Day 110 - Coinjock is the Place to Be

We had one more day in North Carolina before crossing into Virginia and 2 more days until we would fly home again.  While each day is long and full, it is always hard to believe it is time to go home again.  I was up early and happy to see the sun out today.  The Captain pulled away from the dock at 8:25 am, carefully avoiding the shallow water, and took us to the fuel dock.  Fuel prices are a little higher here, as is almost everything, because it has to be shipped in.  At 8:55 am we turned into Silver Lake and the channel out.  We noticed that the Coast Guard had boarded a boat that had left the marina just before us.  We breezed by and soon encountered a ferry boat headed right at us.  The channel is not very wide so it is a bit intimidating to see a huge boat coming at you.  Captain Randy had it under control and we made the pass with no problem.

 

We had to run up the middle of the Pamlico Sound due to, of course, the shallow water near land.  That did not make me happy as I could not see much, if anything, on shore.  There was hardly a boat out besides the car ferries.  The water was not bad to start with, but it grew worse the farther north we went.  Still, it was nothing we had not encountered often on Lake Michigan, just a little bumpy.   Those pesky crab pots started showing up again and the captain had to zig zag between them.  We reached the Croaton Sound at noon, with Roanoke Island on the starboard and the mainland on the port.   At Manseto we went under the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge and the William D. Umstead Memorial Bridge.

 

 

 

The water widened again at the Albemarle Sound, with Nag’s Head and Kitty Hawk (Outer Banks) far to the starboard.  In addition to the crab pots, there were wood stakes that rose 3-4 feet out of the water to dodge!  We assumed they marked fish traps, but are not sure.  We saw a few more boats here, including a large Riviera with Arneson Surface Drives and it created a rooster tail of water behind it as it sped by.

 

We rejoined the ICW doing the eastern “Virginia Cut” waterway on the North River rather than the “Dismal Swamp” on the Alligator River (both are considered part of the ICW).  The shore is beach, marsh, and low trees, with a few homes sprinkled in.  Coinjock Marina, our destination, consists of a long face dock on the river.  We were tucked in close to the boats ahead and behind by 2:25 pm.  Boats continued to arrive all afternoon until the entire dock was full with only 2-3 feet between each one.  Hank Evans, from Queen Ann’s Revenge, introduced himself to us as he noticed me reading the Waterway Guide.  He and his wife Ann are cruising editors for the Atlantic ICW section of the Guide.  Our new Minnesota friends from Southport came in on Dollinger around 5:30. 

 

 

The Coinjock Marina restaurant has a captive customer base as there is nothing else close to walk to.  After relaxing on the back of the boat, we went up for dinner and the place was packed, inside and out.  Captain Randy gained some local knowledge about the bridges and locks ahead of us the next day on the way to Norfolk. 

Day 109 - Ocacroke Island

The clouds from yesterday hang on today, but luckily there was no rain.  We are off in our golf cart to the British Cemetery.  During WW II, the British HMS Bedfordshire was assigned to the US Navy.  On May 11, 1942, it was destroyed by a German sub and the entire crew was lost.  Four bodies were recovered and buried at this site.  The land is leased to Great Britain and maintained by the US Coast Guard. 

We had lost one of the ratchet straps that holds the dinghy to the swim platform so we stopped at a hardware store to pick up another.  We purchased a few grocery items at the Variety Store and stamps at the post office (where we ran into the friendliest postal clerk I have ever met).  There were only a few roads left that we had not driven, and they took us to the east side of the island.  Most of the homes and small inns are named.  A couple names I remember are Poker House and Landshark House.

Teach’s Hole is a small exhibit highlighting the life of the pirate Blackbeard and we found it well done and informative.  We had not realized how much pirate activity there was outside of the Caribbean and Florida.  Thinking about dinner, we stopped into Ocracke Seafood and bought scallops and mahi-mahi to grill on the boat.  By now we were hungry and stopped at a hot dog stand designed to look like a boat.  The captain had a hotdog and I had the “walking taco”, essentially taco fixings spooned into small bag of Fritos.  It was so good that Captain Randy had to get one of his own.

 

 



It was time to return the golf cart and we spent the rest of the afternoon doing projects and cleaning the boat.  Captain Randy successfully repaired the center windshield wiper motor.  Switching gears, the Captain donned his new Margaritaville apron and grilled our fish and scallops.  Soooo good!!  A short walk to a local ice cream stand topped off our meal.  We held our breath as the Hawks and Kings started game 6 of their series.  Not to worry – the Hawks come up with the win and force a Game 7 back in Chicago! 

  

Day 108 - Across the Pamlico Sound to the Outer Banks

We set off for a fairly long day on the water at 9:08 am.  On the advice of local knowledge, Captain Randy took us on the “inside route” to the Outer Banks:  back to the ICW which led us north on the Newport River to the Adams Canal all the way to Pamlico Sound.  This way we would avoid backtracking around Cape Lookout and chancing a shallow inlet to the western side of Ocracoke Island.  We wound through the islands, past the port at Morehead City to the Newport River.

The Adams Canal is a narrow waterway cutting straight north.  Small boatyards, businesses, and homes line the shores.  The homes here are of many different sizes, styles, and colors.  Some areas were “no wake” and we had slower boats to pass, but we made good time for the ICW.  The canal opened up into an open bay, then the Neuse River, which we took to the Pamlico Sound, the body of water that separates the Outer Banks from the mainland.  The water was choppy and the sky was overcast, coloring everything greenish-grey; not good for pictures. 

 

We turned east to the village of Ocracoke, following and passing one ferry, then waited for a second to come out of the channel before we entered.  Between the choppy sound waters and the ferry wakes it was fairly rough coming in.  Once inside the channel and closer to shore the water smoothed out and the sun decided to peek through.  The channel took us right in to Silver Lake and the Anchorage Inn Marina, which is right in town.  The current kicked up as Captain Randy was “sandwiching” the boat between 2 others, but he was able to control it with the help of the dock hands who grabbed our lines.

 

Ocracoke can only be accessed by air or water.  Ferries come from Cedar Island, Swan Quarter, and Hatteras Island and there is a small airfield on the island.  There are 900 permanent residents with lots of visitors in the summer.  Until fairly recently, Ocracoke was very isolated – to the point where residents have their own dialect and a few unique words.  One of those words, “dingbatter” is used to describe outsiders or tourists.  Another is “quamish”, which means sick to your stomach.  We learned this at the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum.  The island’s claim to fame is that Blackbeard, the pirate, used to hang out here and was eventually killed offshore in what is now known as Teach’s Hole.  Blackbeard’s real name was Edward Teach and he died of gunshot and sword wounds from naval officers sent by North Carolina’s governor to capture him.  The story goes that Blackbeard hosted a 5 day “beach party” on Ocracoke when 2 ships sent by the governor arrived after being tipped off to his whereabouts.

Captain Randy thought it would be a good idea to rent a golf cart to get around town, so that’s what we did, traipsing through shops and the museum.  We drove to the lighthouse, but it is not open to the public.  We had a fish/shrimp sandwich at the dockside restaurant SMacNally’s, even though they did not have rum.  Later we drove the cart to Dajio as they had live music .  We sat at the bar and had a spicy shrimp appetizer and listened to the band Blame the Waitress play bluesy rock music.