There’s a secret place out in the waters in the San Francisco Bay Area where history, quiet, relaxation, romance, good company and excellent dining all come together for an unforgettable overnight stay.

Built in 1873 on one of the Brothers Islands, in the strait where San Pablo Bay meets the waters of San Francisco Bay, the Victorian-style tower and house of East Brother Light Station opened as a unique Dinner, Bed and Breakfast Inn over twenty years ago, literally saved at the last minute from destruction and preserved for coming generations of visitors and guests. A 501 c3 Non-Profit California Corporation restored and now maintains the historic, registered property under license from the US Coast Guard. To raise money for a variety of restoration and renewal projects on the island, the corporation operates an Inn from Thursday through Sunday nights.

Although visible in the distance from the upper span of the Richmond – San Rafael Bridge, the East Brother Light Station and its Inn have long been one of the area’s best-kept secrets. Over the years, a wide variety of guests have taken the short boat ride across the bay to enjoy a memorable evening of gourmet dining and conversation in the old lighthouse. Artists, authors, lighthouse buffs, honeymooners, wedding parties, world travelers, people celebrating anniversaries, business executives looking for a place where phones and e-mail messages don’t intrude — all have found a place where stress and strains get smoothed away.

The experience begins in the late afternoon; the guests gather at the Pt. San Pablo Yacht Harbor for the short 10-minute boat ride to the Island. Upon arrival, climbing the ladder to the dock, you step back in time to when this was a working aid to mariners plying the waters of the bay on their journeys upriver to Sacramento or Stockton, or returning outbound to San Francisco or further through the Golden Gate.

Enjoy a welcome glass of champagne as the Innkeeper tells you of the history of the island and of the Light Station. Watch the sun go down over the Marin County hills, and the lights come on in San Francisco, clearly visible across the waters.

Dinner here on the Island is the stuff of legends. There are two principal job requirements for service as an Innkeeper at East Brother: an up-to-date Coast Guard skipper’s license, and being an excellent chef. (An unwritten third is talespinning; the ability to weave stories of past keepers, history and mariners into a magical evening.)

The following morning, you’ll find the table set again for a memorable breakfast, followed by a tour of the lighthouse and the fog signal building. You’ll get to hear the deep booming of the foghorn (along with everyone else within several miles!), and perhaps can imagine the lives of bygone keepers and their wives, working to keep the light burning through the night and the warning signal going when the fog came up.

The boat will be waiting at 11 AM to take you ashore, back to the yacht harbor and a busy world, but that’s okay. When it all gets to be too much again, you’ll remember where to go to leave it all behind.

Photography: Mikael Blaisdell

Perhaps you’ve heard one, far-off in the night or through the misty fog, the deep “BEEEEEEE-Ohhhh” sound of a foghorn. It can be a romantic sound, if you’re safe and snug inside and ashore. Out on the water, however, it has a difference meaning. “Here is danger!” it cries. “Stay well clear.“

The Diaphone

The technical name for the foghorn is the diaphone. Here at East Brother Light Station, we have two of them, and two systems to produce the air to power them, although only one is operational at this time. This is a picture from a few years ago. (The white platforms around the diaphones were apparently added sometime in the late 70’s; they weren’t part of the building when it was constructed. When they got old and the wood had deteriorated, the Wickies removed them, leaving only the diaphones themseves.)

Originally, the main diaphone system was electrically powered, with a backup generator in case the shore-supplied electric power went down. Unfortunately, many years ago, the old 3-phase power cable across the floor of the channel was cut by a ship dragging its anchor. The replacement cable only brought single-phase electricity, so the old 3-phase electric motor that powered the main air compressor could no longer run. Today, we use what was once the backup system to blow our horns.

The process begins by using a lanyard wound around the small yellow wheel to start a small gasoline “pony” engine. Here is a picture of the system: the pony engine is located at the left side of the main diesel.

After the pony engine is going well, the next step is to engage a clutch to turn the main diesel engine over. Once the diesel has been started, the clutch is disengaged and the gasoline pony engine is shut off. When the diesel comes up to speed, another clutch is used to engage the air compressor. The dark bands visible beneath the yellow metal shrouding on the left are the drive belts for the compressor just beyond.

Here’s another view that shows what the air compressor itself looks like. The yellow screens are there to keep people away from the wheels, and to prevent things getting caught in them as they spin. The next photo shows the inside of the air compressor itself, revealed by removing a cast iron cover at the top. This is the piston shaft — and the oil supply pipe which you may be able to make out in the center (hint: look above the shadow!) that keeps squirting oil so that everything stays properly lubricated.

The air is pumped from the compressor through pipes to the two large air tanks shown below, to a maximum of 40 pounds per square inch of pressure. They’re pretty large, but keep in mind that what the diaphones need is a lot of volume rather than high pressure.

The next step is to transfer the air through pipes up to one of the two diaphone units on the roof. The two chains control which horn will receive the air supply. Only one is open at any time. (No, you wouldn’t want to have both open at once, for there isn’t enough volume to blow both horns at once anyway. And who would want to? One is plenty loud enough, as anyone who has ever spent a night at the Inn and gotten the full tour can testify.

The machine in the lower left is what once was the main air compressor unit, driven by an electric motor. In the fall of 2007, some Wickies examined this unit and found it half full of coolant water. We hope one day to be able to restore it, and would welcome anyone who feels mechanically inclined and has time to tinker!

You can’t quite see it in the picture, but there is an exhaust valve at the bottom of the tanks to allow water from condensation to be expelled from the system. The exhaust pipe leads underneath the concrete floor and off to the right, with the outlet outside near a eucalyptus tree that’s grown up over the years at the top of the ramp.

This is the control panel for the system, with two rotating timing wheels. Notice the little notches at the edge of each wheel? When the wheel rotates so that the notch is at the top, it permits a switch to make connection which triggers the valves of the horn. There are two levels to each notch, varying the connection to produce the two different tones of the diaphone. The metal switch in between the two wheels and just below the wiring connections at the top controls which horn will sound. Only one horn is used at a time, the other is a backup. The gauge off to the right is the pressure indicator for the system — we never go over 40 psi. The wheels take about 30 seconds to rotate, so the horn sounds at the correct interval.

The sound of the horn carries for miles, depending upon the weather conditions. On a clear night, people have claimed to be able to hear the foghorn on East Brother as far away as San Rafael. We usually blow the horn in the mornings, when the night’s guests of the Inn are being given a tour, and at other times when requested by passing ships or ferries.

The diaphones at East Brother are oriented upwards, which I’m told is very unusual. Here’s a view of the top.

It was once the temporary perch for a seagull, who happened to land there only seconds before the horn was sounded for a tour. The outraged gull was either startled or blown a couple of feet in the air when the horn went off, and proceeded to circle about and let the observers know about his or her displeasure until it sensed the horn was about to sound again and rapidly departed for a quieter roost.

Our diaphones are Model F2T’s, and while both of them still work, they both badly need to be tuned. Are there any diaphone experts out there who would like to volunteer their services to get our system fully restored? Or diesel mechanics, to help out by working on the diesel engines that power the air compressors? If so, please get in touch with me, we’d love to have you involved.

In the meantime, now you know what a foghorn looks like, and have some idea about how it works — remember East Brother Light Station the next time you hear one booming through the night.

Photography: Mikael Blaisdell

For over 130 years, the sole freshwater supply on East Brother Island has been from rainwater. Captured from runoff from buildings and the concrete pad, stored in the 50,000 gallon capacity cistern beneath the center of the island, water has always been a precious thing. There has never been an excess supply, and now the demand is even greater.

The Cistern

The white dome is the cover for the cistern. Built before the invention of rebar concrete, the cistern had to be covered with a brick arch so that it wouldn’t fall in. There is a small manhole at the top, which once was used to lower a small man down inside when the cistern was to be cleaned. Around the base of the cistern, there are inlets to capture the water, and an outlet to dump the excess back to the bay. A pipe runs from the cistern beneath the concrete and into the Fog Signal Building, to a pump that moves it over to the redwood tank. From there, as needed, it is pumped back into the FSB where it is filtered and exposed to UV light to purify it before it goes to the house and/or the Keeper’s Cottage.

Water Woes

When the Coast Guard gave the non-profit East Brother Light Station Inc. a license to operate and to maintain the facility 30 years ago, the buildings and infrastructure were in very poor repair. The light station had been automated many years earlier, so there had been no need for a water supply. The 25,000 gallon secondary redwood tank had stood empty for so long, its timbers and bindings had shifted. Fortunately, once the hoops were repositioned and tightened, and water pumped into the tank to swell the wood, the leaks stopped and the tank was functional again.

Here’s a picture of the redwood tank being drained. The piping system at the base of the tank needed repair, so we had to remove the contents (25,000 gallons) and put the water back into the cistern. There’s a pump that moves water from the cistern to the tank, but apparently the designers of the system never thought much about having to go the other way!

The Redwood Tank

Once the Inn began operations, the need for water increased. A policy was instituted that guests only got to use the showers if they stayed two nights. Once the visitors understood that the only water supply was captured during the spring rainy season, they were glad to help out. The wastewater system was run on salt water, pumped out of the bay near the dock and from there up the ramp and into the system. This arrangement worked fairly well until the Bay Area water quality entities requested that the wastewater be processed rather than being dumped into the bay as it had been since the light station began. The state chipped in with a grant, and the wastewater system was built at a cost of about $150,000.

Unfortunately, although the wastewater system was supposed to work with salt water, the system consistently failed to pass the various water quality tests. Something had to be done. The salt water feed was shut off, and fresh water from the cistern was used for the wastewater system. EBLS was in compliance with the water quality tests, but the supply of fresh water was sinking very fast. What to do?

The next step was to get another grant, this time to purchase and install a desalinization system to turn bay water into fresh. The unit was duly purchased, delivered and installed. The first day, it ran like a champ for a couple of hours, and then a pressure pump failed. The pump was replaced, and the system was tried again. Unfortunately, the main saltwater pumps down on the dock then failed. Great! Off to the supplier to replace a $650 pump, and to do some rewiring. Life around a lighthouse is certainly never boring…

The next problem was that there was too much silt in the water at the level of the intake at the pier, so we had to raise the intake pipe, and acquire a powerful filter unit to ensure that only salt water got pumped up to the desalinization system. That filter remains on the list of things-to-be-installed at present — we’ve had other issues of greater priority of late.

So, at the moment, the freshwater supply is still rapidly shrinking. We hope to have the dock pumps replaced and fully functional again shortly. In the meantime, if there are any water supply experts around the area who would like to apply for the volunteer job of WaterMaster, please contact me at your earliest convenience!

Photography: Mikael Blaisdell

The gulls are supposed to be scared away by what seems to be waiting for them, but we’re hoping you won’t be.  What better way could there be to spend a Saturday than working at a lighthouse?

Workdays are generally held on the 2nd Saturday of the month..  There’s a lot to be done, as always.  There’s restoration work, the desalinization system still needs attention, there’s gardening to do and a never-ending list of general maintenance and cleaning tasks offers opportunities for all skill levels to make a difference.

The first requirement for being an EBLS “Wickie” is a willingness to lend a hand wherever one is needed.  You may not be a diesel mechanic or an electrician yourself, but you can certainly help someone who is as the team works on keeping the lights burning and the foghorn sounding.  Or perhaps you have some special skills and can spot a job that was just waiting for you to arrive.

We’ll go out at 0900, and come back off the Island by 4 PM.  In order to participate, you must first have registered as a Volunteer and have RSVP’d to the e-mailed  invitation.  There are only a limited number of spaces each month, and it’s first come, first served.  Late responders may find themselves on the waiting list.

Can’t make it this month?  There’s always next, and the month after that as well.  The work of maintaining an historic light station never ends.  East Brother has been going strong for over 100 years now, and with your help, should still be delighting visitors for another 100 to come.

Keeping a web site going is a lot like maintaining a lighthouse — there is never an end to the work to be done.  Just when you think everything ought to be running smoothly, something breaks.  Or, in this particular case, gets broken.  (Here’s a picture of the Tool Room on the Island; the behind-the-scenes look at the Website Administration panel is not all that different!)

Dealing With The Spammers

As the marine air is to the buildings and equipment of the lighthouse, corroding everything it touches, so are spammers to web sites.  For some strange reason, there was a spate of “volunteers” who signed up with odd names to the Wickie list over the past few months.  As fast as they were deleted, the names reappeared.  Finally, the Volunteer page itself was “hacked,” redirecting visitors to some foreign web site.  Enough was enough; we’ve now moved the entire EBLS site to a different host and to a different system which should make it less vulnerable and easier to maintain.

You may have noticed that Comments are not currently being allowed for articles posted on The Foghorn.  That’s because open comments attract spammers like exposed flesh draws mosquitoes on a warm summer evening.  We may turn on the Comments feature at some point, but we will require commenters to be fully registered and logged in, and all comments will be held for editorial review before being published.

In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you, and we’d very much welcome your photographs of the Island and stories about your experiences as guests of the Inn.  Contact us via e-mail if you have material to share.

The Real “Wickies.”

Every month, on the second Saturday (weather permitting!), the EBLS Wickies get together for a workday on the Island.  There are always windows to be washed, gardening to be done, tool rooms to be put in order and a myriad of other standard maintenance tasks that need the doing — and which can be done by nearly anyone, regardless of skill level.  (Here’s one of our Board members, Kristen, cleaning the Galley windows.)

And there are tasks which do require some strength and/or more specialized skills.  The diesel engines in the Fog Signal building (air compressor and electric generator) need periodic maintenance, there is always electrical work to be done, and repairs to be made to the pier and other buildings.

(The photo to the right shows Pete Martin, Board member and VP, working with a Wickie crew to install a new dock ladder. )

The key requirement for a successful Wickie is simply a willingness to lend a hand wherever needed.  You may not be a licensed Electrical Engineer yourself, but you could help one on a variety of projects around the Island on a workday.  Don’t know anything about dry rot restoration?  Neither did many of our wickies before they offered to work with Tom or Charlie on a particular project.

For some time, it was thought that the compressed air winch used for hauling supplies up the ramp was broken.  And then a new wickie with a background in mechanical engineering took a look at it and discovered that all that was needed was an adjustment to the clutch.

Can you coordinate and manage the activities of a group of individuals?  We’re looking for a new Wickie coordinator to run the monthly workdays.  There is always a need for buiding materials on the Island, so if you have contacts in the building supply industry and could help with arranging donations, we’d love to talk to you.

Grant Writing, Anyone?

Even if the Inn were able to run at full capacity seven nights a week and 365 days per year, there would still be not enough money generated from it to do all that needs to be done to preserve the Light Station.

Over the years, the EBLS, Inc. non-profit 501 c3 Corporation has received a number of grants and donations that have enabled the restoration of the light station.  One grant paid for the construction of a waste water processing facility; another for the purchase of a salt water desalinization system.  But there is much more on the “wish list” that needs to be addressed.  The existing boat is getting older, and a backup is sorely needed.  There have been dreams of restoring the old pier that once was on the other side of the island, so that there would be an alternate — and perhaps an easier access point to the Island.  The entire electrical system requires serious attention all the way from the shoreside delivery point.  Could the island be run off solar power?  Not without a lot of help.

If you’re an experienced grant writer, and/or know of funding sources, etc., and can help, the Island offers a substantial opportunity to make a true difference.  The Victorian-era buildings were saved from being razed to the ground because a dedicated group of people came together to preserve a unique historical resource.  Preservation, however, is not a one-time deal — it’s an ongoing effort.

The Next Step

Now that we’re in our new home, the Wickie List needs to be rebuilt.  If you’re interested in being a part of the effort, the first step is to register yourself here on the new site.  Tell us a little about yourself and your skills.  Plan to join us on the second Saturday of the month — once you’ve registered, you’ll receive an e-mail announcement each month with an invitation to sign up for the work party. Remember that the Innkeepers are providing a gourmet lunch that is not to be missed!

You don’t have to attend the work parties in order to be a true Wickie, however, for there is off-island work to be done as well.  If you have time and skills to offer, we’d love to hear from you.  The East Brother Light Station has been proudly standing in the strait between the San Francisco and San Pablo bays for over 130 years because people like you cared enough to do what it takes to keep it going.  Hopefully, it will still be as proudly present in 2108 as it is today.