Tuesday - October 31, 2023 Happy Halloween

It’s Wednesday morning as I’m writing. About 10:00PM last night the wind started its march around from the Southwest to the Northeast. The barometer is on the rise too. Cold front is approaching. This means the wind doesn’t know what to do. One thing about all of the wind directions are they are strong - currently 19-27 knots out of the Northeast. The sky is gray and it could spit a bit of rain too. The temperature is starting to drop. It’s 64º right now. Water temperature is 69º. The water around Ocracoke Island will heat the colder air and keep the air temperature from dropping too fast.

The wind speed is the thing we have to watch out for. If the wind speed is forecast to be over 10 knots in any direction we might not be moving. It gets very uncomfortable. If the wind is from the direction we are heading, we bounce up and down. If the wind hits us broadside we roll side to side and that’s the worst. If the wind is at our back it’s not too bad a ride and we might get underway. Right now the wind is going to be over 10 knots until Saturday. Of course weather forecasts change. So, we will see.

Yesterday, we took a walk along the Springer Point path to the beach. It was windy but we were walking a path through myrtle and live oaks. Susan and I like paths such as this, with many varied plants. Our iPhones have the ability to look up what plant we are looking at. And, our volunteer time at Lewis Ginter Garden gets us recalling some plants, too. Yaupon (you can make tea with Yaupon), Viburnum, Penny Wort of course live oaks and wax myrtle ( candles were made from the wax myrtle ) were all there. As we came out of the protected path onto the beach it was evident we were not going be sitting on the beach as the wind was blowing the sand and stingingly sandblasting our legs. Looking toward the ocean, there was a dredge ship working on the Ocracoke Inlet. There is constant dredging of the inlet. The shifting shoals of the ferry route of “Big Foot Slough” channel are under constant dredging too. It was nice being at Spring Point thinking about Blackbeard actually camping there in 1718.

Today’s picture is the well at Springer’s Point where the pirates got fresh water. The wooden covered well is shown on many historic maps of Springer’s Point. It’s not known who built the well. It could have been the ‘Hatterask’ Native Americans, pirates, or colonists.