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The Fyddeye Guide to America’s Lighthouses makes your travel planning easier by showing you hundreds of fascinating lighthouses you can visit today on the east coast, Great Lakes, Gulf Coast, and the west coast, including Alaska and Hawaii. From remote islands in Maine to the metropolises of southern California, you’ll discover the towering historic structures that have inspired travelers for millennia. You can get close to virtually all America’s lighthouses, and many allow you to climb to the top and stay as long as a month in historic buildings.

• More than 750 lighthouses, conveniently organized by coastal region and state
• Brief histories and complete contact information, including website, email address, and phone
• Three maps with suggested itineraries for discovering lighthouses in New England, Michigan, and California
• Notes on whether you can stay overnight on the lighthouse grounds, possibly in the keepers’ historic quarters
• Chapters on lightships and historic life-saving stations, including availability of overnight accommodations
• More than 40 images of lighthouses from coast to coast

With a foreword by leading New England lighthouse photographer Jeremy D’Entremont.

Museums, gift shops, and historical societies: Buy directly from the author! Send email to Joe Follansbee today and get all the details!

• ISBN/EAN13: 0984905405 / 9780984905409
• LCCN: 2011944952
• Page Count: 242
• Binding Type: US Trade Paper
• Trim Size: 6" x 9"
• Language: English
• Color: Black and White with Bleed
• Related Categories: Travel / Special Interest / General

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How to Be a Sailor (via YouTube) Walt Disney's Goofy gives a short course in maritime history through World War II. The cartoon was released in 1944.

Shipwrecks of Lake Union: Seattle's Hidden History (via YouTube) The Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle, in partnership with the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, the Washington State Department of Ecology, and local diving enthusiasts, is documenting shipwrecks at the bottom of Lake Union in Seattle. This short documentary was produced by filmmaker Vaun Raymond and students at the Art Institute of Seattle.

Felicity Ann is the UK-built 23-foot sloop used by Englishwoman Ann Davison when she become the first woman to solo across the Atlantic in 1953. She wrote about her experience in her 1956 book My Ship Is So Small.

Felicity Ann was built in the Cremyll Shipyard in England in 1939, but construction was interrupted by the war. The sloop was completed in 1949 or 1950. Ann bought her in the early 50's.

Davison's story is an example of triumph over adversity. Ann was a civilian pilot before the war (her pilot husband owned the airfield,  located near Liverpool). When the war came, the government took over the airfield, their planes and house, and the Davisons lost nearly everything they had. They sold what little they had left and bought an island in a Scottish lake, farming there during the war.

After the war ended, the Davisons wanted to get away from the severe austerity that characterized post-war England. They bought and partially restored a large motor ketch, but ran out of money. To avoid the boat being impounded, they took it to sea where they were wrecked and her husband drowned. After recovering, Ann went to work in a local boatyard, learned to sail and to navigate, and saved up the money to buy Felicity Ann.

"As soon as I set foot on her I knew she was right and that she was the ship for me," she wrote. "She was sympatico. She had a slightly aggressive air and the quality, distinguishable but indefinable, that spells reliability; adversity, I felt, would bring out the best in her."

Felicity Ann, as built, had the following specifications, according to author John Doherty: LOA, 23 feet; LWL, 19 feet; beam, seven feet, six inches; draft, four feet, six inches (over five feet with a full load and 2000 pounds of ballast); working sail area, 237 square feet.

Doherty, in his 1985 book The Boats They Sailed In, devotes an entire chapter to Ann's transatlantic voyage, writing, "Her feat bears a close resemblance to other first-time-ever challenges - climbing Everest, sailing around the world non-stop, landing on the moon."

Felicity Ann was sold at some point after the Atlantic crossing, and after many years ended up in Alaska for a quarter-century. She is a tough little boat and was fortunate in being stored under cover for most of her time in Alaska. A couple of years ago, she was donated to the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in Port Hadlock, Wash., near Seattle for a last chance at restoration.