Our pal Bill from Hull snapped this shot today from his telescope showing sea spray at the 50 foot mark on the tower.
The sea conditions at the outer harbor today were – and still are! – nasty, with 10 foot seas and high winds.
Chris, of Boston Scuba, discovered an original Graves Light porcelain door knob on the bottom of Boston Harbor.
Discovering the original from under water let us install authentic replacements from a wrecking company..
Some of the clues to the faithful reconstruction of the interior of Graves Light have come from the bottom of Boston Harbor.
Chris, a diver from Boston Scuba, found yet another artifact offshore at The Graves.
Pictured in his hand is a heavily weathered porcelain door knob.
We had already restored the surviving interior door and built two copies on Nantucket, but we didn’t know what the original knobs looked like. Now we do.
So we found four antique sets of knobs at a local wrecking company. Voila! The doors are now complete. Thanks, Chris!
Alison MacDonald of ACKfire studios gets the replacement glass jewels ready for the Watch Room skylights/Lantern Room floor panels.
We’re getting down to the fine details now. The missing glass jewels that form the skylights for the Watch Room ceiling and the floor pieces for the Lantern Room are now being cast.
The Nantucket artisans at Ackfire Studios are hard at work right now creating replacements for the missing heavy glass jewels embedded in the round bronze skylight frames.
Alison MacDonald of Ackfire visited Graves Light in April to examine the job and take measurements.
Now, the colored glass disks have been cut and are being cast in tiny molds within a large kiln.
We love our local artist community! Here is the Ackfire crew cutting individual discs of glass which will be melted and formed in these little molds.
The resulting glass jewels will be glazed into the lantern floor this month.
These glass pieces are reproductions of the missing original glass from the 1903 architectural design, and are copied from the remaining originals.
L’Hermione passes Graves Light while entering Boston Harbor. Photo by Richard Green.
What an exciting Independence Day we had this year, with a visit from the French sailing ship L’Hermione.
A new reproduction of the French warship that the great Marquis de Lafayette took to America to announce France’s military support for the American Revolution, L’Hermione paid a goodwill visit to the east coast of the United States this summer.
We first caught up with L’Hermione during its visit to Baltimore, toured the ship, and talked to the captain and crew. When L’Hermione made its way north and arrived in Boston Harbor on July 10, Graves Light saluted her with the French tricolor. L’Hermione responded with a tweet.
It was a great occasion to commemorate Lafayette’s historic voyage and show her our appreciation to France for saving our new country during the American Revolution.
Randy Clark took this picture via drone while helping with carpentry at Graves.
Our pal Randy Clark took this nifty shot of master carpenter Karl Phillips sanding the new mahogany railing prior to installing it on the 4th level stairwell.
Look closely and you can see some of the work we’ve done:
A photographer by trade, Randy also swung a hammer to fix the shed while piloting his new drone. Thanks Randy!
Greg and Greg deliver the compressor from shore to Graves Light.
We’ve told you a lot of the more glamorous activity going on at the top of the tower, but there’s lots down below, too.
Lloyd and Greg unload the compressor from the boat and hoist it up to the dock at Graves Light.
At high tide this week, Boston Harbor Cruises delivered the big air compressor so Derosier Bros. Painting & Sandblasting can give the steel pilings under the deck a fresh coat of marine-grade paint.
That’s no easy task. They painters must work suspended from above at high tide, and lower down to the rocks at low tide.
Graves isn’t their first lighthouse, and it probably won’t be their last.
Boston Harbor Cruises are the folks who bring you the lighthouse cruises, ferries, water taxis, whale watches, and Codzilla.
Many thanks to Graves veterans Robbie and Larry, and Lloyd and Bob. And thanks to Greg & Greg from BHC for driving!
John builds the bronze lantern railing so that we can have an open area and still keep the beacon secure as a US Coast Guard aid to navigation.
Remember those bronze castings we made over the winter? John and John from Nelson Metal Fabrication machined them to perfection and fitted pickets and rails made up in their Portland, Maine shop.
John installs the bronze lantern railing. The solar-powered beacon is visible at top right.
Then they brought them out to Graves and hoisted them up the ladder and into the lantern room.
Three days later, the results are amazing.
Graves Light remains an active aid to navigation. We have to make sure that while we make as much use as we can of the lantern room, the topmost level of the tower, we have to keep the solar-powered lantern safe and free of obstructions. We also have to make sure it remains accessible to the Coast Guard for their maintenance visits.
G installs the new 5th floor ceiling, an exact reproduction of the original, surviving parts of which were left in place.
Remember the oak ceiling we showed being built on Nantucket back in April? It’s now installed at Graves Light.
Karl Phillips puts the new oak ceiling panels in place.
Master carpenter Karl Phillips built perfect replicas at his Driftwood Construction shop, based on surviving original panels and the original architectural drawings.
Karl and G put the new oak panels in place up on the 5th floor library of the lighthouse. G is performing the trimming and shaping.
Karl did most of the other woodwork at Graves, too, including reconstructed oak windows based on the original casement design, interior oak window panels and sills, interior oak doors, and the mahogany staircase handrails.
As we’d previously noted, we decided to leave the original damaged ceiling panels in place, covering them with the new ones to give some future renovators a surprise.
Royal Spanish Navy barquentine Juan Sebastian de Elcano passes Graves Light on June 15, 2015.
The third-largest tall ship in the world treated us to an early-morning visit, of sorts, here at Graves Light.
Juan Sebastian de Elcano, the four-masted brig-schooner of the Royal Spanish Navy, has been seen off the New England coast recently. Today, the majestic training ship, with its crew of 197, passed Boston Harbor. The steel-hulled masterpiece is 370 feet long. (Here are some close-up shots.)
We remember first seeing this beautiful vessel as kids with our dad during OpSail ’76, when the Elcano visited Boston to celebrate our nation’s bicentennial. That day was also the first time we set eyes on Graves Light, from our dad’s Tanzer-22 sloop.
Juan Sebastian de Elcano – named after the great Spanish explorer who captained Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the earth – has logged more nautical miles than any other sailing vessel in history. Since its keel was laid in 1927, the Elcano has sailed 2 million nautical miles.
We call it a brig-schooner because that’s what the Royal Spanish Navy calls it on its English website. However, on the official Spanish-language version, the vessel is called a “barque,” which would also make it a “barque” or “bark” in English. Others call it a brig, because of the square rig of its foremast, or a barquentine.
We don’t pretend to be experts on the rigging of sailing vessels. We’re just excited that the great Spanish sailing ship passed by today.
First look at the new Bunk Room at Graves Light, June 2015.
What an amazing week out at Graves!
Carpenters Nat, Karl, Will, and Peter are installing the new mahogany stair rails (see where brass castings of the original fixtures were made) and bunk beds, finishing the windows, and hanging the interior doors.
We’ve never seen this level of activity inside the tower, and it’s really getting exciting out here.
As a safety test, the carpenters camped out a couple of nights. They proclaim the bunk room “almost ready.”
