For the Golden Years, a Bright Idea

"For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time,
and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis
lawn...; and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody...; to
see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful
storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed
against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be able to put
your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea? How would
you like that?"

-- To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf

TURNS OUT, VIRGINIA, THERE ARE PLENTY
of people who would like it. They've been snapping up offshore
lighthouses from the federal government, which has dozens for sale for
as little as $30,000, and turning the neglected 19th-century structures
into luxurious cottages for weekend getaways, business meetings and
retirement recreation.

Lonely as the life of a lighthouse keeper
might seem, the new occupants can't get enough time on their remote
islands. Scott Holman, an experienced underwater explorer who owns and
operates two major foundries in Freeland, Mich., uses his Granite Rocks lighthouse, 12 miles offshore in Lake Superior, for corporate board meetings when he's not weekending there.

"It's a great retreat," says Holman, who
was one of the first private citizens to buy a lighthouse. There's no
fear of a director wandering far from deliberations for a round of
golf: Holman's refurbished lighthouse sits on two and a half acres of
granite. And the weather on the temperamental Lake Superior can be
unpredictable. Granite Island is famous for its fog. The lake itself
hosts storms that best anything on the saltwater oceans. On Jan. 18,
2003, Holman's weather gauges record winds of 143 miles per hour.

Dan
Billingsley, an engineer and accomplished ocean sailor from Annapolis,
Md., partnered with his brother-in-law to buy the 1,100-square-foot,
cast-iron "sparkplug" lighthouse atop a concrete- and iron-encased
cement piling in the Chesapeake Bay at Hampton Roads, Va., for $31,000.
They are spending weekends and $100,000 in materials to restore the
Newport News Middleground Lighthouse's exterior and turn the interior
into a vacation home. The partners have been working for two summers
now, aided by family volunteers. They expect their work to be finished
in another eight months.

"It's been a lot of fun," says
Billingsley, 58, whose wife also is an engineer and whose two sons are
engineering students. One recent treat was watching sailboat races from
the lighthouse's deck, 15 feet above the water. It was like watching a
horse race from a seat at the inside rail.

The Delaware Bay Light sold for $200,000. Dozens of lighthouses are being auctioned off after satellite technology and solar-powered buoys made them obsolete.

THE LIGHTHOUSES WERE OWNED by the U.S. Coast Guard,
which no longer needs most of them. New technologies like
global-positioning satellites and signal-buoys powered by solar cells
have rendered most of the 300 Coast Guard lighthouses obsolete (though
at some, the new owners work with the Coast Guard to keep the lights
burning).

Sales are handled by the General Services Administration, which advertises the properties and accepts bids online (go to www.cr.nps.gov/maritime and www.auctionrp.com/auctions2).
Thirty-seven lighthouses have been transferred to the GSA since 2006,
some for as much as $250,000, and another 51 are being transferred for
sale.

Historical societies and municipalities generally get first
crack at the most desirable lighthouses -- those on the edge of the
shore -- but there are still plenty for the public to pick from, and
some states, like Virginia and Maryland, offer decent tax breaks.

Robert Trapani Jr., executive director of the American Lighthouse Foundation
says the lighthouses are fairly spacious, most with four floors. Buyers
should be careful to check out the foundations of cement surrounded by
cast iron, which is often 30 feet into the water and seabed. Ice flows
can damage the structures, "so stability is an issue," he says. Ralph
Conner, who runs the sales for the GSA, says most serious bidders visit
the lighthouses with a structural engineer in tow.

Holman, an
engineer whose companies make parts for offshore oil rigs, paid $86,000
for his lighthouse. He ferried contractors to and from the island
hundreds of times for the extensive renovation project, which ran to
six-figures. He had roofers install zinc shingles that replicated the
asbestos-shingle look of the original and completely gutted the
interior plaster walls, which had been ruined by rainwater, and
replaced them with sheetrock.

He rewired the house and installed
solar panels and wind generators for power. He had the old wood floors
refinished, installed new kitchen cabinets and appliances, and had masons repair the island's 400 steps and walkways.

This old light, 12 miles offshore in lake Superior, on Granite Island, is now the weekend retreat of businessman Scott Holman.

Because it was so difficult to land a boat by the rocks,
Holman ordered a 22-foot Zodiac, a type of boat that has a hard bottom
and inflatable sides. He logged 3,000 miles on it in less than three
months, but the boat wasn't always up to the job. Once, he says,
Superior's rough waves partially split the craft on a return trip; the
operator managed to make it ashore only after using wire to tie the
sides of the boat together. The manufacturer eventually replaced that
boat and, in the meantime, Holman bought a 30-foot Zodiac with a cabin
to complete the work.

Billingsley has had his share of daunting
experiences, too. He said it took several weeks to clean his lighthouse
of bird droppings, feathers, eggs, and nesting materials. He installed
a hoist to lift a 750-pound diesel generator and other equipment into
place (and rebuilt it when it burned out), and put in such niceties as
a $2,000 marine toilet.

So what in the end does a lighthouse
owner really get? "It looked like a unique summer cottage," Billingsley
says. "But it's more like a giant tree fort."

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