MANTEO, NC

FIGURING OUT THE GAME PLAN

Next morning we were up and looking for a place to get some breakfast.  While we gulped some coffee and munched on some eggs, we tried to figure out a game plan for the next few days.  The most pressing thing was to get Larry to the next doctor's appointment which was on Thursday.  This meant we had to hustle as today was Tuesday.  We didn't realize that it would be such a difficult undertaking to get from the Outer Banks to Moorehead City, where the next doctor further south along this journey was.  To get there easily from the Outer Banks was no easy task.

NO OPTIONS

Initially we thought we'd just cut our visit to Manteo short heading quickly to our next stop, Ocracoke (on the Outer Banks), the following day.  Our thoughts were to rent a car in Ocracoke, take the ferry from there to Cedar Island and then drive the rest of the way to Moorhead City (near Beaufort).  After some checking we quickly realized that idea wasn't going to work as there were no rental cars to be had in Ocracoke. 

Okay, Larry will fly we thought.  Nope, there were no flights that worked to get him where he had to go. 

RED BARON?

Okay, so we'll charter a small plane.  Nope, that won't work as there were no charters, well except I guess we maybe could have asked to charter the local Red Baron.  He advertised charter flights.  We saw him several times flying over Manteo taking tourists on excursions to see a higher perspective of the Outer Banks.  Hmmm, we wondered what that would be like to fly to the ophthalmologist in a bi-plane, open cockpit vintage WWI Red Baron plane.   With the front coming maybe that wasn't a great idea.

OKAY

I guess we should've figured this out before we came to the Island.  Who would a thunk this would have been so difficult?  Larry finally found a car.  The local car dealership said they'd rent a car to us to go to the doctor.  Whew!  So, that was our only option, driving to the doctor. 

DOWN THE BANKS?

So we looked at the map to figure out the drive and boy was this going to be an indirect route to the doctor.   I wanted to head down Route 12 down the Outer Banks.  It was the most direct route mileage wise (though an incredible 300 miles round trip to see the doctor) but involved catching two ferries, one crossing Hatteras Inlet and the other from Ocracoke to Cedar Island.  We didn't have time to mess with ferries and their schedules and insure that we could make the appointment in time.  It was too risky, so that was out. 

CRAZY

The next route was back across the bridge we saw coming in by boat yesterday, back over to the mainland and making our way inland to get around two main waterways, one being Pamlico River and Neuse River.  Wow, that was going way out of our way, a trip of almost 400 miles round trip to get to a doctor which was 100 miles away as the crow flies.  If we had been able to get to Ocracoke like we had planned the distance was only about 50 miles as the crow flies.  This was getting insane but we had to do it. 

RATIONALE

So the plan was set.  The car dealership would pick us up early tomorrow morning and we'd head out promising to return the car by nightfall.   I said to Larry it would easier to just go back to the doctor in Elizabeth City which would only be 130 miles round trip and a lot shorter but he said we needed to start moving south and by going to this next doctor it was getting us on that path and would be easier for the next follow up appointments as we got the boat further south.   Okay, okay, I'm going to look at this drive as another opportunity to see some more of North Carolina's countryside.

HANGING OUT

So we spent the day, Larry resting and me washing and cleaning the boat as Larry wasn't up to it.  Then Zig and I took a long bike ride up and down the little narrow streets of Manteo which turned out to be a charming stop.  We had several restaurants to go to, lovely old buildings to look at, a cute little maritime museum to poke into, and lots of photo opportunities.  

PEOPLE WERE VERY DIFFERENT

The people we met were completely different though compared to our last stop.  They were more distant, not as friendly at all and I have to say a little goofy in the restaurants as each time I ordered a meal; they would bring me something else that I didn't order.  It was the strangest thing.  One night I ordered crab and shrimp enchiladas and was served pasta which I ate without comment as I was dog gone tired.  The next day, still hankering for some Mexican food, I ordered an enchilada and got a burrito which I again ate with no comment.  Why? I find when you are traveling to some of these places on a boat you just go with the flow and this was certainly becoming the flow around here.  Larry actually would get the dish he ordered but comically it would be prepared completely different from how it was described on the menu.  And the third wrong order was the night we came back from the doctors and I ordered a hamburger and got fried shrimp and chips.   I did mention it to the waiter that this wasn't what I ordered but the poor kid was so sorry, saying he was tired after working three jobs and got mixed up so I felt sorry for him and ate it anyway.

We also came across some very unfriendly people but I think it is because this is a tourist area.  It's a bit like when we lived in Santa Barbara as there were so many tourists that the locals working in stores didn't have to worry about pleasing them because they were gone the next day.  Probably so many people come and go here too that they just get tired of them.  I got so disgusted at the local breakfast joint that I even walked out as the girl behind the counter kept waiting on locals that came in after me though I had been standing in line before them. 

MONOPOLY BUILDINGS

Manteo and the Outer Banks isn't quite what I had imagined.  I thought it would be more remote and less populated but this place is so overly built up with one monopoly style building after another.  If you looked across Roanoke Sound to the Outer Banks, the thin strip of shore was one long line of identical looking monopoly game structures.  It was difficult these days to imagine the remoteness that the early colonists had to deal with when you see one friggin' ugly building after another with no thought to how it all looks. 

We finally got the dinghy down for the first time when I was cleaning the boat took it for a short ride through marsh lands for a trial run and got a taste of what the landscape must have been like way back then as we meandered back through the manmade cuts. 

UP AND OFF FOR THIS MARATHON DRIVE

Well, we were up the following morning and off at the crack of dawn in the auto that the car dealership loaned us.  We crossed over the bridge to the mainland.  I wanted to take a more southerly route along the shoreline of Pamlico Sound and since I was driving that's where we went.  It was a monotonous drive, I have to say, through nothing but swamp land and because the road was so windy it was taking FOREVER. 

I noticed on the map that there was a ferry from Belhaven area that crossed the Neuse River that would give us a definite advantage on cutting the trip short but we had no idea what the schedule was or what the deal was.  Maybe it was like the other ferry that we went on, a local thing, maybe it was unreliable, not open, etc.  We just didn't know.  So when we got to Belhaven I found an old truck driver delivering groceries and asked about it.  He was so nice and said he thought he had a ferry schedule in his truck which after filing through all sorts of papers he found it miraculously.  He then asked what time the doctor's appointment was and said that we had better go the long way as we'd not make the ferry in time to get us there and would have to take a chance on waiting too long. 

So off we went again.  I felt like I was on a marathon drive and getting a little nervous about making the doctor's appointment on time.  On the way back we said we're going the more direct route for sure.  We did see some beautiful countryside, some interesting churches and a few glimpses of water but the trip was not what I imagined.  We were in such a hurry it wasn't fun.  Once we headed back towards the direction of Moorehead City by the Marine base it got to be nothing but pretty typical ugly strip malls, traffic lights and congestion.  

MADE IT

FINALLY we made it to the doctor's office and in my opinion it was in a questionable neighborhood which made me worry about Larry's appointment with the "new" doctor.  While he went in I took advantage of the time by getting some things that we had on our list at the local drug and grocery store and filling up the tank with gas for the big long drive back. 

After a couple hours Larry came out and said his eye was improving and they reduced the medications and number of applications a bit but we had another follow up appointment in a few days.  We had a few days to get the boat further south to Ocracoke and then to Beaufort which is close by Moorehead City for the next appointment. 

We were now on a schedule which we don't like to do on a boat necessarily and with another Front coming.

So I drove Larry back the long drive back to the boat (which for record was a total of 372.7 miles round trip!!! Oh my God!) but we took a more direct route this time saving only 30 miles from taking the zig zag route.  Much of the drive was through the dark and I mean dark, as we were driving through the swamp.  It was exhausting and even more tiring knowing we had no time to rest as we had to leave early the next morning to get to Ocracoke before the bigger front came in. 

ANOTHER FRONT COMING

We were really pushing it on the weather and I didn't like it.     

MANTEO TO OCRACOKE,
OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA

WEATHER REPORT NOT GREAT

I didn’t sleep well at all last night.  The marine weather report for today wasn’t the ideal for heading across Pamlico Sound so I guess that had something to do with it.  We're on a schedule now and don't have options.  We both were up before daylight knowing we had a long and probably bumpy ride.  I too wasn’t looking forward to finding markers on the long dredged channels especially when the red and green will be switching sides have way at precarious points.  I'm especially worried about it after we went on the wrong side of the green coming in here and rubbed bottom. 

I took Zig out.  The sun was just coming up over the Outer Banks, projecting a dark clear silhouette of buildings, way too many, as clearly they have over build on the Outer Banks.  The water was flat calm, not a ripple across the surface.  That should make for an easy get away from the dock I thought. 

PRETTY TIRED

We were ready to go having buttoned everything up the night before.  My eyes were puffy from too much driving yesterday and adding to that not a great sleep last night.  I justify the long day ahead by telling myself that I can always sleep at the other end.  I will do a good bit of the driving today as we don’t want to stress Larry’s eye anymore than we have to.  He’ll drive the channels with me helping to pick out the markers and then I take the long run out on the open water. 

So the engine was running and ready to go.  A few other people are up too, before daylight, walking their dogs, heading to the marine “comfort center” and jogging the wooden boardwalk.  I take a few last minute pictures and start to get the lines off.  I’ll be glad to leave this particular spot on the dock because I’m not too sure they aren’t dumping here.  We had a few whiffs and the nearby sign didn’t do much for my confidence. 

PLANS FOR THE STORM

Another boater who came in yesterday on a Grand Banks stopped to give us a hand with the lines. He said he’s headed the same direction, south to Florida.  Aren't we all? I thought.  They just arrived and he said "Looks like we'll be stuck here for a couple days waiting out the storm".  We will be doing the same but in a new location, in a place called Ocracoke.

I threw the last line on the boat and stretched myself as long as I could to push the stern of the boat away from the dock before jumping on, hoping it would give Larry some room to maneuver out of this tight spot.   He went forward but the boat wasn’t turning as quickly as he would like and he had to back up again and forward, over and over to try to get her turned.  Each time coming closer to other boats stuck in here with us.  One guy tied his dinghy so it way hanging way out in the way, (thanks a lot!) and then finally by the skin of our pants past the Grand Banks who they put in a slip way to short for him so he was hanging half way out of the slip.  It was like putting a size ten foot in a size 6 shoe.  Whew!  Made it with no mishaps (this time, I though). 

RUBBER DINGHY

Sometimes I dislike that ugly rubber dinghy hanging off the back of the boat, hiding the name of our boat and the carefully selected colors and letter styles, but on a day like this, that dinghy comes in handy to make us incognito for some of the shenanigans we’ve been doing lately. 

ZIGGY ALWAYS HELPING?

Larry headed out to the first red marker while I pulled in the mucky fender balls (much from whatever was collecting in the water there under that contamination sign) and threw them into the dinghy which is about the only two things that it comes in handy for: (1) making us incognito and (2) serving as a big storage bin for fenders and junk.  Ziggy always thinks he needs to come up and out along the narrow gangway with me to help with the lines or at least to watch I guess to make sure I’m doing everything right.  His interest in this mundane activity is so comical but many times he just gets in the way especially if something isn't going right.  I have to laugh too when I yell at him to get back in the cockpit because he has to back up all the way down the gang way because it's so narrow.  Have no idea why he follows me around watching what I’m doing, maybe he worries that I'll fall off the boat and watches so he can tell Larry. 

THESE MARKERS ARE A CHALLENGE

I can't emphasize how careful we are being with these channel markers here on the Outer Banks as they are few and far between, hard to see, and placed unlike any other place we’ve been.  I know Larry is having a hard time seeing them and rightfully so but I'm having a Dickens of a time also.  We really have to search for the next markers with the binoculars and its dam nerve wracking. 

AN ABOMINATION

I also can't help but click pictures with the camera when I can to catch a permanent glimpse of the abomination of vacation homes that look like cookie cutter houses, one identical one after another, crammed onto the narrow stretch of the banks as if on a city lot in a big city.  You lose the feel of the beach and narrow patches of the banks.  What architect or planner would ever approve this ridiculousness? 

GOOD LUCK?

As we approach another channel marker heading into the next marina down, a boat comes out and takes a turn going the same way we are.  Larry says “Good we’ll have a boat to follow and a local to boat.”  It looks like a local fishing charter boat maybe.  It sure will make it easier for us as he just reconfirms what we think about the markers.  A few other little fishing skiffs zip by, one guy is standing on a thing that looks like scaffolding structure which puts him high above the water on his little boat.  We've never seen anything like it.  We pass three other guys in a small boat throwing out fish nets.  We've never seen that before either, well not at least in the US.  They must be catching bait?

Things are going fine now.  The boat is still ahead and we're following but confirming the markers as we go.  It's making for so much less strain.  We can see Bodie Lighthouse off in the distance in the grey darkness of this dark over cast day.  Every so often the Fresnel light rotates it flashing a bright light towards us.  We've left the monopoly of homes behind now and are finally seeing what the Banks really look like before development.  We're passing little islands, nothing more than dry shoals with marsh grass and lots of birds, some local and others migrating.  It's a mixture of pelicans, sea gulls, ducks, and many others.  We pass what looks like duck blinds too or maybe they are birding stations for the observer. 

OREGON INLET

As we are nearing notorious Oregon Inlet and the dredged channel it suddenly becomes very shallow and narrow.  We are following the same boat ahead and assuming he has local knowledge about these channels and the recent shoaling from the last recent storms.  He goes left and right in the channel and we follow figuring he knows where the low spots are.  Sometimes we have less than a foot beneath us (we draw 4 1/2) which starts to makes us really edgy.

GETTING OUT OF THE STORM

Up ahead I see two big fishing boats heading this way with their paraffin's up and running lights still on as it still is pretty dark out.  They look big and ominous as they come our way.  We will have to pass them in this shallow narrow channel.  It’s exciting but nerve wracking.  They must have just come in through Oregon Inlet from the Atlantic.  It’s supposed to be very rough out there today; maybe they are coming in to get a break from the storm.  Imagine being a fisherman in these waters, fishing daily over ancient ship wrecks taken by the mighty and fierce waters off the Outer Banks.  It makes me shiver to think of it.  I take some pictures of these guys as they go by hoping to catch the how powerful they look.  They are painted to look fierce like the jobs they do. 

RED RIGHT RETURNING?

After studying the charts, before we left, we knew we were coming up to where the markers switch.   The place is just past the Oregon Inlet as we will turn to the right and start the long marked passage leading out to Pamlico Sound.  A short ways after this turn there is a line marked on the charts which indicates that all the markers do this change to the opposite side.  So for an hour now we’ve been running with green to our right and red to our left.  Soon we will switch and to "Red Right Returning".

Our trusty fishing boat ahead us makes a noticeably wrong turn around a marker and goes very close to a sandy shore.  What's he doing?   It's scary because we don't know if he knows some local knowledge that we don't.  Should we follow him and take the chance on getting stuck outside the markers???

Sorry, we’re not going to follow you on that one.  We couldn’t figure out what he was doing.  Soon a marker or two later he made a portside turn into the channel heading towards Oregon Inlet.  Wow, is he going to take those day fishermen out into the Atlantic on a day like this?  I guess we’ll never know.

HARD TO IDENTIFY

We're on our own now trying to figure out these markers.  You should see the mass of sticks with diamonds and squares on them in the distance.  It looks like a fish trap.  If the markers have diamonds or squares on them, then that identifies those as markers for the Intracoastal Waterway.  If they don't have these markers then they could represent markers to private channels or to channels to marinas, anything.  It's hard to see the identification marks as many are faded or turned at an angle where you only see on of two numbers, etc.  The skies are so dark it’s hard to see the colors from a distance too.  Everything looks dark grey, so we try to go by identifying the shapes but now what's this huge of a thing right in the channel up ahead of us???

NOTHING IS MATCHING

We soon realize it’s a big dredger with some support boats.  They are working, dredging the channel.  Crap! Just what we need more confusion.  To add to it, now none of the markers match anything on the charts, not the paper charts or the electronic charts!!  This is when you just have to forget looking at the friggin' charts and use your eyes and brain trying your best to figure out what the hell is going on with these markers and what the guy that put them there was thinking. 

We both were having trouble making any sense out of this, nor did the markers didn’t switch to Red Right Returning when they were supposed to.  We reasoned that the confusion must be because they are dredging the area and just decided to change the friggin' plan.  We did our best but since it didn't make sense it was nerve wracking.  They had all these unidentified red and green floats with numbers that had nothing to do with the chart numbering. 

HE JUST SAT AND WATCHED!

Suddenly as we feared we went aground and went again pretty solid.  Oh my gosh! This is bad.  We moved a little further and hit another thump.  Larry tried to turn to get around it and another hard thump.  Then we were just plain stuck!  I'm freaking out but Larry keeps his calm and immediately gets on the radio and calls the dredger who answers back right away.  Larry asks "Where the heck is the channel?"  The dredger who obviously had been watching the whole thing not bothering to give us a call to warn us says, and kind of flippantly, "Captain, you are 50 feet out of the channel!"  Well, nice of him to let somebody know where the hell the channel was that he was dredging!  And it would be nice to know when and where he decided to switch the red to right as there was no sense to anything he had marked out here! 

LARRY TO THE RESCUE

Larry reacted quickly and forcefully, scaring the bajilickers out of me, by giving her lots of power and turning this way and that, forcing the boat by pure force making a circle and soon we were out off the bottom and over into the "imaginary dredged channel".  It was a scary experience.  I'm hoping we didn't do damage to the bottom as we now have no where to go but a long way across Pamlico Sound. 

We just couldn’t get over the mess that was back there.  No one could have made sense out of those markers and if they did make any sense, there was no time for a boater new to the area to figure it out in time!  Its just plain dangerous!  The dredger should have called us when he saw we were headed the wrong way especially since he was the master and designer of that mess, but nope, no call from him as he was just going to sit and watch us get into trouble in the mess he created.  We still don't understand how we "got 50 yards out of the channel" as we were following his friggin' markers.  We both went over it and over it trying to make sense out of what happened.  If it was that terribly difficult for us with all our boating experience then how would it be for others? 

QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOR

I also hate to admit this but it crossed my mind that maybe they like a few people to get stuck out here so they can earn some money getting them off or do a little salvaging.  I might be wrong but I’ve been told by a reliable experienced commercial captain that things like that happen in places along the coast.  I thought he was exaggerating but now I'm thinking he may be telling the truth.  It sure was starting to perk my interest now and making some sense.  It even seemed suspicious when the fishing boat knew we were following him and then suddenly went outside the marker which didn't make any sense.  Maybe he was trying to get us into trouble for their own profit.  Good thing we didn't follow him.  Sorry, I know this isn't a nice thing to say and Larry may not agree with me, but a handful of people have been a little strange out here on the banks.

We were nervous wrecks after that experience.  Once we got past the dam dredger everything was marked clear as a bell but I would not recommend that trip to anybody now as you are surely to get in to trouble if the dredger is there. There simply was no sense to the markers. 

FREE IN PAMLICO SOUND

Once out we were past the final markers and into Pamlico Sound, Larry turned the helm over to me so he could rest his eye.  We need to take good care of his eye and strain it more than necessary to keep the swelling behind his eye down.  It felt so good to be away from those dam markers.  Now we were free in the open waters and could relax.

SEAS WERE GETTIN' CRAZY

So it was me at the helm for the next few hours.  The seas were unpredictably rough. We knew we were to expect it to be a bit uncomfortable but this was more than predicted.  We had about 17 knots behind us and the seas were creeping to 3-4 feet.  Some of the troughs were getting way deeper maybe to 6 feet on occasion and steeper.  Larry was sleeping below and Ziggy and I both were getting a little nervous.  I watched the charts as we passed one sunken ship after another marked on the charts.  Imagine, we were on the inside of the outer banks and still you could see the markings of ship wrecks.  Imagine just a few miles to our port was the thin strip of Hatteras Banks and then just beyond remains of hundreds of lost ships below the oceans surface.  Traveling these waters in a storm gives you suddenly a lot of respect for the hazards of this area and you realize that you don’t want to take any of it for granted.  The water was shallow, mostly 10-15 feet below us and the winds where whipping it up quickly.  The bow was throwing off water in amazing thick sheets of waves.  It was like the Bellagio in Las Vegas without the classical music to go along with the water show.  The water was a powerful force, quickly whipped up and deserved its respect.

I'M GETTIN' WORRIED

Larry came up after a bumpy nap and joined us.  We both remarked how bad it was out.  As we got closer and closer to Ocracoke, the seas weren’t getting any better either just increasingly worse.  I was getting really concerned about heading in through another set of marked channels in these conditions!  We would be heading in with these steep four foot waves on our beam! 

“Maybe we should keep going to Beaufort?” I asked. 

“Why?” Larry asks back.

“Can we make it through the channel in these conditions?  I’m getting really scared about this.”

“We have to, there’s no other place to go and we need to get out of this.”

“What about Beaufort?”

“No, it’s too far; we are going in to Ocracoke.”

As we get closer, the seas still are getting worse.  I try to look ahead with the binoculars.  I see what looks like a couple sticks projecting up out of the gray wetness and the extremely choppy seas up ahead.  I think to myself that this is too dangerous.  No fool would be going into a shallow channel in this stuff.  I think that maybe we should get our life jackets on.

I suggest to Larry that maybe we should call the harbor and see if they could send someone out to guide us in.  Larry says we’ll see what it’s like when we get closer. 

ANOTHER DREDGER

I see the markers again and there’s some strange pier posts sticking up too that don't make sense to the charts again.  Oh great, on top of the horrible seas, we've some more stupid markers that don’t make sense.  I also see, oh no, not another dredger!!!  Yes!

“Larry, Larry, they’ve got another friggin' dredger right in the channel!  He’s huge and has this big arm extended out blowing out the sand they are dredging.  The channel must be shoaled in really bad from the storms for them to have this guy out in these terrible conditions today!"

I'm scared and asking myself how are we going to get past him?  Larry gets on the radio and tries to hail the dredger twice.  The seas are terrible and it’s raining and the wind blowing.  Visibility is terrible.  I get the radio and try to hail him.  No answer.  Then I realize we’re stupidly calling on 16.  We should be calling on 13, the channel the commercial vessels monitor so I switch to 13. 

So I try again, “Dredger in Big Foot Channel, this is the Knotty Dog, come back please”

“This is the dredger in Big Foot Channel” he answers right away.

Larry grabs the handset, “This is the Knotty Dog and we are about to enter the channel, which side do you want us to pass you on?”

Dredger answers us back, “Come on in Captain, and give me a call when you get to marker “10”.  I’ll move over to give you enough room!”

Larry again, “Roger that, we’re heading in.”

CAN'T KEEP IN THE CHANNEL!

My eyes are wide and I'm scared.  We head in with rolling four foot plus steep waves on our beam.  Each wave carries us over pushing us out of the channel.  We can't control it.  Larry keeps fighting to turn her back into the channel and manages to keep going.

I keep redundantly out of complete nervousness telling Larry to get back in the channel and turn left. 

He says "I'm trying but the waves are grabbing us". 

He turns back in to get in the channel again and just as soon as we get back in another wave pushes us out again.  We manage to get to the #10 marker and I call the dredger to say we are at the marker.  I wonder to myself "Why does he need us to call him?  Doesn’t he know we are there because we are only just yards away from him?"  Maybe he’s got his back to us.  He has already moved over for us before I even call back but still it’s going to be tough getting by him with these waves. 

I think to myself, "God, please don’t let the waves push us into him as we go by!"  It may sound dramatic and exaggerated but you had to be there to see how Larry bravely and with great courage that I didn’t know anyone could have, proceeded on to get by that dredger even when the waves were still taking us in a direction we didn’t want to go.  As we got close to the dredger Larry pushed the throttle hard and fought the waves using all the power our little ship had to keep us the few feet away from the dredger.  I glanced off to the left of us and the water just beyond the markers was total white caps!  It was about the scariest thing I think I've ever been through in boating yet. 

DREDGER IN BIG FOOT CHANNEL

We made it past the dredger and I got back on the radio, “Dredger in Big Foot Channel this is the Knotty Dog.”

“This is the dredger in Big Foot Channel”

And with great appreciation I said, “Thank you captain of the dredger in the Big foot Channel for making way giving us safe passage”

“You are very welcome Knotty Dog.”  Though it was few words we both spoke to each other, they meant more than you cold describe.  It's a grateful moment that you will always remember.

And just that quickly a few more 100 yards the seas calmed down.  We were in the protection of the shores of Ocracoke.  It was still windy, rainy and white caps were everywhere but it all seemed like nothing after what we experienced just moments ago.

We hailed the marina, Anchorage Marina, and told them we were here and where would they like to put us and I just couldn't keep from adding "hopefully a spot that’s easy as we’ve had a rough time of it out here today". 

He says he’ll put us on our side against the dock and for us to have the lines ready for a starboard tie.  He said "Not to worry mam.  We'll be here.  We'll help you all get in".  I don’t think I was ever so glad to see one of those dam old wooden docks with posts in my life.

They did help us get in and did give us an easy spot.  I was ever so grateful. 

NASTY AS COULD BE

As we barely even got the lines set we were greeted by another couple that was docked nearby.  They wanted to know how it was out there and I said "It was as nasty as it could be".  They said they tried to leave earlier this morning heading for Beaufort but it was so bad they had to turn back.  They also wanted to know how we did coming out the channel from Roanoke and I gladly told her all the gory details of going aground and they said they too got lost in the mess of markers but the only thing that saved them was that the dredger called them yelling at their wake and charging that they were endangering the lives of his men with them.  They said they then asked him where they should go as they couldn't make sense out of his markers.  So he did tell them where the channel was after they asked and that's the only way they made it through.  They also said another boater they talked to went aground there too just the other day.  So mariners beware of that area as this ain’t no piece of cake here on the Outer Banks.

It was about 12:30 when we got settled after leaving just before sunlight.  We both thought we deserved a toast for making it safely.  We poured ourselves a glass of wine to calm our nerves.  In fact, two glasses!

We were hungry and tired and walked a short way to the local Jolly Rodger.  Of course we had Ziggy and because of it were directed to sit outside under an umbrella at the picnic tables.  One sour puss of a young waitress came out and rudely said "If you want to get served you’ll just have to go inside cause I ain’t serving anybody out here in the rain!" then turned her back and proceeded to huff off.  Well, it wasn’t raining yet, and they wouldn’t let Zig sit inside so we thought she was pretty darn unfriendly.  It wasn't exactly what we needed after our experience to get insulted.  A nice young man though came right out as he must have overheard her and offered to get us some lunch.  So there we sat and eventually did rain, but nothing was going to mar this day as we were happy as could be to be there and had another glass of wine to boot as we munched our hamburgers.  And before we left, we gave the nice young man a big tip! 

We then headed straight back to the boat and collapsed for the rest of the afternoon in our cozy little boat.

Wow, what a day, what an adventure.