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Angelo Rigazio wasn't there when the men built the base of the lighthouse.

He never actually saw this 45-foot iron cylinder, which was built on land and barged out to where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Delaware Bay. That's because the men sunk the base 65 feet under water and pumped the water out of it. Some men went down inside of it. They dug and dug and dug, until they hit bedrock. Finally, they filled everything but the last 15 feet with concrete. They surrounded it with rocks, called riprap, and built a lighthouse on top: the Harbor Refuge, completed in 1903.

Rigazio wasn't there, but he knows it happened because he's a lighthouse buff. In fact, he's president of the The Delaware Bay Lighthouse Keepers and Friends Association. But there is another reason the 59-year-old North Cape May resident is acutely aware of the concrete and the iron and the riprap that make up the foundation.

He lived there.

On Saturday, Rigazio will guide a lighthouse cruise on the Delaware Bay. It is one of the four cruises the association puts on every summer. The tour aims to familiarize people with some of the seven remaining lighthouses on the Delaware.

"Angelo is good at what he does," says Dusty Pierce, the association's vice president and other tour guide. "His purpose is to take these people out there, 52 at a time, and educate them on what the lighthouses were used for. Some people don't even know there are lighthouses out there!"

Rigazio and the Association will supply water, sodas and the knowledge that comes with having lived on a lighthouse surrounded by water. Rigazio was the last keeper of the Harbor Refuge, which was automated in 1973. He's one of the last men to work, eat and sleep on a lighthouse, period.

As a member of the Coast Guard, Rigazio spent many sleepless nights trying to ignore the sounds of the ice floes that knocked against the base of the lighthouse. He's swayed with the foundation during the rumble of Tropical Storm Gilda in the fall of '73. Gilda broke his bedroom window and allowed him an even more intimate relationship with the salt water that surrounded him.

A glamorous life? Not always.

"Everybody thinks of that picture of the old man with the pipe and the cat on his lap, smoking his pipe and rocking back in forth in his chair out in the lighthouse," Rigazio says. "No. Sometimes you got pummeled. We were rockin' and rollin' out there."

Rigazio spent 18 months of his Coast Guard service living on the Harbor Refuge Lighthouse, first as an engineer and then as the officer in charge. He maintained the equipment on the light: The two 4,000 gallon fresh-water tanks that provided drinking water, the 1,500 gallon fuel tank, the generators that powered everything. Most importantly, Rigazio monitored the air compressors, which allowed the foghorns to warn oncoming ships of treacherous shoals.

"Every foghorn has a different signal, so if you were out in the middle of nowhere and you had a chart it'll tell you what that signal is," Rigazio explains. "Harbor Refuge was like a 2 second blast, 2 second pause, 2 second blast, 18 second pause, 2 second blast and so on. These are not these new ones you hear out there that make this high pitch 'beeeep.' The old ones went 'BURRRR.' Everything would shake and you couldn't sleep."

Rigazio, originally from Springfield, Mass., didn't join the Coast Guard so he could live on a lighthouse. In 1970, he was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. He was supposed to report to Fort Dix on Oct. 13 but successfully enlisted in the Cape May Coast Guard on Oct. 11.

"When the guy asked me why I joined the Coast Guard, I told him: 'because I can swim better than I can duck bullets.' It's as simple as that," Rigazio recalls.

After completing training in Virginia, Rigazio returned to Cape May. The officer in charge pointed to a little spit of land right on the mouth of the Delaware Bay and explained that this was where Rigazio would be spending his next year.

"He tells me I'm going to live on a lighthouse," recalls Rigazio. "I said, 'you've got to be kidding me."

The uniqueness of lighthouse life was apparent to Rigazio, but at the time he saw it as a punishment.

"This a 21-year-old guy wondering who the hell did he (make mad) to get stuck out in this hunk of rock in the middle of nowhere," he says.

Despite the harsh winters and an obnoxious officer in charge, Rigazio has fond memories of his time at the mouth of the Delaware.

"I don't regret it, I thought it was neat," Rigazio says. "Yes, the winter sucked. The storms were bad. But basically in the summer time you had a ball."

Summer meant sunsets, fishing and other people out on the water. Sometimes fishermen would ask if they could fish off the breaker. The lighthouse crew had no problem with this, especially if fishermen left them some beer, which was forbidden on the lighthouse. In order to avoid the chance that a higher-up might come aboard the lighthouse and find the beer in their refrigerator, Rigazio and his colleagues would use the five-pack technique:

"We'd take a six pack and take one can off, make it a five pack and throw it in that fresh water tank," explains Rigazio. "We'd have a hook, we'd open the lid up, fish around with the hook and pull up a five pack. And that's how we kept our beer cold. And out of sight out of mind."

Until his tour ended, he spent two weeks on and one week off the floating beacon. On Dec. 15, 1973, Rigazio locked up the lighthouse for the last time. He was reassigned to a search-and-rescue team and finished his term with the Coast Guard in 1974.

Today, he lives in North Cape May with his wife and seven Chihuahuas. He works as an electrician for the Cape May Regional Medical Center. He is not known as "lighthouse man" in his town. He doesn't whittle lighthouse sculptures out of wood blocks to sell at local craft fairs. He's never written a book on his unique experience.

Evidence of his time spent on the bay remains with him subtly. There is a 2-foot replica of a lighthouse in his front yard, but only the top of it peeks out over the day lilies that surround it. The Coast Guard flag flies on his flagpole, underneath a larger American flag. He even has an image of the Harbor Refuge tattooed on his right shoulder. It rests under his sleeve and is only shown to those who ask about it.

"My kids bought me that for my 45th birthday," he says with a laugh.

As president of The Delaware Bay Lighthouse Keepers and Friends Association, Rigazio writes for the organization's quarterly newsletter. He also works to preserve the lighthouse.

With GPS navigation, even the need for automated lighthouses is diminishing. A structure such as The Harbor Refuge, which sits in a volatile location at the mouth of the Delaware Bay, needs regular upkeep in order to keep it from being destroyed. The Friends Association works to raise awareness about the plight of these beautiful structures.

Part of that effort involves the summer tours, which allow Rigazio to revisit his past to, hopefully, ensure the lighthouse has a future.

"We try to narrate every (tour) with an actual lighthouse keeper, somebody who was stationed on the lights," says Rigazio. "I try to tell them what it was like to actually live on one. That kind of stuff is not covered in pamphlets."

Contact David Simpson:

609-272-7052

DSimpson@pressofac.com

Moonlight Cruise

6:30 p.m. Saturday from Highbee's Marina, located on Fortescue Road in Fortescue. Tickets are $30. Attendees should arrive at 5:45 p.m. Guests can bring wine and cheese. For tickets or more information, call Maxine Mulligan at 856-691-8224. For directions, visit

www.bonanza2.com/

directions.htm