Pete's Irish Lighthouses

Just back from a very quick one-night stay trip to Waterford, after my wife expressed interest in visiting a horological exhibition there. "You're not going to drag me to any lighthouses?" says she. "As if!" says I. To be honest, and my wife agreed, the horological exhibition wasn't up to much. A dozen or so of the finest watchmakers in the world assembled in one room. Each bought one, or maybe two watches to show us. "Yup, that's nice." "Yup, that's nice," "Yup, that's nice." Thirty seconds later and we'd seen everything. Good job it was free. Undaunted, we decided to try the new Irish Museum of Time which opened in Greyfriars Church last year. A fiver in, which turned out to be a real bargain. A fantastic collection of grandfather clocks, mantle clocks, ship's clocks, Austrian, Japanese, Swiss, you name it they had it. We spent two hours in there which surprised me, as my attention span is normally measured...

  Once again I am indebted to my mysterious friend Nick from Holywood for sending me pictures of the Northern Lights tender Pharos cruising up and down Belfast Lough. Equally as mysterious, Nick tells me, is that the vessel has no name or ID markings and its transponder was turned off. Basically, there are three lighthouse boards in these islands - Trinity House, which covers England; the Northern Lighthouse Board, which is responsible for Scotland and the Isle of Man; and the Commissioner of Irish Lights, which is of course the authority for the island of Ireland. So the Pharos is basically the Scottish equivalent of Granuaile, going around the coast and servicing buoys and lights. But whereas the Granuaile is the third light tender of that name in our jurisdiction (which sometimes leads to confusion), the Pharos is the tenth of that name to serve the Northern Lighthouse Board. Built in Poland and brought into service in 2007, it is based at Oban on the beautiful, island-stud...