DUNGENESS SPIT — Using a sling, four Coast Guard crewmen with the cutter Henry Blake managed to lug down the old and muscle up the new Tuesday, replacing the 250-pound vent ball atop the 63-foot New Dungeness Lighthouse tower.
The physical feat of strength — with two brawny Coast Guardsmen at each end of the heavy blanket wrapped tightly around the cast-iron vent ball — topped off a two-day operation.
It ended shortly after 1 p.m., when the vent ball was carefully placed atop its chimney.
“Things did go pretty smoothly,” said Chad Kaiser, New Dungeness Lighthouse Association general manager.
‘Very simply done’
“It was very simply done. It wasn’t very complicated,” he said.
“It was just a bunch of Coast Guard guys who knew what they were doing.”
It was the first time the 17-inch diameter vent ball, which draws humidity out of the light tower, has been replaced since it first sat atop the Admiralty Head lighthouse glassed-in lantern room in 1861.
The vent ball was relocated from Admiralty Head to New Dungeness Lighthouse in 1927 and has sat atop the tower ever since, crowning the beacon highly visible by land and sea.
Kaiser, who organized the project after the association hired him in April, said the vent ball and lantern room would be repainted when the weather warms.
“We do have quite a few other projects, but nothing nearly this dramatic,” he said.
Work began Monday
The once-in-a-century project to replace the corroded and cracked vent ball, which was in danger of falling off in high winds or a quake, began with New Dungeness Lighthouse Association volunteers Monday.
Association members set up special scaffolding around the outside of the lighthouse light room.
It ended Tuesday after a crew of 12 Coast Guard members landed ashore in a Zodiac, motoring in from the Henry Blake, which was named after the 1857 lighthouse’s first keeper, Henry Blake of England.
The cutter, which is homeported in Everett, was anchored overnight off Dungeness Spit in Dungeness Bay and work began at about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.
“Most of them had never been here before,” said Rick DeWitt, lighthouse association board vice president.
He said the youth and physical stamina of the Coast Guard members were welcomed and sorely needed by the aging lighthouse keepers.
A Georgia foundry cast the new vent ball, a job made possible through a $10,000 grant from the Benjamin N. Phillips Memorial Fund, which allocates money to organizations improving the lives of Clallam County residents.
After the volunteers drove out through the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge on the spit to the lighthouse at low tide Sunday night, they stayed overnight at the keeper’s house before assembling the scaffolding Monday.
Association President V. Steve Reed said the commander of the Henry Blake, Lt. Jason Haag, got in touch with the association a few months ago and offered his support for the New Dungeness Light Station.
Kaiser, who was hired as the association’s third general manager overseeing all that goes on at the light station, researched the national archives to find the specifications needed to replicate the vent ball. He then located the foundry to cast the iron vent ball and mainly organized the replacement project.
The lighthouse and station were maintained by Coast Guard keepers until March 1, 1994.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
