June 28, 2008.

We spent 3 nights in Ocracoke NC. The town’s a little beach town that depends on the tourist dollar. There’s also an incredible amount of history here. I’m not just talking about historical events I’m talking about family history.

Families have been here for generations. It seems that half the people here claim to be tenth or twelfth generation Ocracokconians (<~ might be a made up word). We were in one of the book stores and came across a book entitled The Genealogy and History of the O’Neil Family. The book was literally the size of the phone book. It must be easy to keep track of things like that when nobody ever moves away. It must make Thanksgiving a bitch though.


On our last night there we went out to dinner at a place called the Back Porch. Yep, that’s where you ate, on the porch. It was actually a very nice place that had seating inside for only a few couples, while the back porch was a huge multilevel screened in porch.

It was 90+ degrees and after walking a half mile in the sweltering heat I was all about an indoor table with some A/C and you can just imagine that Christy was in complete agreement. The hostess asked us if we would like to be seated inside or out on the porch, Christy said she would like the “coolest” table in the place (meaning A/C). To which she responded “trust me, you’ll love this” and I’m sure I remember her saying that the porch was much more comfortable, so she led us through the swinging doors to the porch. It was nice, with tables at different levels with ceiling fans overhead and with the breeze coming in through the screens, it seemed to be only about 84 degrees. It was bizarre as every time there was just a puff of breeze you could hear everyone on the porch gasp and appreciate the air.

We walked with a good sweat running and by the time dinner was over we were only glistening. We had some time to kill, so after dinner we went inside and had a drink at the air conditioned bar before heading out to the evening’s main event.

There’s a live theater here in town and every evening there is different entertainment scheduled. The night’s performers was a 4 person folk group that is pretty famous in this region of the country or at least this part of the county, oh alright, they're definitely big in town. There was a steel guitar, a fiddler, a rhythm guitarist and a base player.

They were wonderful and played a variety of music during the evening. It seems that these small communities have a history of entertaining themselves through music. It’s a great tradition that is alive and well on the Outer Banks. There’s live music everywhere as each generation of fresh faces take the stage. Oh, and we won the door prize which was a free CD!

There’s a big blow coming this weekend so we basically have 2 choices. We can stay in Ocracoke until Tuesday or we can head up to Manteo and hide there until then. A week in Ocracoke is a little much so we’re off to Manteo.

Manteo is a town on Roanoke Island, NC. If you remember your history the English dropped off some settlers and then forgot to come back and resupply them for 2 years. When supply ships finally did arrive they found the fort empty and no sign of struggle or survivors. In an interesting side note, some of the Native Americans in this area have blue eyes.

Anyway, Manteo it is. After Christy went to bed I did some late night navulating and decided that Manteo might not be a good idea. The charts all show a 12 mile system of channels with marked depths ranging from 3 to 5 feet in the shallow areas. So I went to bed without setting the alarm because we’re not goin’ there.

In the morning after we got up I showed Christy the charts and guide books. We have several sources and they all agreed, don’t go. But we are sure we know people who’ve done it so Christy called the harbor master in Manteo and he assured us that the channel had been dredged to a full 12 feet deep.

By the time I walked the dogs, it was already 0900 when we finally got underway for the 60 mile trip to Manteo. After pulling the anchor we left the harbor and then raised the mainsail while we waited for an inbound ferry to make its way through the shallow part of the channel. After he passed by we let out the genoa and were moving along at 5 knots in the light breeze.

Once clear of the channel we turned on our heading and found ourselves with the breeze, once again, coming straight over the stern. We ended up sailing wing and wing for about 10 miles until the wind started to build so much that it became dangerous. We were doing in the low eights with a rolling following sea threatening to collapse the genoa and refill it instantly in the brisk breeze. I decided that rather than risking exploding the genoa we would see what kind of progress we could make with just the mainsail alone.

The winds were now pretty steady at 20 knots so we found ourselves maintaining a little better than 6 knots with just the mainsail. We stayed configured like this for the next 30 miles and had a really pleasant day in spite of the building seas.

The only boat we encountered all day was another sailboat. We were running straight downwind and he was close hauled, fighting to windward. While we were sitting high and dry in bathing suits enjoying the pleasant sailing they were rail down, spray flying, dressed in foulies and hanging on. What a difference "point of sail" can make in your perspective on the days sail.

When it was time to turn into the channel we decided to drop the main as there didn’t seem to be enough room to maneuver and drop it once we were committed to the channel. The first leg of the channel was about 5 mile long and broadside to the running seas. So we rolled out about half the genoa to steady the boat until the sea state diminished.

We had the engine running but the sail was doing all the work speeding us down the channel. The channel was marked with red marks on our left and about half way down the channel we came to a section where there were 8 marks all within a hundred feet of our boat. There seemed to be a channel jutting off to starboard so that explained the red and green “center of channel” marker but after this mark it got very confusing as the channel markers were now “red right returning”.

The charts and the chartplotter all gave conflicting information but we were able to sort it out with binoculars and common sense. I guess when they dredged the channel the numbering and configuration had changed more than a bit as well.

Of course, a squall had to come through as we negotiated the narrowest section of the channel. The water on the windward side was only a foot deep so the wind driven waves weren’t a problem but the wind did have us crabbing our way from mark to mark as we moved along.

Finally, we arrived at the turning point for the anchorage. The chart shows Shallowbag Bay to be anything but hospitable for deep draft sailboats but it’s the only game in town. The chart showed 7 feet of water in one small section but you never really know until you get there what you’re gonna find. We’ve pulled into anchorages that looked so good on paper only to find that the area is covered with crab pots or there are already 4 boats in that little spot where you thought you were gonna drop the hook.

Its 1900 hours and fortunately there seems to be about 8 feet of water and we’re the only boat anchored here. There’s a small marina here and dog walking looks to be easy. We’ll see what town has to offer tomorrow as we've done enough for today.

We're anchored south of red # 10 fairly close to shore.