A short reflection from the old town of Cefalù on the lighthouses of the year
I am sitting at a small table in the old town of Cefalù with a bottle of red from the hills of Mount Etna. Sarah is across from me. The cathedral and the rock above it are going gold in the last of the light. S/V Spindrift is on the hard in Licata, a couple of hours south. Earlier today we walked out to the Cefalù lighthouse under the great rock, and it got me thinking about all the lighthouses we passed this year.
The Cefalù lighthouse, at the end of the street.
Capo Cefalù from above: the lighthouse under the cliff, with the harbor at its feet.
Since the boat left Brittany last fall we have come down past France, Spain and Portugal, through the Strait of Gibraltar and across to Sicily. Every headland in Europe, it turns out, has a lighthouse, and every one of them is blinking at you in its own private code.
And over here they are still on duty. Every night each one sends its own signature, a pattern of flashes and a number of seconds printed on the chart, so you can tell it from its neighbors in the dark. On a black night you sit in the cockpit counting “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” at a light, trying to work out which country you are in. It is the only conversation I know where both sides speak in code and one side is a building.
GPS was supposed to put them all out of work. It didn’t. I have screens at each helm that will tell me where I am to within a boat length, and I still go up on deck to look for the light. The plotter tells you where you are. The light tells you somebody thought about you.
Here are the ten we liked best.
The Lights
La Corbière, Jersey. At high tide the sea covers the causeway and the lighthouse becomes its own island.
La Jument, off Ushant. The most famous lighthouse photograph ever taken was shot here in 1989 by Jean Guichard: a keeper standing in the doorway while a wave wraps around the tower. He stepped back inside just in time. I would have stepped back inside and resigned. (See the photo.)
La Vieille, the Raz de Sein. “The Old Woman.” We took the inside route, past her and past Tévennec, which is said to be the most haunted lighthouse in France. The current was the scary part.
The Tower of Hercules, A Coruña. Built by the Romans and still working after about 1,900 years. It has outlasted the empire that built it.
Cabo Finisterre. The Romans called it the end of the world. Pilgrims walk hundreds of miles on the Camino to stand here. We motored past at six knots and felt we had earned it more.
Cabo de São Vicente. The corner of Portugal where the Atlantic stops and the Mediterranean starts thinking about it.
Europa Point, Gibraltar. The Rock with its cloud cap on, the one Gibraltarians blame on the Levanter, and the lighthouse standing guard at its foot.
Es Vedrà, off Ibiza. Everybody photographs the rock. Almost nobody notices that it carries a tiny light. The introvert of the list.
Porto Pí, Palma. One of the oldest working lighthouses in the world and our home port in the spring. It watched us leave and come back more times than I can count and never once asked where we had been.
Pertusato, Bonifacio. A white tower on white cliffs at the bottom of Corsica, with Sardinia in plain view across the Strait. We anchored just along the cliffs in Cala di Paragnano.
The Lights Before These
A glass and a half in, I will admit the list is missing something. I have been going past lighthouses my whole life.
When I was very young it was Thomas Point Shoal, the little screwpile house standing on iron legs in the Chesapeake at the mouth of the South River, just below Annapolis. To a small boy it looked like a cottage that had waded out into the bay and decided to stay.
In high school and college it was Watch Hill Light, on the Rhode Island shore at the edge of Fishers Island Sound. I paid it less attention back then than I should have. It didn’t seem to mind.
For the last stretch of years it has been Old Barney, at the north end of our island back home on Long Beach Island.
This year I saw the Tower of Hercules, the Old Woman of the Raz and the light at the end of the world. I still think Old Barney is the prettiest of them all, in part because she is home, and she shines her light into our bedroom, reliably, every night.
Old Barney, Barnegat Light, from the inlet.
There is a line I keep in my commonplace notebook. Think of home as a lighthouse. It doesn’t judge the rough seas you’ve traveled. It just keeps the light on to guide you back.
It is what I tell our girls, Sam and Hannah. You can always come home. Knowing that is what should allow you to go and explore the world. The light will always be on, and this is where you will always find safe harbor.
The red is nearly gone. In a few days we fly home, and for the first time all year I will not need a light to find my way. I will walk down and look at her anyway.
A note on the photos: we passed some of these lights at night, and some of my pictures were just too bad to use, so a few of the photos here come from the internet.
S/V Spindrift
Cefalù, Sicily · 38°02’N 14°01’E
Next: home to Long Beach Island for the winter, with S/V Spindrift on the hard in Licata
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