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Ocracoke, NC |
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The Fairfield Harbour Yacht Club organized a short cruise to Cape Lookout and Ocracoke, NC. Due to a scheduling conflict we opted out of the Lookout portion but arrived in Ocracoke ahead of the flotilla. We departed Tuesday June 15, spent the night in Lower Broad Creek with another boat Doodah. Toby, our dog went with us and demonstrated that he is still deck trained so we didn’t have to drop the dinghy and take him ashore. Doodah had stuffing box problems and had to turn back the next day. Both Tuesday and Wednesday were reasonable sailing days and George was frequently trimming sails to accommodate wind shifts along the way. We arrived Wednesday June 16, to an almost empty National Park Service dock where we get a 50% discount with our seniors’ pass. The docks are adjacent to the ferry docks and are in excellent shape.
Over the next few days, as other boats arrived we did more and more group things but still had plenty of time to hold up on Sunspot Baby and read. Part of this was driven by some really serious thunderstorms rolling through. Even with our special antenna there was no Wi-Fi in range of the docks so we got a little behind on email and the like. One important issue is an on-line course we are taking through the local community college and we are now four lessons behind. We need to go into a full court press to get caught up. There are not a lot of people living on the Outer Banks, at least not this far south. Ocracoke did get a little national attention lately when a local school teacher, Charles Temple, won $100,000 in the Jeopardy Teachers’ Tournament on TV. Not surprisingly he is front page news here.
As the weekend approached the docks and anchorage filled. Two different sailing groups came in, Nuese Sailing Association and a regatta organized by McCotters Marina in Washington, NC. You may have read about the serious fire they had last year. As more boats arrived they were squeezing onto the dinghy dock and rafting up with each other. Another yacht club boat rafted to us one night, but then a dock opened and they moved. We were privileged to witness a lot of bonehead maneuvers by some fairly new and some fairly inebriated boaters (not from FHYC of course). Fortunately most of the partiers hadn’t learned to pace themselves and by 9:00 at night, the dock was still and quiet.
Then the real biggie. As stated we had some major thunderstorms including some winds around 40 knots. During one such storm, boats were dragging in the harbor. I had parked the bikes near our boat, on the dock. The wind caught them, blew them off the dock and into the water. One hung on a dock line and some nice folks from a neighboring boat pulled it up. The other went right to the bottom. Now, this didn’t seem like the end of the world to me. The water in our toilet as we flushed through and into our holding tank looked pretty clear and our depth gauge said we were only in 11’ of water. No problem, I planned to just dive down, hook a line on the bike and pull it up. The captain of one of the other Club boats leant me a mask (note to self, why wasn’t there one on my boat). I tied a line to the boat about where I thought the bike went in and dropped the free end to the bottom. I always get a little water in my mouth and as soon as I go in and this time was no different, The water tasted like fuel oil. I swam under the dock, did a surface dive and found there was no more than 2’ visibility at the bottom. I searched (felt) around and did not find the bike. After three attempts it was clear I had misjudged where the bike went in. Our club member who had loaned me the mask brought his fishing rod and used a hook to drag the bottom, successfully locating the bike several feet and well out of visual range from where I was diving. I brought the line's free end of the line up, moved to the proper area and hit the bike on the first dive. I looped the line through the frame, surfaced, and tied the end to a boat hook Lynn extended. Folks on the boat and dock pulled the bike up while I swam back to the swim ladder. We rinsed bikes and diver on the dock and loaded the bikes aboard. By this time I was pretty tired of the oily tasting water and felt like I was going to cough up a lung. This too passed and all is well. The Club calls its cocktail happy hour get together a Splash. At that evening Splash several people seemed surprised that this fat old man could dive in 10 or 11’ of water and stay down to attach a line to the bike. I told them the hardest thing was swimming constantly to keep from bobbing to the surface. I really should lose some weight. The Club has a Red Marker award for the biggest gaff of the cruising season. I have been alerted that my bike incident is in the running for the award. I hope someone else does something more worthy of ridicule before the season is over. But hey, we are usually gone to the Bahamas by the time the prize is awarded so maybe I won’t have to be there for the embarrassing award ceremony. The dragging boats managed to affect us, even though we were securely and safely tied well out of the way. One of the boats had a hard time getting the anchor reset after dragging into another, fortunately with no damage to either vessel. A Club member anchored near them suggested they raft up to us which after a while, they reluctantly did. Thus we had close neighbors for another night. Tuesday morning, all remaining club boats headed out, most leaving in the wake of the 7:30 ferry. We took a while, got our rafted neighbor cast off and finally left ourselves. We couldn’t have been too much later because we were out of the channel with sails up by 8:45. Winds on the way home were behind us about ¼ of the way, then it was mostly motoring with occasional use of the Genoa when the wind picked up. We came all the way home and had the boat tied in our slip by 6:00 pm. It was really nice to spend a few days on the boat in a remote and charming location and it reminded us of how much we like our long winter cruises to the Bahamas.
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George and
Lynn Stateham |
