MOVING SANKATY
Preparations underway for Historic move of Sankaty Head Lighthouse
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER

First in a series

Almost more historic than its original construction is the moving of the 157-yearold, 450-ton Sankaty Head Lighthouse.

PHOTOS BY ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent A summer squall passes to the north of Sankaty Light, above, which wears a supportive girdle of wood and cable. Below, left to right, holes were sawn through four feet of brick and stone, making room for steel I-beams that will be used to lift the lighthouse. Center, an upward view of the interior spiral staircase, which is suspended for the move. At right, International Chimney specialist Mark Mitchell uses a maul and wedges to free a freshly-cut section at the light's base.

In three weeks, the ancient brick and mortar behemoth will be inched down steel beams to a safer location next to the fifth hole of the Sankaty Head Golf Course - 390 feet to the northwest and 250 feet from the bluff's edge.

An act of the U.S. Congress allowed the U.S. Coast Guard to eventually gift the 70-foot lighthouse to the 'Sconset Trust - an appropriate gesture considering that it was a faction of the Trust that got the monumental move in gear.

"To me, the most important part of the location of the lighthouse is that it is a Nantucket project and not a 'Sconset project," said Bob Felch, president of the 'Sconset Trust. "We've got the school kids involved and we're actually just starting to reach out to the business community."

Sixteen years of fundraising and awareness campaigning to pay for the $4 mil- lion move began with the formation of Save Our Sankaty by six 'Sconseters. Besides the SOS slogan that appeared on bumper stickers around the island, Mother Nature inadvertently helped in her own way, biting huge chunks out of the bluff in front of the lighthouse that stood 250 feet from the edge when it was erected in 1850. And Sankaty Head Golf Club donated golf course land for the new location.

But the actual lifting, hauling and transplanting of the lighthouse is being done by the world-renowned anything-movers, International Chimney of Buffalo, N.Y. and their moving subcontractor, Expert House Movers of Virginia Beach, Va. who moved the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island, R.I., the Cape Hatteras Light Station on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, the Highland Light Station in Truro, Mass. and the Nauset Lighthouse in Eastham, Mass.

Although Expert House Movers President Jerri Matyiko thinks he can move Sankaty 390 feet in less than 10 days without so much as cracking a brick or chipping the paint, International Chimney President Rick Lohr is reticent - with good reason - about making predictions.

"Slowly and carefully," said Lohr of their lighthouse moving modus operandi. "It could take three days. It could take a week and a half. I'm very careful not to give a specific speed. With the Hatteras lighthouse, we hoped to go 50 feet a day. Some days we went 300 feet, some days we went 20."

Once on its new home turf and safely away from the edge of the bluff, Sankaty Head Light will continue as an aid to navigation, although the beam will be seven feet lower than it is now. Its grounds and historical interpretive exhibits, moreover, will be open to the public.

YOU CAN HAVE IT, BUT...

Six members of the 'Sconset Trust, led by the late Gene Horn and including Phil Arensberg and his wife, Kit Murphy, David Churchill, Elizabeth Bentley and Carol Moffitt, had a collective epiphany in 1991 to move the lighthouse after the devastating no-name Halloween storm that year, also called the Perfect Storm. During the following winters of '92, '93 and '94, the bluff lost a tremendous amount of ground to storm erosion, with the lighthouse losing 17.1 feet of ground to nor'easters between June 1991 and July 1992.

"I think the formation of the group owes itself to a gentleman who is no longer with us, Gene Horn, who felt that there was one storm and there would invariably be other storms, and if I remember, that was well before there was any sort of erosion control," said Arensberg.

Bo Overlock designed the bumper sticker and three members of the Sankaty Head Golf Club - Willard Overlock, Sam Sylvia and E. Garrett Bewkes - negotiated the easement for the new lighthouse site on club property, which today is the exact location on International Chimney's plans, said Arensberg.

But before any of these brainstorms, in 1991 the U.S. Coast Guard, in a nationwide effort to divest itself of its lighthouses and their costly maintenance by passing them on to nonprofits and private individuals, asked the Nantucket Lifesaving Museum if it could take Sankaty. Hearing no, the next stop was the NHA, where the Coast Guard got the same answer, said former NHA executive director Maurice Gibbs.

"The NHA just had too much on its plate," said Gibbs. "It simply wasn't a case of not wanting to do it. Also, Walter Beinecke Jr., vice president of the NHA at the time, and I, were also working on a parallel project to save the Methodist Church as a historical site."

Added to the slate of projects was the NHA's climate controlled storage facility on Bartlett Road and its first-ever collection inventory, forcing the NHA board of directors and Gibbs to rule in December 1991 that it just did not have the resources to acquire Sankaty.

But the NHA did take the lead on preservation efforts with Save Our Sankaty, including holding

public forums that led to the petitioning in

1992 of former Massachusetts Congressman Gerry Studds, who successfully lobbied the U.S. Coast Guard to push for special legislation

- Section 5220 of the Oceans Act of 1992 - that authorized the Secretary of Transportation to give the lighthouse to the NHA. But with the NHA out as a keeper of the lighthouse and, following a period of subdued winter storms combined with the Siasconset Beach Preservation Fund's dewatering system that went online in the fall of 1994, which may have slowed erosion of the bluff, the 'Sconset Trust briefly held on to the false hope of not having to move the lighthouse.

HISTORIC HAND-OFF

Lighthouse moving and transfer efforts were rekindled late in 1994. There was 96 feet between the lighthouse and the edge of the bluff when the 'Sconset Trust agreed to take ownership of the lighthouse and began working on a procedure for acquiring it from the Coast Guard through the NHA. But before the Coast Guard would give up the lighthouse, it needed to feel comfortable that the 'Sconset Trust could move the lighthouse to a safe location, maintain the structure and accurately and competently interpret its history for the public.

In 2002, then 'Sconset Trust president Susan Ruddick contacted International Chimney on behalf of the Trust and asked them to do a shelf report that evaluated the erosion of the bluff in front of the lighthouse and looked at the feasibility of moving it. Quarterly meetings with International Chimney began in 2003 and, with guidance from the U.S. Coast Guard and the 'Sconset Trust, the NHA board of trustees voted unanimously on Oct. 14, 2005 to take momentary ownership of the lighthouse from the Coast Guard before passing it on to the Trust. That transfer happened just last week on Aug. 30 with the lighthouse standing only 76 feet from the edge of the bluff.

The agreement also includes the Sankaty Head Golf Club, which granted a pro bono easement of 10 acres to the 'Sconset Trust and the Massachusetts Historical Commission that required meticulous documentation of the transfer, technical details of the lighthouse move and the comprehensive historical documentation of the present lighthouse, said Felch.

"They needed a memorandum agreement between the Coast Guard, the 'Sconset Trust and Massachusetts Historical Commission and the Trust to report to the Massachusetts Historical Commission bi-weekly," he said.

FROM POINT A TO POINT B

After an initial visit in April to attach a wood-slatsteel cable girdle to the outside of the lighthouse and stabilize the internal spiral staircase, preparations by International Chimney resumed in August. While excavating around the lighthouse and beneath the interior after removing a concrete slab, crews discovered two extra cast-iron steps on the spiral staircase in the sand under the slab. These steps, bringing the total to 62, will be restored and maintained at the new site, an effort that will add nine to 10 inches to the height of the lighthouse.

Since that discovery in early August, International Chimney got busy with the excavation of the lighthouse and the preparation of a moveable foundation of steel beams. During the past week, crews used chainsaws with diamond-studded teeth to cut holes near the lighthouse base, through which a matrix of steel beams will be placed to help jack it up onto what Lohr and Matyiko call roll beams.

"After they insert some beams through it - a couple of them are extra long - they will put jacks on it that are ten feet away from the lighthouse and this will allow us to dig lower," said Matyiko.

They will jack up the lighthouse by using a hydraulic unified jacking system on beams protruding out around the lighthouse like spokes on a bicycle wheel, pushing the light upwards by raising all the jacks at the same time on the same plane. As the jacks gradually bring the lighthouse up, oak cribbing is placed underneath the light until the lighthouse is level with roll beams laid out in the northwest travel path. Two main beams on either side of the lighthouse and a network of crossbeams will form a moveable foundation of steel H-beams that will carry the lighthouse to its new site.

What rolls on these steel beams are units called Hilman rollers, thick rollers like short rolling pines attached to a greased chain in an oblong loop encased in steel boxes. Attached to the main beams supporting the lighthouse are more hydraulic jacks, their pistons pushing downward on the Hilman rollers.

With the roll beams placed close together, the Hilman rollers are grouped in a triangular formation for optimum stability in supporting the lighthouse and keeping it level on the roll beams. The unified jacking system connected to the jacks will keep the lighthouse level over varying terrain.

"These jacks are then used to pick up the load and the portable foundation with the lighthouse that is floated on the hydraulics," said Lohr. "The many jacks and rollers are in three zones, creating a tricycle effect that will not stress the frame."

With the lighthouse ready to move on the roll beams, another unified jack system, this one with pistons pushing horizontally, will drive the lighthouse along the roll beams at 62 inches per stroke. When Matyiko is close to running out of roll beams, the ones behind the lighthouse are picked up and laid in front of it so the lighthouse can continue its move northwestward.

"You can go five feet every ten minutes, but we only have three lengths of roll beams, so we can only

stretch out 130 feet, then we

have to take the roll beams out and bring them out in the front."

Because the new lighthouse site is 12 feet below the existing one, and the new foundation is built up five feet above grade, the lighthouse will descend seven feet in elevation as it travels the 390 feet to its new foundation. At steep drops in the terrain, the moving stops and the lighthouse will be lowered down onto roll beams at the lower grade and the thrusting by the horizontal unified jacking system will continue.

Throughout the move, the Coast Guard has asked the 'Sconset Trust to keep the lighthouse lit if possible, said Felch.

Felch said that the initial plan was to turn the light off on Aug. 30, but it will remain on until the move and be off throughout the move itself.

This moving process continues until the lighthouse is dead center over its new foundation. The unified jacking system will be employed to lower the lighthouse onto its concrete-and-steelrebar reinforced foundation, said Matyiko.

When the move is complete and the lighthouse is in place, all the steel beams will be removed and the holes cut in the lighthouse will be filled in with brick and mortar.

With 76 feet left between the lighthouse and the great beyond, and International Chimney's moving minimum of 67 feet of bluff, October's move comes just in time, as catastrophic winter storms could easily eat up more feet of bluff next winter.