Page 12 - VLA Newsletter Fall 2022

Navigation Lights Repaired
After notification of a missing navigation light “somewhere between St. Mary’s Island and Trout Lake portage,” VLA Volunteers Jerry
Bontems and Jill Korpela-Bontems took off in their boat with a hammer drill, bolts, and a Honda gener- ator on board. There they found the missing light in the water on a pile of rocks they call “Turkey Toes”. The damage to this light was most likely caused
during the “ice out”. These navigation lights were originally set into a tire rim with a rock on
it. The Bontems have been im- proving this set up by drilling a hole and bolting
the mount to the rock. As you can see, maintenance of these lights can be hampered by water access only, and further delayed by high winds and precipitation.
As a community service, the Vermilion Lake Asso- ciation maintains a series of flashing night naviga- tion lights along the major travel routes on the lake. Inconspicuous by day, the lights assist boaters and snowmobilers traveling the lake at night by helping them visually locate the main routes of travel.
Over the years, the lights have been upgraded to im- prove reliability. All are now solar powered to min- imize routine visits to swap batteries. The lights are placed at shoreline spots and island spots and are not intended to indicate navigational hazards.
For a map of navigation lights maintained by the Vermilion Lake Association, go to our
website at https://www.vermilionlakeassociation.org/other-programs/night-navigation-lights/.
To report a problem, contact John Zweig at jczwieg@lcp2.net (West End) or Jerry Bontems (East End) at jandjatbigrock@frontiernet.net .
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12 The Vermilion, Fall 2022