Velociworld

A Blue Channel Marker, and Mad Blindness

I've always been a fan of aids to navigation, be they bouys, both silent and sounded (by bell, gong, whistle, or horn), marker lights, or daybeacons. I like the way they provide information in so many ways. They guide you in from sea, and out, show you where the channel lie, and where the accursed manatee frolic.

I have a steel channel marker I took off the Savannah River in 1974 (legally), when they were replacing all the steel ones with those cheap plastic pieces of junk. It weighs a ton, and it's blue-lensed. Now, everyone knows what red, green, and white mean, but I'll be damned if I can remember what blue is. I believe I took it off a post at the north tower of the old Talmadge Bridge, so blue denotes a bridge hazard, I suppose. It has a fine glass Fresnel lens. The newer lenses are plastic, of course, at least in navigational aids. Lighthouses have the real deal, though.

I spent a month of my senior year of high school at the Coast Guard station at the Tybee lighthouse on an independent study program, so confiscating this light was my patriotic duty. Climbing the lighthouse and staring into a nine-foot tall, 680,000 candlepower First Order Fresnel lens whilst impaired was not, however. I was blinded for eight hours totally, with short-circuited vision for three days.

That little blue Fresnel sits still on my plant ledge, to remind me when I climb a lighthouse with my children to look to sea. To sea.