Lighthouse association raising funds for lighthouse portholes.

Lighthouse association raising funds for lighthouse portholes.

LUDINGTON — The Sable Points Lighthouse Keepers Association is selling 2018 custom walkway boards that will be installed at the Big Sable Lighthouse.

The boards will be for sale all summer long but if a board is ordered before March 31, it will be installed by the May 7 opening of the Big Sable Lighthouse, according to Peter Manting, executive director of SPLKA.

“This has been a wonderful fundraiser for our organization,” Manting said. “Recently funds raised from this were used to finance part of the roof on the keeper’s quarters at Big Sable and the new flat roof installed in September of 2016 on the North Breakwater Lighthouse.”

The SPLKA Board of Directors has designated that this year’s funds from the sale of the walkway boards will help finance SPLKA’s restoration of the portholes on the North Breakwater Lighthouse. SPLKA will be removing the 14 existing portholes, stripping the paint off them, polishing the brass and installing new ¾ inch thick glass in the opening. Presently the glass or replacement Plexiglas in some of the portholes is so weathered that guests to the lighthouse are not able to see out of them.

SPLKA will also be locating four period correct portholes and installing them in the openings which have been boarded up. The cost for this project is $15,000.

Local gifts for this project have been received from the Community Foundation for Mason County, Love Ludington Fund, Historic Bed and Breakfast Association and Oxy Chemical totaling around $5,000. Another $4,000 was given as year-end gifts from the SPLKA membership for the project.

“We are still in need of the $6,000 to complete this project,” Manting said.

The walkway brochure” Leave A Print In the Sand” is available on the SPLKA web site at www.splka.org or at its office, located at 905 East Ludington Ave. Office hours  are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.