A bird’s-eye view of Hog Island Shoal Light, which its new owners, Juli and Jon Chytka, hope to visit sometime this summer and eventually restore to its original condition.

Journal file photo

She was in Germany. He was in Iraq.

Across the miles, the dream of a lighthouse in Rhode Island brought them closer together.

Recently, their dream came true when Juli and Jon Chytka took possession of the Hog Island Shoal Light, off Portsmouth in Narragansett Bay.

The Chytkas bought the century-old lighthouse for $165,000 in an online auction, making Hog Island the first lighthouse in New England to be auctioned by the federal government.

Even more remarkable is how they did it.

At the time of the auction last summer, Jon Chytka, 40, was in Baghdad, a lieutenant colonel and second-in-command of an Army Corps of Engineers battalion responsible for civil military operations, reconstruction and defusing explosive devices.

His wife, Juli, 36, was in Giessen, Germany, where he is stationed when not in the Middle East.

The couple, married three years, have driven through Rhode Island, visiting Bristol and Newport, and were struck by the state’s coastal beauty. He is from South Dakota, she from New York.

The Chytkas were searching for “unique real-estate opportunities,” according to Juli Chytka, when they stumbled across two Virginia lighthouses in the Chesapeake Bay that the government was auctioning last spring.

Jon Chytka was in Kuwait, surfing the Web during a break from preparations to move his unit to Iraq, when he found the two Virginia lighthouses on the Web site of the General Services Administration. He told his wife, who bid on the two lighthouses. But when the bids climbed past their limit, selling for more than $200,000 apiece, the Chytkas dropped out.

Then they found the Hog Island light listed on the same Web site.

The squat, sparkplug-shaped lighthouse has stood sentinel at the mouth of Mount Hope Bay since 1901, enduring hurricanes and guiding boats past the shoals along the south coast of Hog Island.

George Silva, a retired Coast Guard officer stationed at Hog Island in the 1950s, remembers riding out Hurricane Carol in the lighthouse in 1954. The wind whipped the waves with a terrifying noise while buoys ripped from their moorings pounded against the 60-foot cast-iron-and-brick tower like bowling balls. The dinghy that Silva and his partner relied on to go ashore was swept away.

Silva, 81, who now who lives in North Kingstown, recalls seeing a mother and son clinging to the roof of their house, floating up Mount Hope Bay. Stranded in the lighthouse, Silva radioed a Coast Guard boat to rescue them.

The lighthouse has since become automated and the new owners must agree to allow the Coast Guard to maintain its foghorn and 250-millimeter optic lantern as navigational aids.

In 2000, Congress passed a law, the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, authorizing the disposal of historic lighthouses through a competitive bidding process. Top priority was given to other government agencies or nonprofit organizations, which have raised money to restore several other Rhode Island lights, from Rose Island in Newport to Pomham Rocks in East Providence.

But unlike all of the other active lighthouses in Rhode Island, which are controlled by the government or nonprofits, there were no takers for Hog Island when it became available in 2004. So last year, the government put it up for private auction.

To enter the bidding, would-be buyers had to put up a refundable $10,000 deposit. Last June, a few weeks after the auction opened, the Chytkas sent in their deposit and entered the first bid: $5,000, under the name “HogIsle.”

About a dozen people registered to bid, including a professional seaman from Connecticut, a Newport taxi company owner, a retired Maine banker, a Middletown restaurateur, a college criminology professor from Connecticut, two Massachusetts businessmen, the owners of a marina in Bristol and a man who lives on Hog Island.

In July, several prospective buyers were ferried out to the lighthouse in a Coast Guard launch for a nautical open house. There, they got to see, firsthand, some of the challenges, including the difficulty gaining access to a lighthouse that has no dry land around it and not even a dock.

The auction was set to close on Aug. 3 at 3 p.m. But it was a “soft closing date,” meaning that a bid that day between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. would push the closing back a day, and so on, until the bidding stopped.

Manny Silva, of Middletown, who operates a pub restaurant outside Boston, emerged as one of the Chytkas’ chief rivals. Silva, who used to build docks with his father-in-law, said that it would be fun to restore the lighthouse as a family retreat, complete with a water slide, a water trampoline and Jet-Skis.

Silva got into the habit of putting in bids on several mornings just before the 9 a.m. deadline. Any bids past that hour meant that the bidding would be extended another day.

By Aug. 2, the day before the closing date, the bidding had reached $85,000, with six people bidding. The following morning, at 3 a.m. Eastern time (but mid-morning in Europe), Juli Chytka increased their bid to $90,000.

To that point, the bids had risen in increments of $5,000. Now, one minute before the 9 a.m. deadline on Aug. 3 to close bidding for that day, Silva upped the ante by $10,000, bidding $100,000.

But another bidder bid $105,000 a few hours later, prolonging the auction at least one more day.

And so it went for another week, with the Chytkas and four other bidders pushing up the price every day. Part of the time, Juli Chytka entered her bids from an Internet café in Paris, where she was visiting relatives who lacked Internet access.

Jon Chytka, meanwhile, had by now moved from Kuwait to Iraq with his Army unit. As the executive officer for his Engineer Brigade in Baghdad, he was responsible for the unit’s administrative operations — “to take care of the fort,” his wife says — and also went out on some patrols with the soldiers. He served without incident there and returned to Germany last fall.

“This whole entire process brought us even closer together across the miles,” Juli Chytka said in an e-mail.

On Aug. 9, Silva bid $150,000, which had been the Chytkas’ limit. The next day, 24 minutes before the deadline, the Chytkas went up to $155,000. But then, three minutes before the deadline, another, unknown bidder promised $160,000, extending the auction for at least one more day.

The next day, the Chytkas made their final bid — $165,000. Nobody topped it. The Hog Island light was theirs.

“Our soft bid limit was $150,000, but we decided to go a bit higher since the bidding had been narrowed down and we had a chance of winning,” said Juli Chytka.

The Chytkas spent last fall and winter finalizing the sale and negotiating a “submerged lands lease” for $150 a year with the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, which controls the land beneath the lighthouse.

Recently, they received the deed in the mail in Germany. The Chytkas aren’t sure when they’ll see their new lighthouse — they are waiting to see whether Jon’s scheduled transfer this summer will be back to the States or, possibly, back to Iraq.

“We would like to visit the light this summer, if possible,” said Juli Chytka.

They don’t have a budget or a timetable for renovating the lighthouse, which will require major repairs to address peeling lead paint, asbestos, pigeon droppings and plenty of rust — not to mention the construction of a dock for easier access. There also is no running water, bathroom or electricity; the light and foghorn run on solar power.

One Rhode Island lighthouse-restoration specialist has estimated that a simple exterior cleanup — sandblasting and painting — could cost $300,000 to $400,000.

“We are in contact with other lighthouse owners, exchanging ideas on how best to renovate a lighthouse,” said Juli Chytka. “Our eventual goal is to restore the light to as close to original conditions as possible and we will look to allow others the opportunity to take part in America’s history — by staying on the lighthouse.”

The Chytkas also hope to spend some time on the lighthouse. In the meantime, their dream lives on in another lighthouse they have since purchased — a toy lighthouse for their 2-year-old daughter, Maria.

mstanton@projo.com