August 21st, 2007 – August 25th, 2007
Ocracoke is a charming seaside town, with quite a few boats in the harbor, a big double master schooner (for sightseeing trips), and many small shops and restaurants catering to tourists. Ocracoke had just gotten the Best US Beach of 2007 designation.
We found the campground right downtown – perfect for us. We got our tent up (slowly), got our showers, and got settled in for sleeping, but we chose to eat at a small restaurant right on the harbor instead of struggling with our temperamental stove. It was such a wonderful end to a really tough day…sitting by the water, watching the sun set, seeing the boats peacefully rocking in their moorings, eating great food…ahhhh…
Back at our campground we were a few sites away from a guy in a huge Wal-Mart style tent. He looked like he lived there, judging from the kinds of things he had set up all around. It clearly wasn’t an overnight kind of camping trip. We wondered how he did at night, because he had no rain fly, and the top of his tent was open netting. We’d had so much dew at night everywhere that if we didn’t tarp everything and put up the rain fly, everything would be soaked by morning. We were so tired that we just let our things go, covering them loosely.
About 9 pm, this guy came over to us (we were long since in the tent reading) and called out to us. He told us that he’d just heard on the weather radio that a huge storm was headed our way, with possible tornadoes, heavy rain, and winds up to 50-70 mph. It was already dark, and there wasn’t much we could do except tie things down and hope for the best. We moved all our things up to the picnic table and tarped them down to the table making sure we had extra stakes on the tent, tied down really well.
It was a very exciting night! The rain and lightning and thunder were awesome, but it’s the wind we’ll remember. The wind whipped our tent on all sides, and Chelsea still remembers the feeling of lying down with her arms spread out hoping to hold the tent down in the big gusts. It didn’t help that our neighbor had a tied a tarp over his tent, and we could hear it whipping and cracking all night.
We found out later that winds had indeed hit 50 mph in our area, and the storm had caused severe damage just up the coast from us. Other than branches down, we had no damage at all. Our tent held up beautifully, and we had no rain inside. However, we didn’t escape unscathed. When we picked up our tarps from the picnic table, we discovered much to our dismay that a literal colony of ants had moved into our snorkel bags overnight. What a mess it was! There were hundreds and hundreds of ants, complete with hundreds and hundreds of eggs. It took us most of the morning to clean it all up.
We opted to stay in Ocracoke for a few days because it was so pretty and so peaceful and relaxing. From our daily trips over there, we became friends with the owners of the candy and ice cream store right across from the campground, and we wandered around the town in the later afternoons and evenings looking at the shops and the harbor.
One of our neighbors in the campground loaned us chairs to sit in, and gave us organic vegetables from their garden back home. Another neighbor gave us freshly caught fish one evening. We stir-fried the organic veggies and then pan-fried the fish, and wow was it good! It was one of the tastiest meals we’d had in ages.
On our last evening in Ocracoke we ate at the same restaurant we did the first night, enjoying the good food, the boats rocking in the harbor and the gentle breezes blowing off the water. Partway through our meal an older couple sat down next to us, chatting with someone who had stopped by their table. Being so close it was impossible not to overhear most of the conversation. We discovered that the couple was traveling by sailboat, and had their boat in the harbor there in Ocracoke. I was extremely interested in talking to them, because I am looking ahead to when we will be needing to figure out how to get from island to island on boats, coming up the Lesser and Greater Antilles.
As luck would have it, they were a gregarious couple, and invited us to join them for a glass of wine. We had just met Gilbert Burnett and his wife Barbara. Gilbert is a retired judge who’s written at least one book, and he and Barbara now spend a great deal of time sailing into various harbors and spending a few days. After a time of getting to know each other’s stories, they invited us to visit their boat and get a feeling for what it’s like. We accepted immediately.
The boat was gorgeous. Not knowing much about boats, it was a real eye-opener to see how much space there could really be in a not-really-very-big boat. We loved the efficiency, and we’ve since seen how much luxury can be packed into small spaces. I asked Gilbert if he had any ideas for us on the island part of our adventure, and his immediate suggestion was to crew on boats. He told us to hang around the harbors asking around for who is going where, and asking if we can crew. He told us we may not get an overnight answer, so we need to be prepared to wait, and he warned us to check out reputations and to use our good judgment before agreeing to go with someone. He also told us we would have the time of our lives… 🙂