Cruising along the North Carolina Coast and into Virginia

It is November 1, 2011 and we are just getting started on our next cruising trip.  We cruised from May 2010 until June 2011, but took a break from blogging.  After getting comments from several friends about “missing our boating adventures”, we realized that some of you actually look forward to our blogs.  We’ll try to do better in the future and we’ll even do several “sorry you missed this” picture shows of some of last years trips.  One of our accomplishments was that we finished the Great Loop after only ten years.  We realize that most people do it in one year, but we probably “stopped and smelled the roses” a lot more than many cruisers.  For those of you who don’t know what the Great Loop is, the red lines on the map below show the routes that “Loopers” usually follow in order to circumnavigate the eastern United States and Canada. The black routes show alternate routes.  The yellow lines show the places we ventured that are not part of the usual loop.  It has been a wonderful experience and we have made so many new friends and have seen many fantastic sights.

Our last blog ended with our boat stored for the winter in Leland, North Carolina.  Perhaps we didn’t give the particulars of the shed before, but it was 200’x300’ and the height was 30 feet.

It was a shed used for doing maintenance on boats, but since the economy was slow for boating industries, Harbour Reach was the only full time boat in the shed and her space in the middle of the shed featured a well built set of stairs leading to the cockpit.  It made for much comfort when we arrived in Leland and when we worked on many boat projects for the first month.  Bill had not told me how many boat projects there would be, but we finally got underway by mid-May, phew!

It was somewhat nerve-wracking to see what a tight fit the boat on the travel-lift was with the exit door, but it made it with inches to spare.

Our first stop was Bald Head Island in North Carolina.  It is a sparsely populated island, but has up-scale houses and a well filled harbor.

We climbed to the top of the lighthouse.

On our walks and bike rides we realized that male cardinals were more plentiful here than we have seen in other places.  Since the female ones aren’t as bright a color, they didn’t standout like the males, but we’re sure they were around!

On the beach we saw many cabbage jellyfish which are quite different from the more common jellyfish that have long stinging tentacles.  In fact they look like a cabbage!

There were many fiddler crabs on the bay shoreline.  These crabs have one big claw that someone must have thought looked like a fiddle.

As we moved up the waterway we were treated to marine water maneuvers near Camp Lejeune, NC.  There were lots of small boats practicing many of the same things boaters do.   In addition shooting sounds or practice bombing maneuvers could be heard from twenty miles away.  We appreciate all the work that our marines go through to be prepared to protect our nation.



After spending about a week on the Intra-coastal Waterway, ICW, we decided to head out to the outer-banks of North Carolina.  It is an area we had never been to before even though we had talked about going there by car.  On our first excursion to the outer banks, we were surprised to see so many fishing boats at the southwestern end of Cape Lookout National Seashore.  As we approached Cape Lookout lighthouse from slightly different directions, working our way into the anchorage, the lighthouse appeared to be black at times and white at other times.  The lighthouse is unique because the diamond pattern indicates compass direction.  When a boater sees a black lighthouse with a white diamond pattern, that means the boat is moving east or west.  However, when the boater sees a white lighthouse with a black diamond, that means the boat is moving south or north.   This is also the only lighthouse in the USA that flashes during the daytime.

After anchoring in Cape Lookout Bight, we decided to climb to the top of the lighthouse where we enjoyed the sight of little land and much water.  The anchorage area had many loggerhead sea turtles swimming underwater and popping their heads up and then down again to prevent photographers like us from getting their picture.  Also out of photo range from our anchorage, we could see eight wild horses walking on the beach on Shackleford Banks Island.

We spent several days walking the beach, watching the fishermen catch fish, nurse sharks, and stingrays, and also enjoying the sunsets.

 

After leaving Cape Lookout, we proceeded back to the ICW where we docked at the coastal town of Oriental, NC.  Oriental is a friendly seafront village with a town dock for boating visitors to tie up.  There is a web cam set up pointing towards the dock.  We were fortunate to get there before the dock was full for the day and hence had our boat’s photo on the Internet where our daughters could view it from home.

In the web cam picture above you can see our boat and the village’s new “Dragon”.  The picture below shows a better view of the dragon that is floating in the small pond in front of our boat.  There is an interesting story of how the dragon became important in the village of Oriental.  This can be found at the website:

http://www.pamlico-nc.com/dragon.htm                

Many visitors stopped by to see our boat and to ask questions about our lifestyle of living on a boat.  Bob and Clare, one of the visiting couples who live in Oriental, invited us to their home for dinner that night.  We biked to their lovely home and had a delicious chicken salad dinner with strawberry shortcake for dessert, (one of my favorites).  We learned that he is an artist.  He gave us a copy of one of the pictures that he had painted..  Meeting local people and hearing about them and the town they live in is one of our favorite pastimes when visiting towns by boat.

People watching is always fun and animal watching is also fun, but sometimes it goes beyond fun.  The next picture shows a snake getting ready to eat an eel.  We watched the snake swim across the water, catch the eel, maneuver his way up onto a low dock, (Not the dock we were tied to!), and hold the eel down with his body.  After shooting this picture we couldn’t watch any longer, but it does suggest part of the animal food chain.

For the next section of the ICW, we decided to go back to the Outer Banks and to investigate one of pirate Blackbeard’s frequent anchorages and the Bay where he was killed.  Luckily there are no pirates there now, but we enjoyed seeing some of the “bad guy’s hangouts”.  The island is quite scenic and has much history associated with it.  The lighthouse called for another good climb with lots of good water views. There were enough roads on Okracoke, so we took the bikes ashore to ride to the beach the next day.

  We had planned on a two night stay, but locals convinced us that the annual Okracoke Music festival with ballads and blues and folk music was a must-see.  Many more boats kept coming into the anchorage and the docks were all full, so we figured many others knew about the festival.  It was fantastic!  Three different areas were used for performances on Saturday and Sunday.  Every hour from 9-5 the performers changed.  Most of the music was excellent.  We were really glad to have stayed for the Festival.

Our favorite performers were a group called Molasses Creek. 

If you would like to hear their song “Hard Times Come No More”, you can open this website.  You do not have to download the song to play it, just be sure the volume button on your computer is on and click the play button.

http://www.molassescreek.com/home.cfm 

Molasses Creek

We continued along the outer banks to the village of Hatteras where we docked near the car ferry landing.  There were so many car ferries coming to Cape Hatteras National Seashore that it took us less than thirty minutes to decide that this wasn’t the marina for us



We went to the next harbor and stayed at Teach’s Liar Marina. Edward Teach was Blackbeard’s real name, but the owners didn’t seem to be pirates, so we docked just before a big storm came through.

The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras has the original 1854 Cape Hatteras Fresnel light on display.  It was taken by a Union soldier in 1861 to defend it from being destroyed.  The Confederates were intending to destroy the lighthouse because the Union was in control of the nearby waters and it provided an aid to nighttime movement of troops.  Its location remained a mystery for over fifty years.

The next day we packed up our bikes and took a taxi to the Hatteras Lighthouse and museum.  This is the tallest lighthouse in America; there are 258 steps to climb.

The Lighthouse Visitors Center has a video showing how the new lighthouse was moved one-half of a mile in 1999 because the coastline had eroded so much since it was built in 1870.  Originally the lighthouse was 1500 feet from the shore and by 1999 it was within 100 feet of the ocean.  Those big waves that storms bring certainly do damage to our coastline.


We had a good view of the lighthouse keeper’s house from the top of the light house.

There are five lighthouses on the outer banks.  We managed to climb all but one which was under construction.  The exercise was exhilarating and the views were superb.  If you are healthy and wanting good views, we highly recommend climbing these lighthouses.

Having explored all of Cape Hatteras that we could by boat, we cruised to Roanoke Island and rented a car so we could get to the northern end of the island.   This is when we went to the last two light houses.  After having climbed all the lighthouses, we then enjoyed the afternoon at Kitty Hawk, NC, home of the Wrights Brothers National Memorial.  We were able to see the actual distances and the ground that the flights went over.  There were two impressive memorials of Wilbur and Orville Wright and their successes.

Kite flying and hang gliding are common sports at the sand dunes in Jockey's Ridge State Park in Kitty Hawk.  These are definitely good spectator sports and they are definitely participator sports also

After three days of exploring the Cape by car, we explored Roanoke Island.  It is historic because Roanoke is the island where a colony of English settlers disappeared in 1587.  The governor of the settlement was William Smith and Sir Walter Raleigh was in charge of planting the colony.  The fate of the colonists has never been determined.  Many visitors come to see the outdoor theater’s production of “The Lost Colony”.  It is an excellent play and as of 2010 it is the second longest running outdoor play in America.  It started in 1937.

When going north on the ICW there are two possible routes, one route through the Dismal Swamp and one closer to the ocean.  Each year there is talk of closing the waterway through the Dismal Swamp because of government financing.  We decided to take that one while it is still open for boats.  We definitely think the area is misnamed.  It is anything but dismal, in fact on a sunny day it is spectacular!

There is an interesting visitors’ center and nature center in a section where boaters can tie up to the wall for the night.  We stayed there for a night and then took the dinghy up to Lake Drummond to see what it looked like.  Much to our surprise there was a small dinghy trailer that was set up on tracks to carry your dinghy up a small hill, across the top of the hill and then down to the Lake.  One of us walked along side the boat and the other operated the controls.  It reminded us of the Big Chute on the Trent Severn Waterway in Canada that took our big boat out of the water, across the road, up a hill, and then down to the river below.  We nicknamed the dinghy lift in the Dismal Swamp Little Chute.

This blog is getting way too long, so I’ll just end with one picture taken from the back of our boat when it was tied to the dock at the Capitol Yacht Club in Washington DC.  A week in DC’s museum, capitol building, and White House area is a sightseer’s dream.  There was a lot to do, good eating, lots of biking and walking trails, and many interesting people to talk to.  We loved it!

Washington Monument as seen from the back of Harbour Reach at dock

I almost forgot that all of our blogs must end with a sunset since we see so many while living on the boat and we want to share them with you.