DUNGENESS — Crew members of the Coast Guard cutter Henry Blake, namesake of the New Dungeness Lighthouse’s first keeper, will this week help lighthouse association members replace the cracked and corroded vent ball atop the light tower near the end of Dungeness Spit.
It will be the first time the 17-inch-diameter vent ball, which draws humidity out of the light tower, has been replaced since it was installed in the Admiralty Head lighthouse glassed-in lantern room in 1861.
The 250-pound, cast-iron vent ball was relocated from Admiralty Head to New Dungeness Lighthouse in 1927 and has sat atop the tower ever since, highly visible by land and sea.
“We know it could not survive any kind of an earthquake, and we know it could not survive any major windstorm,” said Rick DeWitt, New Dungeness Lighthouse Association board vice president.
The Henry Blake, which will be involved in the replacement of the vent ball, was named after the first New Dungeness Lighthouse keeper, Henry Blake of England, who reported for duty at the first lighthouse on the Strait of Juan de Fuca in early 1858 and kept the light burning for more than a decade.
Starting at 8 a.m. Monday, pending weather, crews will begin erecting special scaffolding around the circular deck around the top of the light tower.
DeWitt said he expects the project will take up to three days and the heavy vent ball will either be hoisted up to the tower using a block and tackle provided by the Henry Blake crew or muscled up the light tower’s spiral staircase.
A Coast Guard helicopter may be involved if necessary, he said.
“We’re the only ones we know of in Washington state that is doing this, but others will need to,” DeWitt said of the replacement of the globe-shaped piece with a small, pointed lightning rod on top that has been pounded by unforgiving wind, rain and salt-water spray for more than 100 years.
Those interested will be able to view the work across Dungeness Bay to the spit with binoculars from the beach along 3 Crabs Road.
DeWitt said a webcam will be pointed toward the work so that those with computers will be able to view it at the lighthouse association’s site, www.newdungenesslighthouse.com, where a link can be found near the bottom of the left navigation bar on the home page.
DeWitt said the Coast Guard crew of about 20 will be responsible for taking the vent ball to the top of the 63-foot tower.
A Georgia foundry cast the new vent ball, a job made possible through a $5,000 grant from the Benjamin N. Phillips Memorial Fund, which was established by the estate of Joy Phillips to honor her late husband in 2006 as an area-of-interest fund of The Seattle Foundation.
The goal of the fund is to provide grants for organizations improving the lives of Clallam County residents.
Chad Kaiser, who was hired in April as the association’s third general manager overseeing all that goes on at the light station, located the foundry to cast the iron vent ball and was a primary organizer of the replacement project.
“It started off with locating the original drawings,” said Kaiser, who came to Dungeness Lighthouse from the Point No Point Lighthouse at Hansville on the North Kitsap Peninsula.
Kaiser, a maritime history buff who also worked for the U.S. Lighthouse Society in San Francisco, said he found drawings through the national archives.
“There are quite detailed drawings of the entire lantern as a whole, specifically the vent ball.”
He sent out requests for work-cost estimates to two Seattle companies, one in Massachusetts and the Georgia foundry, which offered the low bid.
The foundry also custom-made brass bolts to secure the vent ball to the tower’s chimney.
The lighthouse and station was maintained by Coast Guard keepers until March 1, 1994.
The lighthouse was erected in 1857, and the keeper’s house was built in 1904.
Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteers staffed the station until Sept. 3 of the same year, when the New Dungeness Chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society assumed responsibility for staffing and maintenance of the station under license from the Coast Guard.
Jason Hague, Coast Guard commander of the Henry Blake, which rarely drops anchor in Dungeness Bay, has been in contact with the lighthouse association in the past, according to DeWitt, who acted as light station manager before Kaiser started work.
When Hague learned through the association’s newsletter about the project, he contacted the group.
One of Hague’s officers aboard the Henry Blake once walked the six-mile hike on Dungeness Spit to the lighthouse with his family and inquired about how the crew could help, reporting back to his commanding officer, Kaiser said.
“As far as I’m concerned, I will be there to direct them and help them out as best as I can, but I want to let them do as much of the labor as possible,” said Kaiser, who works with an association of more than 700 members, many of whom stay at the keeper’s house a week at a time and help maintain the light station and grounds.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
