It was a very busy weekend on Seguin. On Saturday we welcomed over 50 visitors to the island. It also happened to be Matt’s 50th birthday. We had some friends visit and we got a chance to go “cliff jumping” (i.e., hopping from rock to rock between the Cove Trail and Cobblestone Beach) with our friends’ kids, hike the trails, play card games, and share some great meals to celebrate. We were joking around with Matt that he has to retired from lighthouse keeping because the US Lighthouse Service had a cutoff age of 50 when they were in charge of Seguin Island Light, though we all agreed Matt’s doing a great job and can stay on through the end of the summer.
Summer really felt in full swing on Saturday as the moorings were full nearly all day. We had a group of 21 visitors spend the afternoon picnicking and taking turns going on lighthouse tours. Their group put us over 900 visitors for the summer! We saw visitors swimming in the cove and nearly every group took some time to hike around the North Trail to pick the blackberries that have overtaken nearly every inch of the island. August is a special time in New England when everyone is enjoying summer to the last drop, but everyone also knows that the first days that feel like fall are right around the corner.
By Sunday morning, the fog settled in and there were pretty strong winds and relatively low visibility as Hurricane Ernesto started to churn up the waters. We didn’t have any visitors to the lighthouse, but we did see a couple of sailboats out on moorings when we ventured down to the cove later that evening. It looked like it was a pretty rocky night for anyone who was moored out there.
This morning the fog was the thickest we’ve seen it and it didn’t let up all day. The batteries didn’t charge up in the morning because we got no sun for nearly two days straight, so we had to turn on the generator for a couple hours in the morning to get the system up and running again. Even though we can’t see the water today, we can hear it roaring. The tide is high from the full moon and the combination of the wind, tide, and storm off shore brought large waves and some huge logs (more like trees) into the cove. We’ll have to figure out a good time to try to move the largest log to somewhere more safe once the waves settle and we time the tides right. We just had one couple come up from the sailboat around noon to get some shore time after spending the night on the mooring. They were planning to stay again tonight to wait out the rough seas and fog.
The juxtaposition between the perfect summer day of Saturday and today’s moody fog was very Seguin. We’re looking forward to seeing what the remainder of our time here will bring as the summer winds down.
