VAYDAGUBSKY LIGHTHOUSE

(autotranslated, could have mistakes)

Installed on the northwestern tip of the Rybachy Peninsula. Provides navigation along the western coast of the Kola Peninsula and on the approach to Vaida Bay. The word is Finnish and presumably means “to change”, “to exchange”, i.e. in Russian the name of the lip would sound like Menovaya.

For a long time, Pomeranian fishermen exchanged the fish they caught here for the goods they needed, which were delivered here by the Finns and Norwegians. On the northeastern shore of the bay, on a small promontory, there was a camp site in the last century. In addition to several residential buildings, it had a chapel, a steam grease pit and a shop where one could buy food, colonial goods, fishing equipment and clothing for fishermen. In the summer, a monk from the Pechenga Monastery lived at the chapel, and a small hospital of the Red Cross Society operated.

In the 1890s, during the spring cod fishing, up to 200 fishing vessels entered the bay, and the population of the camp increased to 1000 people (according to the 1897 census, only 63 people, mostly Norwegians, lived here permanently) [9].

The bay is inconspicuous from the sea; the entrance to it was found along the adjacent capes, in particular, Nemetsky - a small sloping protrusion to the west of Vaida Bay. But this is during the day. At night, ships were afraid to enter the bay and waited in the open sea for dawn.

In 1894, the White Sea Lighthouse Directorate decided to install a light beacon on a cape 2 km from the entrance to the bay. In 1896 he began to act.

Image removed from public review package. Local review only · not public no-info · image21.jpeg

Northwestern tip of the Rybachy Peninsula

It was a small, single-walled log house with a red iron roof covered with planks. Above the roof rose an octagonal gray turret, which housed a diopter light-optical apparatus of the 5th category. The height of the fire from the base was 6.6 m, and from sea level

12.7m. The lighthouse illuminated a sector of the sea from 246.5 to 99.5°. Lighting was carried out, as a rule, from February 1 to April 2, and then, after the end of the white nights, from July 20 to December 1. The rest of the time the lighthouse did not shine.

Image removed from public review package. Local review only · not public no-info · image22.jpeg

Vaydagubsky Lighthouse

By the time the lighthouse was opened, a telegraph station was already operating in the camp, and the keeper’s house was connected to it by telephone by the end of construction.

The lighthouse significantly revived shipping in the area of ​​the bay, fishermen were no longer afraid to approach it at night, and by 1910 there were 16 fishing camps, three grease dumps and a rich trading post in the bay. At the end of the 1890s, the meteorological station of the St. Petersburg Physical Observatory began operating at the lighthouse.

As a result of the First World War, the western part of the Rybachy Peninsula, together with the lighthouse, went to Finland. In March 1940, Red Army troops, with the assistance of

The Northern Fleet liberated this territory, and the lighthouse again joined the ranks of the lighthouses of the Hydrographic Service of the Northern Fleet. During the retreat, the Finns damaged the lighting equipment.

Before the hydrographers had time to establish regular operation of the lighthouse, the Great Patriotic War broke out. On June 29, 1941, the defense of the peninsula began. The lighthouse was switched to operation in manipulator mode, and an observation post was equipped on it. From the lighthouse, the sites where mines were dropped by enemy aircraft were spotted. In addition, its building with precise coordinates made it possible to carry out geodetic reference to artillery batteries that protected the western coast of the peninsula.

During the defensive battles for the peninsula, the Fisherman's Lighthouse was destroyed. After the war, a new red stone round tower 29 m high with a lantern structure at the top rose on the site of the ruins. A stone lighthouse and technical building was erected in 1966 for the radio beacon and nautofon. The lighthouse currently flashes a green flashing light for up to 20 miles.