Episode 22 - Tourlitis Lighthouse

0:00 I'm Vince. No. Oh, oh. Try again. Hi, I'm Vince. Hi, I'm Paul. And I'm Emily. No, we got it. Hi, I'm Vince. And I'm Emily. And you're listening to The Lighthouse Lowdown. We're doing a switch up. I lied. I was supposed to do this episode and it fell apart. So Vince is doing the episode today and it's going to be hopefully a mini-isode.

0:43 Yeah. It's a shorter story. I think there's probably more history that I couldn't find. Yeah. And so maybe we'll learn more someday. But for now, this is what we got. And it's interesting. Yeah. Just a little tidbit, a taste, a taste crumb of information. All right. I suppose on that screen I should put up something that's not that so I can show everyone. Let's just put this up. Vince is doing TV time for the first time, I think. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to control the screen share and you should see it now. Yeah, if you're on YouTube. Yeah. If not. I'm just assuming everyone's watching the YouTube.

1:23 Otherwise, they're like looking at their phone like. Yeah, like what? Yeah. Something's supposed to happen. So either way, the screen share is up now. You're looking at a Google open tab for now. So a couple of different items for housekeeping. The first is the history buoy for today. Oh, you have one. I do have a history buoy. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't. I didn't prepare anything to show, but I'm just going to shoot from the hip. Oh, that's fine. So recent. I was going to say recently. What's that look? You kicked me. Violence. One of our past, I'll call it recent, it's relatively recent history movies. Wow. We talked about some vocab, and I think you chose the words nautical miles.

2:08 Yeah. And then knots for speed. We talked about we talked about all that. Yeah. And I was trying to think of a movie scene that I had seen before where they were talking about knots and they were on a ship and I couldn't remember what it was when I was trying to to recall. Oh yeah, I know what I know what this is. And then I was totally wrong on the meaning of what it was. What I was thinking of is the word fathom. OK. So fathom from engineering software, King Kong, the film, 1933 King Kong could have spelled it right. I'm just going to leave it. Let it ride. So I was thinking of fathom like fathoms and I'll tell you.

2:48 So first off, King Kong. I recently watched the 2005 King Kong and then I looked up. I didn't watch it, but the 1933. So the original King Kong was 1933 and then it's been made since then into 13 films. Oh, my. Not all straight King Kong with different sagas. Some of them are just straight remakes and three TV shows. So that's a lot. Fun fact. I watched it 2005 and they they did. I'm not going to show the clip, but they did do the same remake scene where they're approaching the island. If you haven't seen King Kong, there's an island. It has King Kong, which is a giant ape on it. There you go. As they're approaching the island, they see they're coming in this into some fog and the captain reads out, you know, give me a sounding.

3:37 So sounding we'll talk about is a depth measurement. So they throw a weighted rope over the edge and the rope goes down to a depth and the ropes are only a certain length. But once the rope hits the bottom, they see how many lengths it is deep. And those lengths are called fathoms. So a fathom is a unit of six feet, one point eight three meters, especially used for measuring the depth of water, sometimes used in singular when quantified, when qualified by a number, as in you'd say five fathom deep. Yeah, not fathoms. Oh, interesting. That goes against, you know, like the English language. Well, fathom comes from Old English, fathom, meaning outstretched arms.

4:19 Oh, interesting. The noun fathom, which now I'm reading at this point, which now commonly refers to a measure, especially of depth of six feet was originally used for the distance fingertip to fingertip created by stretching one's arms straight out from the sides of the body. It is in one of its earliest uses, the verb fathom was a synonym for a modern embrace. To fathom someone was to clasp the person in your arms. So fingertips around them. So the fathom was just to figure out the depth of the water so you wouldn't like run aground. Yeah. So you're taking a sounding as a measurement of depth of water using a rope, a sounding rope, which is knots are tied in at six foot lengths.

5:02 And the reason I think they did that is because you could like, so your height is supposed to be your arm span. Like they're typically a one to one ratio. Different people have like my arm span is slightly shorter than my height because I'm six foot five. My arm spans like six foot two or my dad, he was six foot five and his arms are like six, seven. So people have variances, but roughly six feet fingertip to fingertip is like a six foot man. So I think that's probably, you could probably like, you know, run the rope out like this and then, you know, I'm stretching my arms for those who are not sitting across from me and then tie a knot and you could get rough depth readings pretty quickly if you just took any rope and made it a sounding rope.

5:45 By the 1600s, fathom had taken to the seas as the verb was used to mean to measure by a sounding line. At the time, the verb also developed senses synonymous with people with, excuse me, with probe or investigate. So to fathom something was to probe it or to investigate it. And now it frequently refers to the act of getting to the bottom of something, figuratively speaking. So I can't fathom that. I can't probe and understand and come to get a measurement. I can't see the depth. I can't fathom it. We say that a lot is like, I can't fathom the size of the universe. No, you literally can't. You used a bro voice for that. Yeah, there's lots of bros. I can't imagine a frat dude saying fathom.

6:29 I can. You see the profit they made on this movie? Which one? King Kong 1933? Yes. Look. The budget, $672,000. Box office, 5.3 million. That is a outstanding... Yeah. So I watched some clips. I'm on my... Oh no. Coffee's hitting me now. I watched some clips. Oh gosh, this is not going to be a mini-sode. Sorry everyone. The 1933 King Kong has some... It's like claymation when it comes to the King Kong. Look at that face. He looks shocked at all times. Oh yeah, he has no idea how he got there.

7:11 I will give... Yeah. Or he's trapped in his body and someone else is controlling it. Right. He's made of clay. He's like, oh. I did. I do have to give some credit. Look at his face. This one. He's like, whoa, she's blonde. The 2005 film used a lot of the same exact details that were used, down to the line, the same exact details that were used in the 1933 film. So I enjoyed it. I like that. That's interesting. Yeah, they really showed us some respect. Even this scene, which is like the climax of the film, is at the top of a tower. All of these details were exactly the same. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I thought that was neat. So we're the watch.

7:51 Could talk more about it, but I won't drag you through it. This is not a movie podcast. Not yet. Movie analytics. If I could control my mouse, that'd be great. Okay. So that is my history movie, Fathom. Nice. Something I didn't know. Here we are. Cool, cool, cool. Cool, cool, cool. So I found the lighthouse I'm going to talk about today, a long time ago. And I found it in a search for the most beautiful lighthouses in the world. Oh. Are we recording, by the way? Yeah. Okay. Why, why? Well, I just totally forgot to ask. You're used to being able to see it, so I understand. Right. I'm used to recording, so. Glad we're recording.

8:31 We still have PTSD. I'm going to download my images. I'm going to bring this up. Whoa. Is it pink? Or is it just lighting? It's a little bit of lighting. I think there's some, a little Photoshop going on as far as coloration goes. Why, why? Did it used to be like a bigger stone? Nope. What? We'll talk about it. So this is, and we're going to go ahead and get into mispronunciations. Oh, good. This is the tour-leet-us. Tour-leet-us. Tour-leet-us. Tour-leet-us, as Google would say, which I actually, actually we're going to do that right now because I brought that link up. Yeah.

9:11 Tour-leet-us. Tour-leet-us lighthouse, which is Greek. Tour-leet-us. Oh no. What is, do it again. Tour-leet-us. Here you go. That's going to go slower this time. Tour-leet-us. What? Yeah. One more time fast. Tour-leet-us. Yeah. So I don't know what to do with that, but I've played with this before. I've also put a name in here for it to pronounce. So I'm going to go with tour-leet-us. Okay, yeah. Tour-leet-us. That's as close as I can get with my skillset, which is, you know, it is what it is. Amateur. Amateur at best. So the tour-leet-us lighthouse here has a height of 36 meters, 118 feet.

9:54 Oh, wow. That's tall. To the optical center. I think it's, I think that's from the base of this rock because it doesn't look that tall and a visible light range of 11 nautical miles. Okay. So it's a fair sized light. It is automated right now. Where are we? Greece, which I didn't show you that and I meant to. I think I forgot. What am I? For people that don't see the picture, it is just precariously placed on top of a bulbous, light bulb-ish, a light bulb-esque shaped rock in the middle of ocean.

10:35 Also the water is very pretty. I'm sure that's editing as well, but. It's pretty gorgeous part of the world. So we're in Greece here. Okay. I don't know why everything's showing in Greek, but that's fine. We're going to go to the island of Andros. Just south of Athens? Greece. Oh yeah, no. I was too far south. East of Athens. Andros. So this is a city town and off of the coast you can see. Oh, I see. So it's not too far out. Yeah, but it is quite pretty. The colors are not that far off. So it's 200 meters out, which I want to say it's 600 something feet.

11:16 We can talk about that too, but my Google is not. Google is not cooperating. Yeah. Okay. But it looks nice. Is this, so this, the rock in this picture that you're showing, is this a low tide? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, one of the lower tides. And we're going to show some more photos that show more details. Okay. I'd like to see it all around. This is something that I found and then edited. So with an aura that evokes another world in time, the Toulitas Lighthouse is still credited today, credited today for advancing maritime navigation for Greece's port city of Andros, which I'm probably pronouncing Andros wrong. Andros, I don't know. The lighthouse was originally built in 1897.

11:58 Then and now it is located just 200 meters, 656 feet off of the coast of Andros, directly across from a castle. Oh. The castle kind of now stands in a state of deterioration. Of course. But it's still there. The lighthouse was destroyed in World War II by the Nazis. What? But it was rebuilt and reintroduced as Greece's first automated lighthouse. Oh, so what year? 1994. What? Yeah. That's recent. Yeah. So it was eliminated by the Nazis in, I'm assuming in wartime, 1940s. It took them a long time to redo that.

12:40 So this is my image 01 for your own entertainment. And there's still some editing going on. You can tell with the colors. Being one of the prettiest lighthouses and so weird as far as its architecture and placement, a lot of the photos are edited. Like there's some that are red, lots of sunsets, lots of waves crashing. Like tourist websites. The water is a lot calmer here than I would anticipate. It's not always as calm. So that erosion, apparently, we'll talk about it, but the site was selected when that was a bigger rock and that's come from water erosion.

13:21 Eventually, I'm sure it won't be there, but it is kind of a cove, but I think it sees some some weather erosion over time. So the lighthouse site was chosen upon a natural rock formation across from the captivating Venetian castle of Andros. The lighthouse had a mystical sense and style of architecture. A twisted stone column that serves as the lighthouse's base features a naturally carved appearance due to thousands of years of erosion. Does the stairway wrap around? Like can you climb up there or is it does it stop? It does. It comes down here as we can see and then down that way. Okay. So it doesn't continue to wrap, but it comes down pretty steeply over here.

14:03 All right. So yeah, it's got a complete walkway up there. So these people that are swimming here, are you allowed to visit it? Not officially. There is no open visitation. You can't enter it. So I think they're going out. As we saw on the map, there's a rock. So this is the city comes out. The castle is actually here. And so you can go to the castle. We'll talk about it and kind of look at the lighthouse really closely because it's only 600 feet. Okay. But these rocks are all part of the same formation. Yeah. So it's pretty shallow right there. So it's 200 meters out to sea. It's the only structure of its kind in Europe. Being that it's the only lighthouse that's built on a rock formation such as this.

14:47 The construction required 10 years of work. Oh. It's completed by an able seemingly amphibious team of Greek builders. Amphibious? As part of their work, they carved a stone staircase into the rock foundation of the tower. Wow. Yeah. And then on New Year's Day of 1897, I was ready for operation and began to illuminate the seas of the Mediterranean. Oh, wow. Mystical. I think I like my writing and my copy paste writing from other sources better than I like my speaking. So now I'm supposed to, oh, two. Yep. Wow. Another beautiful photo. That's insane. It's like it's defying gravity.

15:27 Yeah. So they didn't, like the rock base of this lighthouse, they didn't do anything to reinforce it? Nope. Holy moly. Yeah. It's part of the land formation from my, I mean, my lack of knowledge, I'm guessing, because it's so close to land that it's actually part of the island. And so I'm guessing it's pretty solid because the entire city is on the water's edge. So I'm guessing that the rock type there, the rock formation and the weather conditions. They can trust it. So I think that erosion is from a long time. And looking at it, you can see that the lighthouse, all the weight is centered over the remainder.

16:10 So I wonder if it actually make it last longer to have weight on it in the center. Compression and stuff going on. So 10 years and the 10 year construction was 1897. It was much faster in the nineties, although I didn't find the exact amount of time. The restoration. So the restoration in the nineties was done to make it look as close as they could to the original lighthouse. So the same style has been there forever. Cool. Forever. I enjoy that. The lighthouse successfully lit the way for ships traveling for nearly 50 years before it met an untimely fate. Oh. Neither an unwieldy sorcerer nor a hot tempered sea dragon destroyed the castle. Rather it was German bombs, which left nothing behind other than ruins and a scaffold tower in its wake.

16:50 Wow. I did not write that. I look good. That's a, that's a carried over quote. So that was a world war two times. It was destroyed. There was nothing left. Um, a half century later, I found this source that said, many sources said this guy was a Greek oil tycoon, but other ones said he was a shipping tycoon. So I looked into it and then the last name of the family is another name. I'm going to butcher G O U L A N D R S. So Gourland is the last name of this family. But we'll talk about them, but I believe it's a shipping tycoon cause I read some history. Apparently this, this guy, his, his name is Alexandros.

17:32 This man, his family went at least three generations before him in shipping all based out of Greece. Like the history was like, they bought a single boat and then they bought two boats. Then they sold the boats. They bought seven boats. Then there was an economic crash. Then they bought five boats. Then they had a boat built for them that could haul extra heavy weight. And so this long family history of shipping that he was a part of. So a half century later, 1990s, the Greek shipping tycoon courted to me, Alexandros Goulandis Goulandis decided to fund the restoration of the lighthouse tower. Nice seeking to celebrate the memory of his deceased daughter. The Alanda Goulandis funded the rebuilding of the lighthouse and dedicated it in her name.

18:17 That's wonderful. What a beautiful story. I couldn't, I couldn't find anything about her. I didn't know her age. He was, I think he was born in the seven sixties or seventies. So she would have been young probably. Yeah. It opened in 1994, the new lighthouse. The present tour lightest lighthouse. This one is a replica of the original serving not only as an enchanting beacon to behold, but an everlasting token of a father's love. In 1995, the inauguration of the restoration of the tour lightest lighthouse in its original shape took place during a special ceremony at the Revias place. My pronunciation is off the charts in the island of Andros.

19:00 It is a great monument to the Greek maritime tradition that survived thanks to initiatives of the Goulandis family in memory of their daughter. Do you know how much it ended up costing? Didn't say. I think it was a private deal. So I don't, it's still operable. It's an automated lighthouse. It was, I forgot to put it in my notes, but it was, it told me the fuel it operated on for a long time. Now it's electric, electric and fully, fully automated. No keepers are there. It's a active guide. It is. Yeah. So this port, this port is more, it's still used for shipping, the Andros port. It's probably more used for less commercial because the world has gotten bigger since Greece has been around a long time.

19:45 Let's put it that way. But it's, it's still an active guide to navigation. I don't know if it's publicly owned. Like I don't know if the government owns it or if the Goulandis family owns it because it's not accessible. Like you can, they're not going to, I can't say this. They, there's no tourism to the, to the lighthouse. You don't get a guided tour or something, get a boat out there. So he was born in 1927 and he died in 2017. He went off on his own in 1952 and originally and eventually had 40 ships of his own. Holy cow. That's a lot. He died in 2017, was buried next to his wife in the first cemetery of Athens. It'd be an awesome place to be buried.

20:27 He was noted, but very private art collector and philanthropist. So I don't think, I think this fit right in. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Kind of neat. I wanted to show you a Google review of the lighthouse. 4.8 out of five. I liked your reviews. This guy be brave. It's an easy scramble across the old arch bridge to the Venetian fortress. And from there you can see the tour latest lighthouse. You can see his picture. Look at that. Whoa. Yeah. So that's the arch and I'll get you a better view here in a minute. Also look at the gorgeous water. You're supposed to call, you're supposed to scramble across that to get, to get to the flag is where the castle was.

21:10 Wait, oh, so by disrepair, you mean it's not there anymore. It's ruins. Yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry. I did think it was like a full size castle. No, but still it's still pretty neat. But I am going to show you, this is the website for the lower castle of Andros. So this shows the island. So this shows the arch we just looked at. Oh my gosh. I would much rather, there's this very tiny amount of water there. I would just swim. Yeah. How would you get, I suppose you could scramble. If you're falling, you're falling into water, I guess. So you're not falling like hundreds of feet. That is very, that's rock right under the water.

21:54 So I think this is part of the castle and then there's a fish. You can continue on this bridge to, this was also like a watch tower. That was part of the castle. I didn't read too much history here, obviously, but this is the rock formation that continues out in the lighthouse is right out of view. Don't worry. It's here. Oh, just peeking in. Yeah. The idea is that, you know, these go, it's on Google, it's like 4.8 out of five stars. So you can go visit the castle and then from there you can see the best view of the lighthouse itself. Yeah. It's a, you would think 600 feet is not so bad, but it looks pretty far. Yeah. Yeah. I would just want to swim over there.

22:35 I think it'd be cool if you had really calm waters, like these are showing to like see kayak out to it. Yeah. Kayak. That's a good idea. There's videos of boats. So one of the videos I found several other videos I found had my heart will go on by Celine Dion as the music like, do do do do. Why? It's a very romantic place, I guess. But I want to go to Greece. Look at this. This is the town that's built out onto the peninsula. And then there's the castle. The town goes to every like uses every little bit of rock on that little penitentiary. Awesome. Well, and the island is not small. They, I mean, and it's not like it's not been there for very long.

23:16 This rock, this rock is very trustworthy. Yeah. And here's the watch tower we're looking at. And then the lighthouse. Very cool. It's the whole. Wow. What a neat looking lighthouse. So I found it right when really right when we started, nice picture, right when we started our podcast. So it's been a long time. I've had this one in my pocket and there's not a ton to say about it that I could find. There's probably a book out there that has a lot of interesting history on who built it and how and restorations and stories. Yeah. For now, it's a, it's one of the most beautiful and I'll go back to the image. I really enjoyed this image. Yeah, that's very nice. Nice background picture. Kind of goes with the colors of our podcast icon.

23:57 I think this will probably be the thumbnail. Should have based it on that. So, but let me, while we're here, if you've got patience for me, I'm going to Google again, but you'll see, that's what I was going to say. All the pictures are like, look at this. Like I was looking at this picture. Oh yeah. Which is a large picture and I'm sure it's edited. Oh very much so. I can book now for just $51 for the members rate. To stare at it or for this website. I'm just going to hit okay. Sign on my life away. Fantastical. Wow. That, yeah, I like that one. But there has been, I did see some photos that have like, you know, pretty, I don't believe that's photoshopped. No, I think that's, yeah. Huh. So.

24:38 Very nice. This one's definitely real. Yeah. Not rendered at all. That's pretty. It's a great lighthouse. That's a good one. Yeah, very pretty. So one of the most beautiful and I found some other lists. Here's some water splashing for you. I found some other lists that don't include this one. So a little bit scandalous. Wait, what do you mean lists? Lists of the top 10 lighthouses in the world that are most beautiful that don't include the Andros lighthouse. Well, they're just uneducated. Yeah, they don't even know. So you can see it's actually a really high quality photo. That is a little beacon.

25:19 Oh, so cute. So no more Fresnel lens up there. Just probably a blinker. Which I can't imagine that's visible from 11 miles, but I guess at best conditions probably is. And 11 miles is not up there. What do we usually see for range? 20, 30? I think the average is about 17. Okay. And we've seen like 22 nautical miles. So. Yeah. This would not be a day you could convince me to go out there. Oh, no. You definitely roll out of your kayak. You can see the backside of the staircase going down the opposite direction. But that's all I got. Very neat. That's a good selection. Yeah.

25:59 I can't wait to hear. Another international. Yep. I got a couple other episodes coming up soon. One will have guests on it. You don't know everything about that. Some others you don't know anything about. So yeah, I'm in the dark. Excited. Now I know how you feel. Confused all the time. We do have an active sponsor still. I want to mention. I think they're active through March. March 30th or something. Yeah. The end of March, maybe into April. But our sponsor is newegg.com. And so newegg.com sells, they spell lots of things, but they sell computer parts. They sell gaming kits, headphones, mouses, which I found is the right way to say it.

26:45 Mouses, not mice. Oh. Not live mice. Computer mouses, sorry. Keyboards, monitors, all that stuff. So if you need anything, head over there. We have a link in our show notes and we get 3% of anything that you purchase through that link. So we appreciate your help. You should check us out anywhere you listen to podcasts. You're already listening to it, so congratulations. We're also on YouTube. We're new on LinkedIn. Both of those are the Lighthouse Lowdown. Appreciate you helping us out. We also have a Linktree link now that I put in the show notes. So if you click on that, it takes you to an area where you can find any of our links. So if you just click on the link in our show notes, it'll take you to our Instagram, to our YouTube, to anywhere you listen to podcasts.

27:32 Make it a little easier for you. Very cool. Do you want me to do it? Do it. The exit. We can't remember. How does it go? No, oh well whatever. We hope you keep listening and we hope you actually had a great time. And also, we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. On Lighthouse Lowdown. To the Lighthouse Lowdown. What are you doing to start Completing Lighthouse Highs'