It’s a relaxing motor up the ICW, but we have one last stop
before heading into the Chesapeake. Ocracoke
Island has always been a
place of interest to us, so we take a detour east to the Outer Banks. Ocracoke is accessible only by boat or plane,
and is located at the very southern end of the Outer Banks. Much of the surrounding waters are shallow,
but a deep channel exists into Silver
Lake, the protected
harbor for the island. That is, the
channel is deep if you stay in it, but it is also consistently shifting so the
buoys don’t match up with our charts. In
a moment of confusion we take a marker on the wrong side and immediately get
hailed by a ferry leaving the harbor.
The captain points out our error and we quickly change course – we
should have been aground but somehow managed to avoid that crisis.
There are marinas inside Silver Lake
along with an anchorage, but we decide to pull up to a National Park dock. One of the benefits of aging is that you
qualify for very inexpensive docking as senior citizens within the National
Park system.
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| The view from our dock overlooking Silver Lake harbor |
For the most part, the
harbor and docks are empty. It is still
off season, but the town is gearing up for the tourist crowds that will begin
to arrive around Memorial Day. That is,
they will begin to come if the ferry from Hattaras can run. Once again, we see another outcome of
Hurricane Irene. Last fall’s storm
silted up the Hattaras Inlet and now the ferry boats can pass only on the very
highest of tides. The tourists are missing along with food at the grocery
store, and, according to a live-aboard sailor at our dock, nary a toothbrush can
be found anywhere on the island. The ferries we saw while approaching Ocracoke
travel several hours from the North
Carolina mainland and are a much more costly means of
shipping to the island.
We plan to stay at Ocracoke several days as it is truly a
delightful place. Bicycles are a
mainstay for transportation, and we pedal through the village and surrounding
developments where some of the side streets are paved with crushed oyster
shells. There are a number of attractive
restaurants and gift shops awaiting the crowds. We cross over the island to the
Atlantic side where the National Park controls the entire length of the
seashore. It is a magical land of sand
dunes, flat beaches, and pounding Atlantic surf, and we share it with only a
few sunbathers and fishermen.
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| Pounding surf on the Atlantic side of Ocracoke |
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| Just us and the ever present shore birds |
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| The dunes for which the Outer Banks are famous |
As always, weather controls our choices, and we leave a day
sooner than planned due to some coming unsettled weather. We overnight in the tiny town of Bellhaven and the next day, after surviving the traffic
and bridges coming into Norfolk, VA, we stop in Hampton,
VA. This looks like an interesting college town
with some recent redevelopment along the water front, but all we have time for
is a dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate both Mother’s Day and my
birthday (what a bummer when they both fall on the same day).
The next day we take a short hop up to Deltaville, VA. We anchor off the docks of Deltaville Boat
Yard for a couple of nights, getting a variety of tasks completed before our
boat is hauled out for a month of routine maintenance. For the majority of the time, we will live on
the boat while it is on the hard. This
facility makes it as easy as possible as we have electricity and water. What we don’t have is a working head
(bathroom) which means we have a five minute walk to a restroom and shower –
try that in the middle of the night for a fun experience! We are working at a
number of maintenance tasks, but the yard will strip off all of our bottom
paint and reapply six coats of barrier paint and three coats of bottom
paint. We are also looking into having
our standing rigging replaced, either now or within the next year. But, no matter how you slice and dice the
situation, this is the price you have to pay to cruise full time. We commiserate and share dinners with other
cruisers in the same predicament, enjoying a screened in area overlooking
pretty Jackson Creek.
Just across the way is an osprey nest whose residents keep us
entertained while perching on some of the docked boats’ wind instruments –
never a dull moment! And speaking of
never dull, the unsettled weather that sent us here sooner than expected has
morphed into the season’s first named tropical storm. It is located directly east of us, but we
hope to only experience increased winds and some rain. Finally, while the yard is hard at work, we
will drive to Ohio and Wisconsin to visit family and friends, and also
get the routine maintenance our bodies require with visits to doctors and
dentists. Thus, this blog will take a
break until Exuberant is back afloat and underway sailing north for the summer.
