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Station acquired in 2006 is a work in progress
By Jim Flannery
SENIOR WRITER
Janet Reingold has to laugh when she talks
about the photo of the construction worker wearing red earmuffs while he grouts the granite
blocks on the Cuckolds Fog Signal and Light
Station. The earmuffs aren’t just to keep his ears
warm. They are to protect them from the station’s
air horn, which lets out a long, loud blast every
17.5 seconds when fog or haze settles in.
Rising from one of two granite ledges known
as the Cuckolds, the historic fog signal and light
station — the first transferred under the National
Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000
— have stood sentry over the approaches to
Boothbay Harbor, Maine, in some fashion for 119
years. Now Reingold, husband Philip Yasinski,
a band of volunteers and some paid contractors
are rebuilding and restoring it — the boathouse
and keepers’ quarters, which were torn down in
as surplus property from the Government Services Administration. “We didn’t know what we were
getting ourselves into.”
The Coast Guard maintains the light and fog
signal for navigation. The Cuckolds Fog Signal
and Light Station Council, a community-based
volunteer organization, is restoring and rebuild-
Cuckolds Fog Signal and Light Station in Maine is shown above as it looked in the 1950s. A volunteer organization is rebuilding and restoring it, and the top photo shows the restoration under way.
1977, the light and fog-signal towers, two breakwaters, a slipway and utilities.
Undertaking major construction on an island
nearly a half-mile offshore poses some challenges. Reingold, who lives on Southport Island
and can see the lighthouse from a cove near
her house, remembers the first barge full of construction supplies delivered to the island. It was
offloaded below the high-water mark.
“We had to move every stick of lumber up the
rock so it would be safe and not float away,” says
Reingold, founder and president of Reingold Inc.
and a prime mover in the light’s 2006 acquisition
46
ing the station and will maintain it once construction is complete. Had someone not come to the
station’s rescue, the light tower would have been
replaced with a fiberglass pole with a light on
top. “This is part of our heritage, our history,”
Reingold says.
Located off Southport Island’s Cape Newagen
five miles from Boothbay Harbor, the station has
guided mariners past the treacherous Cuckolds
outcroppings through fog, rain, snow and dark
of night since 1892, when the fog signal building
was built. In 1907, crews erected an octagonal
tower on the roof of that building and installed a
flashing 600-candlepower oil vapor lamp 59 feet
above the water.
There’s nothing easy about acquiring a lighthouse from the government, raising $1.4 million to rebuild it, and barging volunteers and
tons of construction materials to the island. Yet
the return on investment of time, money and
sweat has been enormous, says Reingold,
whose firm specializes in mobilizing community support for “do-good” projects.
“We’ve met a lot of new friends,” she says.
“We’re a band of people who are doing
something larger than ourselves. We’re
not lighthouse nuts. We’re building community and creating a spirit.”
Reingold and a few volunteers who
caught her vision early on worked for two
years on the 542-page application to acquire the 7-acre, two-island property and
four more years to raise the $1.4 million
to restore and rebuild it. “We took this
on just as the economy was tanking,”
she says, so the going was slow at first.
But by last year, the council had raised
$200,000, enough to start on the boathouse.
As soon as construction began, support for the
project gained momentum. Large donations of
money and in-kind services and materials steadily increased, and volunteers started signing up to
work. “It was astonishing,” Reingold says.
This summer, work on the two-story duplex
keepers’ quarters got under way. “We’ve had a
crew of eight to 10 people out there every day
since spring,” she says. Interior work on the keepers’ quarters will finish up next year for an anticipated opening late in summer 2012, she says.
“We are desperately looking for the right lightkeepers,” she says. “It will be such a great job for
the right people.”
“Right” means they must be crackerjack mariners, handy in things mechanical and carpentryrelated, and “great concierges,” she says. “This
is a hospitality business.”
The keepers’ quarters will have three suites
— one for the keepers and the other two for
guests — a fully equipped country kitchen, two
bathrooms and public spaces for work/study,
exhibits, receptions, seminars and food service.
Reingold expects the lighthouse to support itself
by hosting weddings and other events. In their
reincarnation, Maine’s Cuckolds could belie
their name and host retreats.
“It is spiritual to be out there,” Reingold says.
“It is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.”
Information about Cuckolds Fog Signal and
Light Station is available at www.cuckoldslight.org.
WWW.SOUNDINGSONLINE.COM DECEMBER 2011
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