and then up and west through British Columbia.  After a visit to Vancouver he headed back south to the Seattle area but took a side trip across Deception Pass to Whidbey Island.  Driving along the southern shoreline he came up on a small ferry terminal.  He had no idea where the ferries went but he felt adventuresome so he got in line for a ride.

It turned out that the ferry went across the sound to a little Victorian town called Port Townsend.  This cute little town is mostly made up of little shops and stores and being about an hour and a half away from downtown Seattle it is a nice drive from the city. 

We purchased a little something for our Denver friend Soapy the clown in one of the specialty shops.  It is a T-shirt with fish painted on it with the words “The Trout, The Whole Trout and Nothing But the Trout So Help Me Cod.”

We have found some great eateries in town including one of our new favorites called “The Belmont”.  They have a good meal for a fair price and real cloth napkins.  And you don’t need to carry your used dishes to a trash collection station.

Our motel was the Tides Inn and a very nice place.  Our room had two Queen beds, a television, a fireplace, a refrigerator and microwave, and free WIFI.  They also have a nice Continental Breakfast in the morning.

When you take that West Coast vacation and after you visit the Battery Point Lighthouse consider a trip up to the Puget Sound and especially to Port Townsend.  It is a real treat.  They have a lot of specialty stores for the ladies and an antique car place for the guys.  The movie “An Officer and a Gentleman,” was filmed here and a lot of the places in the movie are still here.

Port Townsend has several really cool shops but it has one very unique store that sells classic auto parts, books, and even cars.  We found the perfect gift for our friend in Denver, Colorado.  Jack Norton has recently restored a 1953 Merc. and we found an antique “Necker Knob.”  For those of you who don’t go back that far a Necker Knob is a little round doorknob looking device that you clamp onto your steering wheel.  This would allow you to steer your car with one hand while you had your other arm around your girlfriend.  They are no longer legal and very, very hard to find.  We want to thank Bergstrom’s Antique & Classic Autos in Port Townsend for this wonderful find.

In the afternoon we headed back to the Seattle area but we stopped off for lunch in Port Gamble, another wonderful little town on the northern peninsula in Washington.  They hold the claim to the oldest Masonic Lodge in Washington, Franklin Lodge No. 5.  Another must visit little town.

It is a little soggy in the winter so to get the most out of this area try to visit in the summer.  There are always special things going on in this wonderful part of the country.  Just turn north after you visit our lighthouse and you can’t miss it.

After some doctor visits in Portland we were able to spend a few days up in northern Washington State.  We had dinner with an old friend John Fox and his son Andrew in Bellevue, Washington.  We had a lot of time to catch up on our stories and Andrew just sat there shaking his head at some of the stories that Randy told him about his dad.

We spent a nice night in Issaquah and then started out the next day with a cup of mocha from our favorite coffee place called, Jitters.  Then we drove north and took the Kingston Ferry across the Pungent Sound (that’s Puget Sound to you Lubbers) and headed up to Port Townsend.  It's a beautiful drive and  Port Townsend is one of our favorite places.

Port Townsend is located on the top of the peninsula in Jefferson County.  It is an old Victorian port with many things to see and do.  We visited one active lighthouse and saw a few that have been deactivated by the Coast Guard.  We had some wonderful meals in Port Townsend and stayed at a delightful and romantic hotel called the Tides Inn.  We then drove down to Astoria, Oregon.  We found a wonderful place to stay at the Holiday Inn Express.  The bridge picture was taken out of our living room window in this beautiful motel.

Before leaving town we visited the maritime museum and the Columbia Lightship.  Inside they had a section on lighthouses and Randy would hang out there and tell the folks all about lighthouses.  The displays were very well done and they had great educational devices to explain what all the stuff was.

The Del Norte County Historical Society sponsored a weekend with past lighthouse keepers from St. George Reef Lighthouse just north of Battery Point.  The focus of the reunion was a newly published book by Dennis Powers called Sentinel of the Seas.  Powers was also in attendance and signed his new book for individuals.  On Saturday evening September 29^th a group of past lightkeepers, volunteers and other Historical Society members attended an open house at Battery Point.

The past keepers and the now grown family members of St. George Reef lighthouse keepers reminisced stories of the life at the lighthouse.  The reminiscing was not only informative but also very entertaining.  Stories ranged from the dangers of the job at this remote facility to family life of a keeper.

The good old days of the lighthouses may be becoming a thing of the past but the history and the stories live on.  We are proud to be a part of this unique maritime service and are doing our part to share the history with our visitors to the lighthouse.  If you get the chance to visit a lighthouse do it.  If you get the chance to visit our lighthouse we look forward to seeing you; after all we are so darned cute!

Did we ever tell you about our wedding?  Randy was past 50 and still never married while Sally was married and widowed about ten years earlier.  We had met on AOL and shortly we met in person.  She did not know what to think because before we met I had told her in an e-mail that I had a 92-year-old brother.  Randy was thinking about a Masonic Brother and it did not occur to him to mention that.  When he drove up to Longmont for our first date he owned a Lincoln Town car, an old man car for sure.  Sally was sure that he must be in his nineties having a 92-year-old brother and driving an old man car.  Randy thought that she was really happy to discover that he was 51 at the time.

We got along very well and started dating a lot.  After about a year we decided to get married but to this day it’s not real sure whose idea that was.

She had a son Michael who was graduating from High School so we decided to wait until after he graduated.  We didn’t want a fancy typical wedding and had even kicked around the idea of going to Las Vegas and being married by an Elvis impersonator.  Randy was a Shriner and a Shrine Clown and he got to thinking that it would be fun to be married during a performance of the Shrine Circus.  That had never been done before ever.  He figured that if it was promoted right they could sell a lot of tickets and make extra money for the kids at the Shrine Hospitals.

Randy had been working in broadcasting and with the Colorado Broadcasters Association.  He was able to talk to all the local radio and television stations and promote the wedding.  We ended up getting married on April Fools Day in front of forty-two hundred of our closest friends and neighbors.  We had two television stations there and we got ink in both of the local newspapers. 

The morning of the day of the wedding we took Randy’s best man, John Fox, to breakfast.  When we were paying our bill the young lady at the counter said it was a beautiful day and what were we going to be doing.  Randy said that we were going to the circus.  She said that there was going to be a clown getting married at the circus that day.  He asked her how she knew and she said that it was mentioned on Channel 9 (TV) that morning.

During the early afternoon show we substituted the regular clown skit for our wedding.  We set up chairs in the first ring so we could have an aisle.  Sally was standing up front by the judge and Randy as 8-ball the Clown walked down the aisle.  He followed our flower girl who was the six-year old grand daughter of one of the clowns who gave twisted balloon flowers to the ladies in the chairs.  8-Ball’s costumer Peggy Smith had him in his finest clown attire, a clown top hat, a sparkly swallowtail coat and a very long dickey made just for him.  He carried a potted plant for a bouquet and he nervously walked down the aisle.  When he got to the front the judge asked him if he was ready for his Wedding Vows.  He said A-E-I-O-U.  The Judge said “No 8-Ball, not your wedding vowels!”  The rest of the ceremony went about the same.  The best part was when he put raisins behind the elephants on the wedding cake.

We ended up on two television stations and in both of Denver’s daily newspapers.  We added an estimated $20,000 to the good works of the Shrine.

The Battery Point Lighthouse is a must see if you are in Northern California on the coast visiting the redwoods or other fantastic natural sites.  Here is a little bit about our lighthouse.

The Battery Point Lighthouse was the ninth lighthouse to be built in California and was commissioned on December 10^th 1856.  The original cost was $15,000 and that covered purchasing the land, building the structure and equipping it.  The official name was the Crescent City Light Station.  The summer before the building was built a side wheeled steamship caught fire in the Crescent City Harbor and one of the items salvaged off her were three cannons.  Two or more cannons are called a “Battery” and the three cannons were brought up to the island and the name “Battery Point” was started.

The lighthouse is a cape cod style with the lantern room in the residence.  Keepers liked this style because they didn’t need to go out in the weather to service the light.  There were a total of sixteen of this style lighthouse built on the west coast.

Of all the many keepers over the years the most revered was John Jeffries who came aboard in 1875 and was the keeper here for almost forty years.  He, his wife and four children saw many changes during their watch including the addition of a kitchen and later indoor plumbing.  This was a special treat as the old outhouses used to wash out to sea during the windy winter storms.

The last government keeper left in the early 1950’s and for a few years the lighthouse had the Coast Guard in residence.  At this time the light was automated but in the early 1960’s the light was turned off.  The lighthouse had resident curators from that time on until 1982 who maintained the historic old building as a museum.  In 1982 The Del Norte County Historical Society became the official entity to take care of the lighthouse under a new “Private Aid to Navigation” charter and the light was relit.  It has been a working lighthouse ever since.

It is well worth the tour to discover the history of this place and the small tour fee of $3.00 ($1.00 for students under twelve) helps maintain the light and keep the building in good repair.  There is also a gift shop for those folks who want a special souvenir or gift.

Being a lighthouse keeper is a one of the coolest jobs in the world.  There is a certain romance we have for lighthouses and being fortunate enough to be a keeper people always ask how we got the job?  It was a true “right time at the right place,” story.

We were living in Denver, Colorado and not all that happy with our daily lives.  Randy was semi-retired and his health was not all that good.  Sally was a work at home travel agent and she was burning out fast on the problems that the airlines and rental car companies were creating.  When it came time to take a vacation we decided to take a driving trip up the California coast through Oregon up to Washington State, and our favorite town, Port Townsend.

We drove up to Wyoming across to Utah, Nevada and into California arriving in Eureka about 10:00 o’clock at night and we got a motel.  The next morning we drove up the coast and had breakfast at a charming little town named Trinidad.  We then drove up the coast to a little town named Crescent City.  Sally wanted a Starbucks so we stopped.  There is no Starbucks in Crescent City but we found an espresso place so she was happy.  While she enjoyed her Mocha she was thumbing through a local newspaper where she came across a photograph of a lighthouse.  She asked if we could go see it.  Randy said that we were on vacation and we could do anything we wanted.  After coffee we got directions to the lighthouse and drove over. 

We found the lighthouse on our first try and Sally decided to take a tour while Randy surveyed the lighthouse from a distance to find a good camera angle.  A carpenter that had been working at the lighthouse noticed our Colorado license plates on the car and he mentioned that he used to live in Colorado.  Somewhere in our conversation he mentioned that the Historical Society was looking for permanent lighthouse keepers.  At that point RV couples were tending to the lighthouse for a month or two at a time.  Randy decided to walk up the hill to the lighthouse and tell Sally of this new information.

Randy met Sally coming back down the hill and told her that they were looking for lighthouse keepers and she should go back up and ask who we should talk to.  She returned with the name Linda Ging who was the director of the Del Norte County Historical Society and that her office was in the county museum.  We drove over to the museum and went inside.

A volunteer named Bob greeted us and asked if he could help us.  We said that we wanted to see Linda Ging.  Bob said, “What do you want to see her for?”  Taken back a little Randy replied, “We heard that you were looking for lighthouse keepers.”  With a big smile Bob said, “Don’t move!” and he ran off to Linda’s office.  He came back shortly with Linda who was also smiling and introduced herself.  To make a long story short we had a great interview with Linda and she asked if we were able to stay overnight and meet with some of the board members from the historical society.  We left and found a motel for the night.

When we checked into the motel the desk clerk asked if we knew that the lighthouse was haunted?  The next day at our interview with the board members they asked if we had any questions about the lighthouse.  We asked about the ghost(s).  Linda rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, you heard about that.”  Some of the ghost stories were related to us but it sounded like any trapped spirits were more full of mischief than into scaring people.  We sort of felt that having our own ghosts would be a hoot.  (Sorry about that!)

After our visit we were back on the road again.  Instead of heading to Port Townsend we both felt that the interviews went very well so we decided to go back to Denver and pack.  A couple of days later we got a call from Linda saying that they would love to have us be their new lighthouse keepers.