Passage Oriental Marina and Inn to National Park Service Docks, Ocracoke, NC
7:10 AM Underway
1:20 PM Docked port side to.
7.2 engine hours 46 miles

OK, we are not home. But Ocracoke feels like home. From high school until now, Ocracoke is just fun. I’m listening to WOVV, their local station, over the radio right now. Usually I have to stream the the station on TuneInRadio. They are playing some really good blues, jazz and other music I cannot put into any genre. I visited their new studio today. They moved from a tiny, waterfront studio to a nice second floor building. I’d certainly volunteer if I lived here!

Our cruise this morning down the Neuse River was pretty easy, even though the windy conditions were still echoing on the Pamlico Sound, with two to three foot seas. Not bad, except they were almost hitting us broadside for two hours. The flag was limp due to lack of wind, but still, the uncomfortable swells continued to run. They finally calmed as the morning wore on.

Where are the two ferries I’m wondering, as I’m still about two hours from the entry of the Ocracoke channel? I don’t know why, but these ferry boats do not appear to have the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which would tell me where they are, their course and speed and how close we will pass. I finally spied the Cedar Island ferry a good hour before it got to me. It looked like a “constant bearing decreasing range” situation. That equals collision. Still, the ferry was, about 10 miles away on my starboard quarter. Then, I saw the Swan Quarter ferry, off the port bow, maybe 5 miles away. Who knows for sure, because they don’t have AIS either. They might not have AIS because of security. AIS would tell a terrorist exactly where the ferry is. War ships don’t have AIS either. Cargo and most commercial vessels have AIS. It was how the Somali Pirates were initially tracking their prey. Now ships cut off their AIS when in pirate waters.

The problem, here is that I was on autopilot with a 9 mile run dialed in and didn’t want to change course if I didn’t have to. On the other hand, though, I was not seeing a change of course on the Cedar Island ferry. The Swan Quarter ferry, I determine, is not a threat. Calling the ferry on the VHF goes through my mind. I will when the ferry gets a little closer. I don’t like what I’m seeing and I don’t want to kick the autopilot off so I decide to slow down a bit. I could speed up and cross his bow and avoid the collision. It might avoid a crash but that would be the time your motor would fail and you’d get run over! So, slowing down let me leave the autopilot on and the ferry go ahead of me. The angle changes and he is definitely going to pass ahead of me. The thing about the ferries is they are fast and I don’t want them coming up behind me in the narrow Big Foot Slough Channel. I prefer for the ferries to be ahead of me going in. They also leave really quickly and will be coming out of Silver Lake’s narrow channel at 1:00 PM and 1:30PM. I will arrive before 1:30 but after 1:00PM so one of those ferries will be coming back out before I arrive. So, I wait for the 1:00 PM ferry to leave and we proceed into the Silver Lake channel and past the other ferry. Wow, no other boat at the National Park Dock, no wind and no current. Docking was a piece of cake!
Today’s picture is the Cedar Island Ferry docked for the night in front of Liquid Therapy.