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The Fastnet Lighthouse
Mon Dec 12, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, Irish commentator Chuck Kruger relates his experience from one of Ireland’s most windswept sites.
Eight miles south of mainland Ireland, and four miles from the island where
I live, rises the solitary Fastnet Rock and its towering Lighthouse. In severe storms, the 180-foot tip of the Fastnet is sometimes obscured not only by the crests of mighty breakers, but by the waves themselves. When foggy or misty, the Fastnet’s foghorn kicks in. At night the lantern’s bright flash reassuringly sweeps the region at five-second intervals: a rhythm as recognizable to mariners as station identifications to radio listeners.
If there’s one incontrovertible symbol of the coast of Ireland, it’s the Fastnet, its first tower lighting up in 1854, its present tower in 1904. John Feehan wrote, “The wind that round the Fastnet sweeps . . . makes itself known in no uncertain terms to every yachtsman, every fisherman, every mariner who sails these seas.”
Last summer I was finally fortunate to experience the Fastnet from on the Rock itself. Friends invited me along in their yacht, and when we got to the there, Gerry and I hopped aboard his dinghy, rowed right up to the Rock. I jumped, made it without getting soaked, held the painter tight while the Gerry took the leap. I began to imagine what it would have been like to live there, to have been a lighthouse keeper, three weeks on, one week off. For some, such a way of life can be like being in an Irish Alcatraz, but for others it can be a liberation, so close does one feel oneself to the inner workings of sea and weather.
Chuck Kruger lives on Cape Clear Island, Ireland. The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru of America.
Today's Links
West Cork Baltimore
http://www.baltimore-ireland.com/places/fastnet.html
John Eagle Irish Lighthouses
http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/JohnEagle.html
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