Friday, October 27,2023 - Docked Anchorage Marina, Ocracoke, NC

There is just something about Ocracoke that just makes Susan and me smile. People are nice. Not too touristy. Laid back. Fun people working in restaurants and gift shops. I HATE shopping. But, the gift shop “Over The Moon”, is owned and run by a 6th generation Cathy Scarborough. I spent the first 15 minutes laughing at all the greeting cards, sayings on towels, and prints. I mean where can you buy a book titled “The Care And Feeding Of Feral Children” ? This type of humor was everywhere in the store and the owner’s sister running the store today. I bought 3 greeting cards that made me laugh until I was crying. They were from a woman’s point of view. I told the sister working I was going to mail them to myself. Susan and I stayed in the store over an hour. And, we did spend a fair amount of money. It was fun. I hate shopping . But that place is always fun.

Yesterday we did go to the local waterman’s store where you buy fresh off the boat seafood without a middleman. We got two nice filets of Sheepshead fish and 2 lbs of shrimp. The seafood co-op has more interesting fish than the usual flounder, tuna and mahi. They had red drum and black drum and others that escape me now. We ate the sheepshead and a few of the shrimp for dinner last night.

I launched the dingy so we can cruise the harbor. We got busy visiting the pirate encampment and never got around to our dingy ride. There are so many pirates running all around Ocracoke. People that are serious about authenticity and some not so serious are wearing costumes from Amazon. We have a pirate windsock on our rented golf cart. I put up a string of pirate flags of the different pirates that roamed the waters around here. The are a few people on this island that trace their roots back to some of Blackbeard’s crew. I find that amazing.

Saturday they are supposed to have a reenactment of the battle that occurred here in Ocracoke 11-22-1718 killing Blackbeard. Many things are very strange about his demise here. It was very late in the year for the pirates to still be this far north. No one knows much really about Blackbeard. Historians do not know his real name. They don’t know if he was born in England or near Ocracoke. Lots of legendary fabricated stories seem most likely. The thing that amazed me is how good a navigator he was. Hey let me try to get from Ocracoke to Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas by looking at the stars. They seemed to just go wherever they wanted. But, still for some unknown reason Blackbeard was still here in Ocracoke when the weather was getting cold. The pirates like the snowbirds of today used to head south to water climes for winter.

Today’s picture is today’s sunset over the Pamlico Sound again. It’s not as spectacular as yesterday’s. But, it’s still pretty.