Dear Friends and Family ~

Jane and I began sailing together aboard our first s/v Voyageur back in 1994. We sailed her on Lake Texoma, about 75 miles north of Dallas, for five years, missing very few weekends regardless of temperature or precipitation.

However, our first shared boating experience took place on a ferry ride from Swan Quarter, NC, to the outer banks island of Ocracoke some ten years earlier on a hot, windless September afternoon.

We stayed at the Ocracoke Inn, a two story wood frame motel with an attached restaurant . . . casual, almost diner like . . . with formica topped tables and paper place mats. Each white place mat was featureless save for lacey, embossed edges and a saying of one sort or another printed in the lower right hand corner. On mine was printed, "It doesn't matter if you're rich or broke, you're always welcome at Ocracoke."



When we offered a Master Charge card (remember those?) to the waitress to pay our lunch bill, she informed us that credit cards were not accepted in the restaurant. So I walked over to the cash register, place mat in hand, and asked if it was true that "it doesn't matter if you're rich or broke, you're always welcome in Ocracoke." The lady at the register said that "no, it wasn't literally true" and, since we had almost no cash between us at that point, Jane and I hopped on the bikes we had with us and peddled twelve miles up to the Hatteras Inlet, ferried across and rode to the only ATM in town at the time. When we got back to the Ocracoke Inn, flush with crisp $20 bills, it was supper time and the last ferry back had already departed. Realizing that our trip had thus been extended by a day, we booked our room for another night, payed for lunch, sipped a couple of beers and enjoyed a delicious, deep fried Fisherman's Sampler dinner as the sun set over Ocracoke harbor.

Tonight we'll be docked at River Dunes Marina near Oriental, NC, just a few miles from where we caught the Ocracoke ferry over twenty-six years ago. And to this day, the quiet little community of Swan Quarter remains an integral part of our first . . . and one of our fondest . . . shared boating memories.

Bob & Jane Fulton
Oct 2010