Lighthouses - Imprisoned Guardians

The fog didn't disappoint.  Each morning dawned with a new shade of gray.  Occasionally, light with a slight blueish hue.  Other times, heavy and dense, confining and oppressive - holding captive the sense of sight as well as the images that the eye sees.  Still, even as one sense is restricted, another is set free....and the soul is comforted.

Please unmute the following 20 second video.

It makes me laugh - every time.

Given all that, there had been an assumption that lighthouses would reveal themselves commonly along our journey - if not by sight, then at least by sound.  Turns out, "common" would be a definite exaggeration.  Few and far between would be a more accurate description of lighthouse sightings.  Nonetheless, "few" seldom equates to none and each observance became valued all the more.  

Brockton Point Lighthouse
sitting atop Stanley Park Seawall
with Vancouver skyline beyond.

Guard Island Light
near the entrance to the Tongass Narrows,
just north of Ketchikan, Alaska

 

On left, Hiyoriyama (Weather Mountain) Lighthouse near Otaru, Japan
with the morning sun lighting Sea Lion Rock on right,
and the west coast of Hokkaido in background.

Sea Fort Lighthouse on Fort No. 2
near the chokepoint of Uraga Channel into Tokyo Bay.
Fort No. 2 (1889) was a man-made fortress island, now demilitarized.
The lighthouse remains a navigational marker to hundreds of vessels daily. 

Turns out, the days of the traditional lighthouses with their iconic masonry, massive glass optics, and human keepers are slowly slipping into seafaring lore past.  The two tone "beeeeee-woo" pitch drop of yesterday's diaphone fog horns echo distant although it's resounding clearly even now from somewhere in my brain and remains something more than a fond reminiscence.  I digress.  Today, modern ships rely on GPS, electronic navigational charts, and automated radio transponders to traverse the hazards inherent the high seas. When visual markers are required, simple steel poles and offshore buoys topped with solar powered LED's provide warning at a fraction of the construction and maintenance cost of their imprisoned guardian predecessors.

Original 3rd-Order Fresnel Lens from the Cape Hinchinbrook Light Station
on display at the Valdez Museum.  The lens focused 80% of the light emitted by an
incandescent oil vapor lamp producing roughly 234,000 candlepower to pierce the dense.
For my money, Jamie is the more radiant. 

Middle Rock Light 13
at Valdez Narrows, Valdez, Alaska.

Woody Island Channel Buoy 6
near Kodiak, Alaska.
It felt like a tight squeeze between the rocky shoals.

United State Coast Guard Cutter Aspen at berth in Homer, Alaska
with payload dockside.
Launched in 2001, the ship is operated as a seagoing buoy tender.
Her eponym was a steam-powered lighthouse tender commissioned in 1906
and assigned to the Great Lakes.

The lighthouse - a contrivance that humanity got right.  For how many beams have split the dark?  Never knowing if any would reach the eye of a human soul, yet always believing that the soul in harms way was worth saving.