Sankaty Head Lighthouse at Dawn, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts
The Sankaty Head Light on Nantucket's eastern edge sits on a high bluff, towering over the beach below. In this photograph, the rising new moon is barely visible as a crescent-shaped sliver, made small by the wide angle lens necessary to get the entire lighthouse in the photo from such a close position. Gulls make gray blurs of themselves due to the slow shutter speed.
When I was the Mate on a small fishing boat, we would sometimes go commercial fishing for codfish. The only ones left in the area in any appreciable numbers were about twenty miles east of the island, or about fifty miles at sea. As we were out of Madaket on the island's western end, we had to steam all the way around the island and past Sankaty before heading out on the completely open sea. We fished far enough out that we could not see any land at all. The days were long, as we had to leave at first light, steam out to the fishing grounds, fish hard all day, then steam back home. Seeing the light at Sankaty was a welcome sign that we were nearing the island and a well-deserved supper.
Photo location: Sankaty Head, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts
