Ocracoke Waves

From the past, your future will grow

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 01:48:00 +0000

Our backyard in North Carolina's Piedmont as the leaves fall

Every fall when the leaves start falling, I am always reminded how those leaves enrich the soils in our yards. There are people who do not want a leaf around, but I am of another persuasion. I am happy for all the leaves that come from neighbors' trees. The lawn crew grinds them up with the mowers and each year a little more organic matter is added to the soil. This summer presented me with a great example of how this works.
A cousin have been dumping leaves on his red dirt garden for over sixty years. As the drought got worse this summer, I remember him saying that he did not have a way to water his garden and it would just have to make it with what Mother Nature delivered. While nearby corn (See picture at end of post) wilted, my cousin's garden looked unfazed by the dry weather.

My cousin's garden filled with leaf mulch, dying corn in background

The metaphor of dumping rotting leaves on your garden does not work perfectly for your life, but what does work is building your life by incorporating what you have learned in the past.
Growth does not happen on its own. I am old enough to remember the early days of the Internet. I was a manager at Apple and it did not take me long to figure out the web could be very helpful for a remote sales force. I can remember making some early web pages. Eventually I had an internal (inside our firewall) homepage for our team. I found the web a much more effective way to keep our goals and even our commitments and presentations on the web.
When you are sales person, you get more focused on doing what you said you would do if you know that in six months someone is going to be flipping through your old slides on the web while you are delivering your update.
After Apple defenestrated me in the summer of 2004, I started blogging on Typepad where my ~[View from the Mountain Blog](https://www.blogger.com/#)~ has over 1,500 posts. Not long after that I started posting here. Because of my expertise in communicating on the web, I got hired as a vice president of sales and marketing in 2006. That took me in Google ad words. I put together web-based sales training and support for the inside sales people at our company.
After I left there, I eventually got involved in another company but not before I had learned how to do effective email marketing with MailChimp. By then I had also learned how to harvest people's addresses and do mailings to backup the email and Internet efforts.
Promotional work I did at the Crystal Coast of North Carolina, led me deeper into web skills. The more that I learned, the more that I noticed that I was building on skills that I had learned early in career.
I have been at my most recent job for over a decade, but I still make time to learn new things and build on what I have previously learned. The very first post on the View from the Mountain blog was about my introduction to Windows after twenty years at Apple.

I want to be able to work with GPS files. The key reason I actually bought the system was so I could upload GPS maps under Windows.

Now I can buy my GPS and we will have a Pentium based Linux box as a bonus. GPS was just a start which I embraced with my boat, watch, and Smartphone.
Now I am working and creating GIS maps which still has to be done on Windows. I hope that I am never to old to learn and embrace new things.

Sad, dry corn

Tis the Season for HOA Boards

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 08 May 2019 16:35:00 +0000

There are posts, that you just do not want to write, but sometimes you know that it is better to speak now before you are to the point of watching people endure a ship wreck.

I served on an HOA Board for three years. One of them was very tough. See my article, My Descent into HOA Hell. I was also involved in the hiring a lawyer to fix our HOA after we got farther into the bowels of HOA Hell. Then I got involved a second time when we had a board that decided the best way to have an HOA was to not meet with the members and keep them in the dark. I ended up writing an amendment to the by-laws to keep that from happening again. I remain involved in our HOA as an advisor since I learned far more about HOAs than I ever wanted to know.

So as many HOAs go into the season of electing new boards I feel a little advice from someone with plenty of scars on his back might at least provide some discussion points before you step off the cliff and accept yet another bad board. You can either listen to my advice from the HOA school of hard knocks or pay attention to the people who are usually experts in everything but with little expertise to back up their freely shared opinions.

Many of you reading this have never heard of an oyster rock. Oyster rocks are very plentiful, sometimes beautiful and as extensive on the White Oak River as HOAs are across the country. I kayak and boat the river frequently so I have seen my fair share. Oyster rocks are lot like HOAs, sometimes you have no idea they are there and often you can have an unpleasant experience if you are not watching for them. Second, HOAs like oyster rocks often have far more below the surface than what is visible. Ours is a tidal river so our oyster rocks might be visible at low tide but nearly invisible at high tides or during storms. HOAs pop up at elections times and disappear sometimes when you think they should be there. That is just the way it is.

All HOAs are different so even if you have had experience in another HOA, you likely might not appreciate the inner workings of the one where you have moved. HOAs are run by untrained volunteers for the most part and sometimes have a management company that in theory might rescue them from their lack of knowledge. It is truly a thankless, unpaid job that will take more time than you imagine if you do it right.

Unfortunately for a good HOA you need people that understand HOA law, your covenants, your by-laws and your history. Without that you are doomed to failure no matter how well intentioned your HOA board is.

One of the first rules that boards do not understand is that they cannot pick and choose which covenants to enforce. If you let something slide and want to enforce another covenant, someone might take you to court and you will likely lose.

Getting people to be on an HOA board is a challenge because no one wants to be the enforcer of rules especially when their good neighbor might be the person violating the rule. The best situation I have ever been on in an HOA board is when we had a secretary from a management company that did almost nothing for us other than provide secretarial help. She took the angry calls, sent out the bills, minutes, warnings and provided what passed for accounting services and budgets.

After scratching my head for my first term, it became clear to me that every board needs someone who really understands where every penny of the money goes and exactly how much is collected. I do not think that person shoiuld be outsourced. That means you need someone on the board who can keep a general ledger. I also believe it is reckless to be involved in an HOA without an independent, professional accounting service that reports directly to the board. The board should not give away its check signing privileges. If you sign all the checks, it much easier to account for all your community's money.

So here are my recommendations for people who should NOT be voted onto a board.

Previous board members who got frustrated and resigned in anger from the job. Even worse are those who have resigned twice. The job has likely gotten worse and your personality has probably not changed. An HOA is not a practice operation for you to prove yourself.
People who are unable to at least have a civil conversation with everyone in the community. If you hold grudges and refuse to communicate with some people in the community, do everyone a favor and stay off the board. Work out your anger issues someplace else.
People who made mistakes on a board and want another chance to show that they can do it right this time. An HOA is not a place to hone your skills, especially if you have been unable to publicly admit your mistakes. If your previous mistakes involved wasting money, do not even think about running for the board. Your previous mistakes will haunt you.
People with a personal agenda and who view the HOA as a way to accomplish their goals which may or may not align with the community's goals. An HOA leadership role is not the right spot to try to force everyone to see things your way.
People who have thin skins and who take everything personally. A role on an HOA board is job that comes with criticism. No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to please everyone.
People who are not willing to work. The boards most likely to suffer burnout or make serioius mistakes are the ones where one person does all the work.
People who have to control everything. If you cannot delegate and work with others to accomplish a task, you have no business being on an HOA board.
People who do not completely respect the confidentially and privacy needed to be on a board. If you inappropriately share information, you will destroy any trust your board has built up.
People who think running an HOA is a fun job. It is not fun and in spite of what some folks in lots of communities think, an HOA is not just a vehicle to have great parties. An HOA is first and foremost a business which needs to be treated seriously with a full understanding of the liabilities that are incurred by allowing any HOA-sanctioned reckless behavior- especially that involving alcohol.
People who cannot see the big picture. If you do not understand doing the most good for the most people, you are doomed to failure. If you play favorites and waive fees or rules for some people and not everyone, you will destroy the credibility of your HOA and have plenty of people angry at you.

HOAs need to be better regulated by the states, but until that happens when the blue moon with a red ring around it shows up, getting the right people on the board can help make the experience of living in an HOA a very tolerable one. I have seen good boards and bad boards. The good ones over communicate and make every effort to treat everyone the same. The bad ones are rife with favoritism even to the point of letting people do things that are actually illegal. The first and best weapon you have is your vote. After that it gets really messy which is why you often see real estate listings advertising "No HOA."

Cheerleading Enforcers

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 03:41:00 +0000

I had the good fortune to work at Apple for almost twenty years, but anyone who worked there for a few years would likely tell you that Apple was more like a religion than a company. The company and its supporters have been called a cult. While Apple and its cheerleaders do not deserve all the blame for spreading cult-like behavior through our society, they are not innocent either. Ignoring the dangers of this behavior at any level of government puts out society at great risk.

If you do a Google search for "the cult of Apple," you will be surprised to find several articles on the subject including this one, "5 signs that Apple is a cult," from The Week Magazine. While The Week article is over five years old, there is a Forbes one, The Cult Of Apple And The Church Of Cook, barely a couple of years old.

This quote is from Eight Marks of a cult by Randall Waters.

"The world is depicted as black and white, with little room for making personal decisions based on a trained conscience. One’s conduct is modeled after the ideology of the group, as taught in its literature. People and organizations are pictured as either good or evil, depending on their relationship to the cult."

As someone who was inside Apple for almost two decades, it would be hard to deny the black and white nature of Apple. People were either for or against Apple. There was no middle ground and that made it very hard for customers who lived in the real world instead of the insanely pure world created by Steve Jobs in Cupertino.

The farther you were from Cupertino, the harder it was to live the pure ideology of Apple. There were times that Apple was paralyzed internally because Steve would not make a decision and no one was brave enough to make a decision that Steve might overturn.

Those of us in Apple sales learned to dread finding a group of Apple fanatics at an account almost as much as a finding a Windows-leaning director of information technology. Our Apple customers sometimes overwhelmed with enthusiasm for Apple's products could become so pushy that they would destroy any opportunity to work with an account.

Living in a cult is hard but it is a totally different thing if you leave. Once you are out of the cult, the cult always turns on you. For years after leaving the company I wrote about Apple. I learned that Apple fans would accept no criticism of their precious products or Steve. Apple fanatics would vilify you for complaining that iPhoto and Apple's Cloud solution were getting worse not better. Fans were especially vehement when I complained about the poor placement on the SD slot reader on the late 2010 iMac. It seemed to me that placing the SD slot on the same side just a quarter of an inch below the DVD reader was asking for SD cards to fall into the DVD reader.

In typical Apple fashion, the problem was solved by eliminating SD card readers and internal DVD drives. iPhoto and its functionality also disappeared and I suspect there is no one inside or outside of Apple that can really explain Apple's cloud strategy.

It turns out that having a cult is poor way of getting product feedback. If every product is great, why take the time make it even better by asking real customers. You end up touting as "Genius" barely useful functionality like the MacBook Pro's touchbar. I will never forget product engineering telling us that Intel would never get its next generation chips after the Pentium into laptops because the chips ran too hot. Unfortunately when you are inside the cult, you end up believing your own propaganda.

Maybe that is why my years-ago prediction that Apple could never sustain a ten percent market share has turned out to be true. Recent numbers show Apple's PC sales losing market share. Even Tim Cook admits that just Windows 10 is four times more popular than the Mac OS.

It used to be if I wrote a comment about Apple's market share, I would have to defend my honor as a human being. Even the slightest suggestion that Apple might be making a mistake would bring a character attack. The comment always came back that Apple was making more money than others. I even had Apple customers suggest that Apple should raise prices even higher. It was not useful to point out that overcharging customers for the same components as used in Windows computers is not a customer benefit. You can read more than you want to know about Apple at my Applepeels site or even better check out my Kindle book, The Pomme Company.

Unfortunately Apple's cult style of leadership seems to have spread because it fits the mood of our country. From the national to the local level, personality politics seem to be the rule. The idea that there might be a middle ground is inconceivable to the cheerleaders behind today's cult-like leaders. Any idea that is not theirs is toxic and any kind of behavior from their leader is not only acceptable but encouraged. Even a neighborhood leader who has attained cult-like status can do no wrong in the eyes of his or her supporters and cheerleaders.

While the diminished spirit of Steve Jobs lives on in the less-than-leading edge Mac products that Apple continues to pedal at exorbitant prices, the principles of his cult-like leadership have infected our body politic. The worship of leaders no matter what their behavior or level of incompetence is rampant from neighborhoods to national parties. It is not going to work any better for us than it did for Apple in computer market share.

Apple better hope the iPhone never falters because it has lost many core markets including education. The rest of us have lost the opportunity for compromise, civility, and mutual success. Steve would be proud, he was never much for being nice.

Holiday Warmth

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 03:49:00 +0000

Holidays can focus harsh light on our relationships with others. The season sometimes becomes a time when it is hard to please and easy to slight even those who are closest to us. Feelings can be on edge during the season and seeking out perfection that is impossible to achieve is often part of the problem.

Old age and the soft light of a few winter sunsets in the marsh have taught me that life is not about the things you accumulate in life but about the connections you make and how well you nurture them. Life is mostly about relating to the people in your life. It is not an impossible task but you cannot relate to others if you do not communicate with them and understand their lives.

Our personalities have not escaped the people who have touched our lives over the years. Our lives are defined not only by our parents and relatives, but also by those friends with whom we have chosen to spend our time. The best friends and family are those who accept you as you are. To them the thickness of your wallet matters little. How you treat them is what matters most.

Those folks whose money and toys are more important than their friends fortunately easily disappear into the hustle and bustle of the season only to emerge at the other end not even understanding what they have missed. It is good to be with people who love others because they have taken time to get to know each other. The values and feelings of all the people that have influenced us provide us with ways to relate to others.

Unfortunately not everyone shares the same values and even among those who do, feelings are handled in different ways. We have all had to walk on egg shells at times to keep a good relationship going. Often during the holidays, giving others space and the benefit of the doubt can make the difference between good feelings and hard feelings.

Time has become the most valuable gift of all. No one has enough time, but patience is a gift that we all need to give during this season. When we take the time to listen and appreciates the lives and concerns of others, we enrich our own lives and expand the circle of connections that make us truly human.

I always look forward to the holidays because it is a time of renewal and new paths to be taken. Conversations seem harder to have in our constantly-connected world of smartphones and tablets, but we cannot give up trying because there will come a holiday season when the person you wanted to talk to is no longer there. That conversation with them might have been the missing piece in your circle of life.

I always take the risk during the holidays that the phone call I make could be one that warms someone's heart and brightens my day. I am rarely disappointed.

The Fuzzy Light of Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:20:00 +0000

Darkness comes early in winter and with the setting sun there are colors to tease the mind. Living on the North Carolina coast means that light gets to play even more tricks because water is everywhere and our complex waters reflect the light in ways that are almost bewitching.

Sometimes just before dusk our sounds and rivers will spring alive with golden hues mixed with rich blues. The colors are such that you wonder if you eyes are seeing things correctly. Just to make things more intriguing, the colors change rapidly as the sun starts slipping below the horizon.

It reminds me most of the Northern Lights that we used to see on late night trips back to our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick. Northern Lights that close to the United States-Canada border are so ephemeral that you are almost positive that you never saw them. The quick changes in colors in a coastal sunset and the lingering doubts that you saw what you saw are the same as with Northern Lights.

Winter on the coast is a fuzzy time in itself. It is rarely winter but not quite spring and you know fall has already slipped away. Our crocus patch started blooming in December and we picked our last tomatoes on January 17, but it is still too cold to plant spring lettuce or onions. Just as the fading light cannot decide whether to be blue, gold or something in between, our seasons often go off course as winter becomes spring and spring falls back to winter.

This year even the birds were confused. Our bird feeder went begging except for chickadees for nearly all of January. Now as spring is just around the corner and winter's back is destined to be broken, the birds have decided to come back. Now the marsh is alive with chirping and birds zooming from one tree to another.

Fortunately the indecision that wraps itself in our winter is never fatal but it does slow our response to the warm days of February. The memory of the dampness and the chill of winter can cause a hesitation in tackling the adventures to search for the real signs of spring that tell us that the first fruit of the season is not far away.

Even spring can be unsure of itself as winter lingers around the edges of the not yet warmed waters of the marsh. Last year at the end of March much like a few years earlier, a late but hard frost killed many of our tomato plants even as they were protected with pots and ready to ride the steep curve of warmth that sometimes tries to roast us along the coast well before the heat of mid-summer.

Then with the late frost just a memory, all of sudden the water is ready for us and spring is here but even then before we know it our evening light is often blurred in the humidity that rarely leaves until fall. The coastal seasons themselves are sometimes just as fuzzy as the last light of winter.

The good news is that the changes in light and weather make for some great photos and interesting years as we cope with life here on the sandy edges of North Carolina. With weather that borders on being a riddle but is sometimes so nice that it should be bottled, our coastal paradise is a great place to be a photographer especially if you can handle all the photos that demand to be taken.

Visit my Amazon author page to check out our books, especially our travel guide to this unique part of the world. Sign up for my almost monthly newsletter about the Crystal Coast at this page.

The Not So Simple Good Life

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 21:01:00 +0000

Years ago just after graduating college, I headed off to rural Nova Scotia. After four years of college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I needed to figure out how who I was and what was really important to me.

My college years were the especially turbulent late sixties and early seventies. As I finished my degree in the summer of 1971, I really wanted to get away from the city. Like many on the same path, I came across the book, Living The Good Life, by Helen and Scott Nearing.

The Nearing's book along with the Whole Earth Catalogue by Steward Brand and Malabar Farm by Louis Bromfield were very influential in my sixteen years in Canada that included thirteen years of farming and growing our own food.

Life in Nova Scotia and eventually New Brunswick was much like my youth growing up in the Piedmont of North Carolina in the fifties and sixties. The influence of my mother followed me to Canada. Her story and that of her generation whose roots ran deep into the fertile soil of rural North Carolina has always had great meaning to me.

I remember well the Sunday afternoons under the shade trees enjoying watermelon or homemade peach ice cream. As children, we played like there was no tomorrow. It was a simpler time when people could actually talk politics without getting angry. I drew many parallels between life on our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick and life in rural North Carolina.

While it is easy to romanticize an earlier time, honesty demands that we acknowledge that every age has its problems and often we can find the beginnings of serious problems if we pull away from the curtain of nostalgia.

I grew up believing that hard work had its own rewards. It was a rule that my mother lived by and shaped much of my life. Yet even back in the early sixties, I learned that there was a class of folks who believed that rules were for everyone but them.

While I got sent away to military boarding school before I could finish my eagle scout requirements, I watched with interest from over 360 miles away as some of the boys whom I grew up within scouts got their Eagle award. I am not sure I ever felt the same about scouting after I learned about the three boys whose father, a former scoutmaster, pulled some strings so that his boys' series of thefts from soda machines would not hinder their path to becoming Eagle Scouts. It did not seem right back then or even now that boys who broke into soda machines with crowbars received scouting's highest award.

That event could have been the first in a series of disillusions that might have turned me into a cynic, but I have managed to endure and believe that most people have good intentions. Unfortunately, over the years I have run into more and more people who believe their birthright is a privilege.

I might understand if these were rich people but many of them are not particularly wealthy yet somehow they have grown to adulthood with the belief that they deserve to be treated differently than the rest of us.

What is particularly distressing is that I have found that these folks will use any small power they might luck into to enhance their status at the expense of the rest of us. At one time elected or appointed power over others carried great responsibility and the expectation that decisions were to be made for the greater good. I will never forget the story of my father who as the run on the banks began during the Great Depression refused to warn my mother. She ended up losing most of her money of the impending closure of the banks. He was a director in a bank but refused to use his insider position to warm her to withdraw her money.

How different that is than what I have uncovered as I have tried to right the ship of our subdivision's Homeowner's Association. There I have repeatedly seen people do what is right for them at the expense of the greater community. Then there is that whole group of folks who love to enjoy the amenities of the community but refuse to follow the rules or even pay the dues that they signed a contract to pay.

While it is not as bad as our national government, it makes it easier to understand our national problem that we have a whole class of people who want to enjoy the benefits of government but spend most of their time trying to destroy it. It is a sorry state of affairs and it all makes it hard to live a simple life.

One of the best examples of the toxic attitudes that have infiltrated our lives came not long ago. We were having a terrible thunderstorm with lots of lightning. My home office has a good view of our neighborhood pool. As the storm intensified, I noticed several young boys continuing to swim in the pool even as the storm got worse. As a parent first and secondly as a member of the HOA board of directors, I felt the responsibility to get the boys out of the pool during the storm.

I walked over to the pool and explained to them that you could easily be killed swimming in a pool during a thunderstorm. The boys, all just over fourteen, were very respectful and left the pool quietly. As they were leaving, I pointed out a sign with a list of children fourteen and older with their parent's permission to swim without an adult being. Since there were only girls names on the list there was no chance of making a mistake. I simply told them just to have their parents send a note to the HOA so they could be on the list. I never suggested that they could not come back after the storm was over.

With fifteen minutes their irate mother was on my porch yelling at me about targeting her boys. It was not a pretty conversation. Never once did she thank me for getting her boys out of the pool during a lightning storm. She was the aggrieved one because the association established a rule which she had completely ignored in her laziness. I have heard her standard "boys will be boys" line far too often. I still remember a friend who worked at a local golf course telling me about chasing their golf cart to the gate of our subdivision. Workers had caught them as they finished throwing all the flags in the golf course ponds.

When we wonder why there is no respect for authority in our society, we need only to look to the homes that raise children with the mantra that the rules apply to everyone but them.

It is no surprise that those children grow up to be the very ones who disrespect the government and even the contracts that attempt to create a civilized life for us all. I cannot fix the problem but I can continue living my dream here in our coastal paradise and treating others like I would like to be treated.

November Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 03:01:00 +0000

Tall Pines in November Along Raymond's Gut

Memories are funny things. Some get stronger with age and some seem to fade away. November is a good month for memories because of Thanksgiving. Our family happens to fall into the category of families having mostly good memories about holidays especially Thanksgiving.

There are no pressures to give gifts and even most of us males can manage to be helpful during Thanksgiving by peeling potatoes or washing dishes. Generally the weather is not so bad that a nice long walk is out of the question. With traffic getting more and more challenging, the actual time during Thanksgiving that people are together seems to be getting shorter and shorter. Thanksgiving is an easy holiday to enjoy.

Thanksgiving is also a holiday that often brings transitions. It often is the first big holiday that you spend away from home. I still remember the oyster stuffing that I had at a friends home when I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home in 1967. I can well remember that first Thanksgiving four years later in 1971 when several of my college friends came to visit my old farmhouse in Saint Croix Cove, Nova Scotia. It was the first Thanksgiving dinner that any of our crew of friends had ever attempted without a mother being cook in charge. We pulled it off and it is still a special Thanksgiving to me. For me it became the celebration dinner for the first chapter of my sixteen years in Canada. Those years are a big part of our book, A Taste For The Wild, Canada's Maritimes.

Certainly Thanksgiving is the holiday that most people want to be home. Because of that, there are sometimes subtle changes in our lives that first show themselves at Thanksgiving. For years we traveled to Mount Airy, North Carolina, to have our Thanksgiving in our home place at 347 West Pine St. which for a while was a bed and breakfast. Our family enjoyed Thanksgiving at that same Pine Street spot for nearly 100 years.

My mother, Blanche Sobotta, held sway there on Pine Street for many years. Her story is certainly a big part of my own story and for several years I can remember my wife, Glenda, driving down from Roanoke, Virginia, a day or two early to Mount Airy, to help with the Thanksgiving preparations. It was always a great feast held in the formal dining room. Mother was an expert at preparing large meals and as she got into her eighties often started the preparation a week ahead of time. I can still remember the hot rolls and other wonderful dishes.

Then there came the time when it just seemed right for my wife and I to host Thanksgiving at our home on the mountain. I do not exactly remember when it started happening but it was likely sometime in the mid to late nineties. We have been hosting Thanksgiving since then and only one year did we venture out to have it with one of our children. Eventually we were bringing my mother to our Roanoke home from a nearby assisted living place in Salem, Virginia. Then we moved from Roanoke and Thanksgiving came with us to live out a dream on the North Carolina coast. This year it looks like we will be in transition once again.

With traffic so bad in the DC area and a new grandson too young to travel on the other end of North Carolina, our three grown children will be own their own with their turkeys this year. They are a lot older than I was when I attempted to do my own turkey in 1972. No one told me about the extra parts on the inside of the turkey. One of them has already done several turkeys on her own. One does not like turkey and the other would prefer someone else put the white meat on the platter for her.

Even so our children will likely remember this year because it is a little different since they will not here on the Crystal Coast with us. They might not have the energy to cook up everything that is on our traditional menu that accompanies the turkey and which our son prefers to the turkey. I know that we will be paring the menu down a lot if only the two of us will be eating it. Still it will be another Thanksgiving to remember and perhaps a memory that will stand as tall as a big pine instead of vanishing.

November is also the time when we moved to our much loved farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick, where we lived for ten years. The snow was on the ground that first year when we moved in and it did not leave until the first week in May. We got twenty-three feet of snow that year and at times we did have six feet of snow on the ground. It was to the eaves on the barn.

I went on my first business trip for Apple in November of 1984. I still remember how cold it was walking around Montreal in a suit and dress shoes with snow on the ground. Then there was the November of 1989. We had just moved to Roanoke, Virginia, and it started snowing early that month and stayed on the ground until after Christmas. The road got so icy that neighbors got together and chipped a path one half mile down the hill.

Of course November was often the time for Apple sales conferences. I remember the wonderful one in 2001 when I won the award as national business sales manager of the year. The next year in Toronto our federal team was treated as heroes because we had done the impossible. We had become a very successful enterprise sales team right in the heart of the very consumer-oriented Apple.

It was only one year later in 2003 when we were treated as outcasts because the company had been unable to ship the product that we sold. That was the year and the November that I vowed that I would never return to Cupertino. I was gone from Apple eight months later and you can read the story in my book, The Pomme Company.

Beyond business, turkeys and snow, I first started kayaking on the White Oak River in November of 2006. I have also enjoyed some of my most memorable fishing during November including this cooler full of fish. There have been some wonderful Novembers here along our piece of coastal paradise where sometimes the weather is so nice that you have to worry about someone pinching you and waking you up from a dream.

Then there is that memorable for me day, November 23, 2004, just one day shy of ten years ago when I published my first blog post, My Welcome To Windows. I have written thousands of posts since then. Many are scattered all over the Internet but there are links to a smattering of them on my homepage. Just a little over one hundred of them are located here at my Ocracoke Waves site. There are lots more at my Crystal Coast Life site and almost fifteen hundred at my View from the Mountain blog with hundreds more at my Saltwater On My Feet blog and my Applepeels site. The four hundred plus posts which were once at Applepeels were the basis for our first book, The Pomme Company. I have written a few other books along the way and I just started my first truly fiction book. It comes as no surprise that I started it this November. That might become another good November memory for me.

I am going to look forward to the memories that I make this November. There will be yet another turkey to carve, mashed potatoes to make, and this year I am in charge of rolls. There is also still time to catch some November fish and finish a few November chapters of that new book.

I hope that each reader makes good memories of their own this November 2014.

Appreciating the shallows

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Fri, 30 May 2014 03:42:00 +0000

When you look back, much of your life has revolved around the big things like graduating from high school or college, getting married, having kids, and getting that great job. Those big events remind me of deep waters where you cannot see to the bottom.

You face a lot of deep, dark waters during your life. When you join a corporation, it is unlikely you have any idea how long you will be there, what you will accomplish, or how your career will end. Certainly I had no idea my time at Apple would end so abruptly right at the very moment when my team was achieving such amazing success.

When you commit yourself to spending your life with another person, there is no way to read those waters and what will happen over the years. You just have to prepare yourself for the ride and hope you can keep your love and friendship alive.

Children are much the same. There is no way to predict what kind of person that wonderful toddler will be in twenty years. You do the best to guide them, provide some advice, and try to be a good example. I know my parents were very surprised when I graduated from college and headed off to Canada to build a cattle operation in the hardwood hills of New Brunswick.

As you get beyond some of those milestones in life, the water get a little shallower and it is a little easier to see to the bottom or you could face next. Life always holds plenty of mysteries, but you often have a little better idea of what will happen if you do a certain thing. You have done a lot of things over and over and some of your actions reliably produce a consistent result. There is some comfort in that. If I go to church every Sunday, pay attention in the pew, and try to live better, I end up feeling better about myself and those around me.

I know that if I go out and walk five or six miles during the day, I will be really tired at night and likely sleep really well. If I also do a lot of yard trimming and gardening on the same, there is a good chance that I will be so tired that I will have trouble sleeping. I seem to feel the best when I walk three or four miles in a day.

We know if we call our older daughter at 9 PM on Sunday night, it will be a short call. That is when she is watching one of the few television shows that she enjoys. My neighbor enjoys washing his cars early on Sunday morning. Sometimes he washes them when even he admits they are pretty clean.

We understand that when beach season arrives that shopping in the grocery stores is a lot more challenging. We try to shop for our groceries between Monday and Thursday and typically we avoid buying groceries on the island from early June until late August. It is part of the rhythm of life here on the coast.

While you can never predict what the future holds, experience teaches us much over the years and as the water gets shallower or our time horizon gets closer, you do get better at navigating the waters. Know even a handful of things that you can comfortably count on to happen removes a little stress. If life was always as mysterious as that first day on a new job or as stressful as a move to a new city, we might be perpetually stressed out.

There is some comfort in shallow waters whether you are f ishing in them or living them. Almost eight years ago when I moved to the Crystal Coast I had no idea that I would be so at home among the oyster rocks that once appeared so threatening. Now I would rather go out on our river to fish when the tide is falling and the water shallow. It is easier to sit alongside an oyster rock and fish. When the tide is in, I cannot see the oyster rocks, I have no place to rest my kayak, and I am also unlikely to catch any fish.

When I get up in the morning, I no longer have to worry about the implications of every email that I write or each decision during the day. I am no longer in the high pressure corporate world that defined my life for twenty years. Now I try to please my wife, keep the commitments that I have made to myself, my family, my community, my church, and also to my boss who is not rich like Tim Cook at Apple but happens to be a whole lot better leader.

We have been here on the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina long enough to appreciate how spring can start cool but easily rush into summer and quickly deliver us to beach season. There is comfort in worrying about when the tomatoes will get ripe instead of when global warming will reach the tipping point or whether Apple will be able to deliver promised products before the end of the year.

Perhaps the choice of living here in Carteret County is a choice of shallower water than Reston, Virginia, where I worked for so many years. By moving here we escaped from the city and found a less complicated life where you are more likely to be something more than just another face in the crowd.

I have written in our Emerald Isle Travel Guide that Carteret County is a lot of water spread mighty thin. Maybe life here on the Crystal Coast is easier to take just because of that.

Thanksgiving Arrives With Wind & Rain

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 23:23:00 +0000

Raymond's Gut, whitecaps of the White Oak River in the distance

It seems like fall just arrived and my friend Scott in his post, We Was Robbed, is hoping for his Carolina friends or actually me to "get plastered by the big storm" that just passed us. Perhaps I upset his midwestern soul by offering to send him some tomato plants as this November was drawing to a close.

I guess that I can publicly break the news to Scott that while the storm huffed and puffed and threw some rain at us, our little piece of paradise along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks survived. Morehead City and Atlantic Beach which are both about twenty miles east of us did get visited by a confirmed tornado. The general area damaged is close to the big bridge across Bogue Sound just over the word City in this map of directions to Harkers Island.

Eastern North Carolina is no stranger to tornadoes but they rarely reach the intensity of ones seen further inland. Our subdivision, Bluewater Cove, just off the White Oak River only got some soggy ground from the storm which visited just as Thanksgiving guests were arriving. Our wet ground from the storm's 1.7 inches of rain will be gone by tomorrow.

We did not even have to empty our rain gauges for that storm unlike the one which visited us in September, 2010. That localized rainstorm which still defies description gave us 20.25 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. After that storm I decided it was far better to live in area where the drains are big like the White Oak River's nearly two mile width than it is to live in the mountains where three or four inches of rain can cause flooding.

In the seven years that we have lived on the Crystal Coast, one waterspout coming off the river turned into a tornado that brushed our subdivision. Tornadoes are scary events and almost no seems out of the reach of them these days. Our friends in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, near Pulaski can testify to that.

If you live on the coast, you are no stranger to serious weather. Hurricane Irene was an impressive weather event and I am happy that Irene is the only serious storm to visit our area since we have been here. Irene taught us to be prepared for dangerous weather, but it certainly did not shake our love of living along the coast. It turns out that few places are immune from bad weather.

We were months away from finally selling our longtime home in Southwest, Virginia in the summer of 2012 when the area was hit with a Derecho. The power in our mountain home was out for over a week since the storm took down some of the power transmission towers from West Virginia that provide electricity to Roanoke. Until that summer when we moved, Roanoke seemed one of the safest places on earth.

Coastal weather sometimes appears to be a riddle that few can decipher. We have the dry spells that inland areas often endure but we can also get some serious wet spells. Like most places we take whatever the weather brings us and try to go about our lives with minimal disruption.

However, we can count on the North Carolina sun to give us a long growing season. My Northern friends are likely upset that I will be ordering my tomato seed this weekend. The plants will go into the ground around the middle of March when we often get wonderful weather. We usually have plenty of tasty homegrown tomatoes by the end of May or early June. I had so many tomatoes in 2011 that we loaded them in boxes and took them inland to some relatives that who were still waiting for their first tomatoes as July rolled around. We even had enough that year to supply the tomatoes for our church's Fourth of July cookout.

The last few years we have enjoyed wonderful crops of winter lettuce. I am hoping we get a regular winter instead of one of those old fashioned winters which could put a damper on our middle of the winter lettuce. We are just getting ready to cut our first heads of fall Romaine. We have already enjoyed some arugula and our butter crunch lettuce is not far behind. We still have high hopes for our peas and of course we are still cutting broccoli from our fall plantings. Our cabbage have just formed their heads so we will likely have one of those soon.

All of that sounds like we have a huge garden, but that is not the case. We just use all the space that we have available including planting lettuce between our ornamental bushes. We have a small lettuce patch in an area we call the solarium. We grow tomatoes in the same spot during the summer. Along our driveway we have another lettuce patch. The same area is used for tomatoes in the summer. Our English garden peas are in an area along our bulkhead where we grow green beans and cucumbers in the summer. We also have a few spots where we grow herbs. While some of our winter vegetables get a little frosty they usually recover without any problems.

Our biggest challenge is that some of our ground gets very little rest. We are trying to get ahead of that problem with composting and perhaps even expanding our garden area with some additional raised beds next year. I am hoping to have some cherry tomatoes in January of this year. I have one plant that is in the ground near the water where our ground stays frost free the longest. I have resorted to covering it during this colder than normal November, but so far it has not only survived but is blooming. I have another couple of cherry tomatoes that are in pots. They go out in the solarium most of the time and come into the garage on cold nights. One of them actually has tiny tomatoes on it.

I wish my friend, Scott, lived closer to us than Chicago. We have some beautiful Romaine lettuce and nearly perfect broccoli that I would love to share. He could join us for a peaceful Thanksgiving along Raymond's Gut and leave the holiday madness of the city far behind.

However, he is going to miss this year's turkey so hopefully he will not be upset if I send him pictures of my cherry tomatoes when they get ripe in January.

Fall On The Coast Hits Its Stride

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 02:31:00 +0000

Fall Sunset Near Raymond's Gut

One of the best things about fall on the North Carolina coast is the great weather. While a visit to the Southern Outer Banks does not come with a guarantee that the fall weather will be fantastic, we have enjoyed some spectacular fall weather since we moved here in 2006. Each summer we eagerly await fall. Our August humidity usually disappears as fall comes and any lingering crowds from summer quickly disperse and best of all we hardly ever have an early cold snap that actually produces serious frost or below freezing temperatures.

There are exceptions like the October 28, fishing trip that I took the year before we moved here. I nearly froze while fishing a few hundred yards from Beaufort's Front Street. Fortunately I caught enough fish that the weather did not really matter. In 2013, we got a touch of frost in a few spots on October 26, but I had some uncovered tomato plants that the light frost did not harm.

A good part of the reason that we have such temperate weather in the fall is that there is water all around us. From our big coastal river, the White Oak, to the waters of Bogue Sound, and the Atlantic Ocean, the warm water surrounding us helps keep early fall cold spells inland. In spring as the water is slowly warming it keeps us cool in the early part of summer. Often it takes so long for our water to cool down that we stay relatively warm through early winter.

In addition to temperatures that please almost everyone, our fall skies are often a gorgeous blue like the ones in this picture taken while I was kayaking on the White Oak River.

While it might be hard to believe, I wore a bathing suit and waded in the surf with bare legs when I went surf fishing on the Point at Emerald Isle this past first weekend of November 2013. With a surf temperature of 60F, the water was a little chilly but not bad for a few minutes at a time.

As one of the rare places which consistently amazes me, the Point was spectacularly beautiful this weekend. I posted several pictures of my Sunday, November 3, hike on the Point. While the fall scenery, weather, and quiet waters make the Crystal Coast really special during the fall, one of my favorite things about living on the coast is that as the holiday season approaches things get more peaceful here on the coast.

There is a little bit of a reverse migration as December arrives here on the coast. Even the most hardy visiting fishermen generally take leave of the area. On top of that many residents who have welcomed visitors all summer take the opportunity to go visit inland relatives during the holiday season. Some restaurants close for a month or two and we actually seem to miss the holiday rush here on the coast. It is fine with me.

If you have never had the opportunity to enjoy a vacation on the coast in the fall, do not miss the chance if you get it. It you need help planning your fall vacation or Thanksgiving at the beach, check out our Emerald Isle Travel Guide.

Who Raised Those Folks?

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 13:05:00 +0000

White Oak River, Three Miles North of Swansboro, NC

We were driving back from church recently and had stopped at one of our area's few stoplights. As we stopped, a big truck towing a large boat ran the red light. The light was red before he even got near the intersection. The first thought that came to mind was one of my mother's favorite sayings, "Who raised those folks?"

Mother believed that you needed to learn certain things while you were growing up and that it was the parent's job to make sure children took those lessons to heart.

Having proper respect for authority was near the top of her list as was knowing how to properly hold you knife and fork especially when cutting meat.

There were some other things that drove her crazy. One was people who littered. Seeing someone heave trash out of their car offended her sensibilities and inevitably brought the comment that the people doing the littering did not have a proper upbringing. My mother would not tolerate name-calling or lying. Those were things that people who were raised properly just did not do.

She also believed in respecting the office of the President. The President no matter what his party affiliation got a chance to earn her respect. A President like Eisenhower who demonstrated his abilities got her life-long Democrat vote the second time around. Others like Nixon fell from grace quickly. Voting was something she did all her life. She could not understand people who complained about the government but were too lazy to vote. She would be quick to tell you whether or not she liked who was in office but I never heard any disrespect of an elected official come from her.

She also believed in keeping a neat house including the outside which she believed required flowers and well-trimmed shrubbery. I do not believe there were many excuses that she would accept for uncared for homes. In some ways, I think she believed more modest homes offered more opportunities for flowers and showing how much you loved your home.

I suspect my mother would have a hard time in our country today. The truth was paramount to her next to hard work. She always told me to tell the truth even if I knew it was going to hurt. She would also have been upset with all the people who never consider that their laziness is just going to cause more work for others.

As we finished our drive home from church, I noticed that the state or county had cut the grass alongside Peletier Loop, one of the rural roads leading to home. Normally mowing the grass makes things look better, but in this case the road looked worse because the mowing just chewed up all the trash that people had thrown out of their cars.

I wonder what kind of an upbringing makes it okay just to heave your trash out the window. It is not the worse thing that makes me think that we should license people before they are allowed to have children, but it is one of the more visible things.

There are other less visible things that bother me more. One is how in some families women are not respected or are even belittled. In some families, women's opinions or all their hard work are not even taken seriously. That would not have worked well with my mother.

She was the matriarch of our extended family. She did not tolerate anyone treating another person badly. I can still remember the story of her standing up to her stepmother who was mistreating one of my mother's sisters. I think a cast iron frying pan was involved. The way I heard the story the stepmother never bothered my aunt again.

As many people found out, my mother was quite willing to share her opinions when something bothered her. Sometimes her unvarnished truth was a little brutal, but most of the time you could stay on her good side with a well-mowed yard, a clean car, neatly cut hair, good manners, an empty plate and proper respect for authority especially hers.

The Muggies

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 20:42:00 +0000

It is that time of year when it becomes challenging to tout our weather here on the Crystal Coast. It is usually pretty warm, humid or just plain muggy. There are a number of reasons that this is one of my least favorite times of the year. They might surprise you.

It is hard to get really nice colors in your pictures and I spend an inordinate amount of time keeping my camera lens from fogging up.
The water in our river, the White Oak, is almost too warm for fishing.
We are sometimes without any breeze. Having spent years in Nova Scotia, I am actually quiet fond of a decent breeze.
It often looks like it is going to rain but it rarely does.
We are between early and late crops of tomatoes.
Our tourists seem to worry that summer is disappearing and get a little more frantic.
We often get tropical downpours even if the hurricanes miss us.
It is the least comfortable time of year to mow my yard.
Our centipede grass is starting a quick downhill slide and I have to start fighting weeds.
Until the kids go back to school, this is the worst time to find a parking place at the beach.

I could go but you get the idea. Obviously there is not really anything very significant to complain about in my list but it does mean that I have to work harder to see the bright side of things.

I am a very visual person and what I see early in the morning often sets the tone for my day. When I go for my morning walk, I love to find a great photo or two. Getting a great shot of a bird or the water can add just enough excitement to get me pumped up for the day. I find late July and most of August the most difficult months for great pictures. Even the sun when it sets often slides down behind a persistent cloud bank.

Our coastal weather can be puzzling but it can keep you on your toes except when the muggies are here and our weather gets in a late summer rut. It is still possible to have some magic days on the water. However, they just seem to be a little harder to find as we get into August.

When we had a house in the mountains, we would often retreat there until September slipped into view. While the mountains in the South often have the same problem, sometimes a change of scenery and some cooler mornings can work wonders. September can sometimes have a bad case of the muggies, but you know that better weather, the fall season, is on the way.

Many of us who live here along the coast of the Southern Outer Banks rate fall as our favorite season. The fishing is often great and the beach becomes a little less crowded. As fall arrives I tend to get some great sunset photos. This album of photos taken early one October is a great example of the dazzling light that we get in the fall.

If you have children who go back to school in the fall, coming to the beach is pretty difficult, but everyone else should at least consider visiting the coast in September or October. October especially can be a spectacular month with slightly cooler air and still warm waters.

If you need some specific advice on a beach visit, you can now order a paper copy of my Emerald Isle Travel Guide. It will also be available on Amazon in a few days and we just have reduced the cost of the updated 2013 digital version to $3.99.

Andrea, The First Storm Of The Season

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 13:47:00 +0000

Cape Hatteras, North Carolina

It is that time of year for those of us who live on the North Carolina coast. The first storm with tropical characteristics is headed up the coast.

When you live just up the river from Swansboro, North Carolina, it is impossible to ignore coastal storms. Yet in the almost seven years that we have lived just a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean, we have managed just one serious storm, Irene, and a brush with Sandy.

As most coastal residents will tell you, beyond the line of homes that are oceanfront or right on the sounds, the areas which get the most damage are often far inland. Once you get fifty miles inland, rivers do not have the size to handle the torrential downpours that often result from tropical storms.

We live three miles up the White Oak River and the river is between one and two miles wide depending on where you measure it. It is also a tidal river. When our tides go out, we lose a couple of feet of water. If a hurricane is going to hit us and cause flooding like Irene did, it has to hang around for a while.

The worst flooding that we have endured here on the Crystal Coast came from a freak rainstorm in September 2010. If you compare these pictures with ones from Hurricane Irene, it is a little hard to tell, but I can guarantee you the rainstorm flooding was worse. Of course there are not many rainstorms that deliver 20.25 inches of rain in less than eight hours.

Fortunately when our nearly two foot tide went out, our flooding from the rainstorm disappeared. If a hurricane surge hits at high tide, it can cause more problems but hurricane flooding is very complex once you get into the coastal rivers. Wind direction and the angle of the river in relation to the storm's track become very important.

Sometimes a storm surge goes right by an inlet because of the direction of the wind. Those of us living in newer homes take some consolation from the fact that our houses are built above the level of one hundred year floods, but you still know that the possibility of flooding is always there.

On the flip side of tropical storms is the beneficial moisture that they often provide. Our area was extremely dry during the month of May. We received only one third of an inch rain in the whole month. While the sunny skies were great for vacationers, they were a problem for those growing crops. Fortunately we got eight tenths of an inch of rain this first week of June.

That rain probably saved the area's corn crop, and if we get a nice dose of rain from this tropical system it will help us make it through June and into July. Our sandy soils need about an inch of rain a week to keep our plants growing. In that respect, we will welcome Andrea.

In July of 2011 it was so dry in Eastern North Carolina that we had some swamps which caught fire. Given the choice of a scenario of swamps burning or rains from a tropical system, I will pick the tropical system.

Of course that choice is highly location dependent. A few inches of rain are not a big problem with our sandy soils and river drains that are a couple of miles wide. Tropical moisture has caused massive flooding in the mountain valleys near Roanoke, Virginia area where we used to live. Mountains concentrate rain into narrow rivers which break from their banks when they run out of room. Sometimes the flooding in narrow valleys can turn into deadly flash floods.

We will not take Andrea lightly since we have just returned from trip that took us from Ocracoke Island to Nags Head. There are still some signs on the Outer Banks of the damage to Route 12 from last fall's brush with Hurricane Sandy.

Whether Andrea ends up being welcome or unwelcome all depends on where you live. We are hoping our spot on the Southern Outer Banks remains a good one to weather the storms which are a normal part of summer at the beach.

Waiting for Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 01 May 2013 19:14:00 +0000

Raymond's Gut, just off the White Oak River three miles up river from Swansboro, North Carolina

Even along the North Carolina coast which traditionally has great weather, it seems that we are always waiting for the next season.

Spring has been a little cooler than normal this year, but we are making great progress towards a greener landscape. The early flowers are gone, the tomatoes are blooming, and some yards including ours have been mowed.

Of course spring presents it own challenges such as winds and frequent showers but we have to be careful to not complain. A few years ago those spring showers were absent and the summer thunderstorms never came. We had a very dry year. We had blue skies every day from months. While I love blue skies, our sandy soil needs rain so I am pretty happy to see the spring showers come this year. Watering everything just to keep it alive is not much fun.

This year we are stuck without extremes. The winds have not been particularly bad this year, but the combination of slightly cooler temperatures, more showers, and enough wind to keep things interesting have conspired to keep me off the water except for a few times.

That we are having to wait until May to really get going with our boating and fishing is not that unusual and waiting until after the middle of April is about normal, but as the month moves along most of us will start to get impatient.

I renewed my fishing license last month and have listened with interest as a few fish are being caught over on the beach. Still I know it is a little early for action in the marshes along the river where I like to fish the most.

All I need is an early morning high tide, some blue skies and warm temperatures and I might go chase some of those early bluefish with my skiff while I wait for the kayak fishing to improve.

If you are interested in visiting the Crystal Coast area and the beaches and waters of Emerald Isle, our 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide has been released. We are doing free downloads on May 1 & 2 so it is a great time to take a virtual trip to the beach. The Kindle book can be read on just about any device. For more information on the download and the software for your device, please visit the free books page on my main website.

Winter on the Marsh

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 03:18:00 +0000

The marsh along Raymond's Gut has settled into its winter pattern. We have days when the promise of warmth is fulfilled followed by a day or two of what passes for winter here along the Carolina coast. As I write this it is early February and on a recent trip to Wilmington, we saw a few trees blooming. We've had daffodils blooming in our neighborhood for two or three weeks.

Our winters are a far cry from those areas to the north of us. Still once you get used to this climate, our winter weather feels as cold to us as a nasty day in Maine.

Frank, the great egret winter visitor from Canada

The one constant here when the weather has turned cold or nasty is that the big shore birds find that our little inlet offers some protection from biting winds and cooler temperatures. On really bad days we see a steady stream of birds jockey for the prime spots.

You do not live along a marsh for very long before you figure out that great blue herons are among the most feared of the birds. It is rare that another big bird get close to a great blue. Even a pelican will not challenge them. Great blues have a nasty enough disposition that they have a hard time getting along with themselves.

Still a marsh stands still for no creature not even territorial great blues. Most days the prime spots change hands several times. Sometimes one of the river otters will even intrude to shake things up. An oblivious cormorant or a well-focused loon will swim through the marsh inhabitants without causing much of a ruckus. However, the cormorants spook easily and will do panic take-offs when they feel threatened.

In spite of all these interactions between the inhabitants, most of the visitors and regular residents are focused on one thing, eating fish. The otters do not even mind if you watch them enjoying their fish Popsicles. Some of the marsh inhabitants can get a little carried away like this kingfisher tenderizing his fish. Beyond those events things don't change perceptibly in the marsh from one winter day to the next.

The storms come and go along with the tides. We have windy days and days when the sun makes you mindful that you are living in North Carolina and perhaps we should bottle some of this cool air to use in the few weeks of August when we really feel the heat.

One thing that has been different this winter is that an identifiable visitor has chosen to hang around our neighborhood. Back in late December on a return trip from kayaking out on the White Oak River I noticed a great egret with red spots on his wings. It was almost dark and he was a long way off. I soon figured out a few days later that he was wearing tags.

As he became a more regular visitor, we got curious and finally learnned that he is a Canadian bird. Along the way he has picked up the name of Frank. You can read his full story at this post of mine, There Are Lots of Egrets, But There Is Only One Frank. Frank has gotten popular and now has a Facebook page. His popularity puffed him up so much that he got a Twitter account and did his first Tweet recently. Frank likes to hear from his fans so send him a note on Twitter @frank29x.139

Icy Morning on the Gut

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:13:00 +0000

There are some years when when ice comes to our spot on the Crystal Coast earlier than others. The year 2012, is not one of them. We have enjoyed some great weather in December. I even spent the morning of Christmas Day out in the White Oak River in my kayak.

The icy picture in the post was taken the morning of the last day of 2012. It finally got cold enough to create some ice on Raymond's Gut. The gut flows behind our home and heads out to the White Oak River. We are subject to tides so you never know exactly what is going to happen with ice, but this time the ice disappeared by the middle of the afternoon.

The only reason that I got to see the ice is that I usually take an early morning walk of a couple of miles around the marsh that is near our home. My first stop after I leave the house is the dock behind our home. It takes me about five minutes to walk from there over to the boardwalk around our clubhouse. There the sun is usually just getting to the tops of the big pine trees when I walk onto the boardwalk. I snapped the picture at the top of the post just before I left the boardwalk.

It was December 31, when I was greeted by some ice in the gut and an otter enjoying an icy morning swim. There was a pair of them and one even swam over to check me out. It not unusual to come upon wildlife on my morning walk. We live in a natural paradise populated by egrets, herons, kingfishers, ducks, and other birds. We also apparently have a good supply of fish that they enjoy eating. At least that I what I assume since they keep coming back.

The icy morning I finished my hour and one half walk by checking out the water by our dock once again. I found one of the otters looking for fish not far from the dock. I only watched a couple of minutes before he caught one. Luckily I had my video camera with me so I took a video of the otter enjoying his very fresh morning breakfast of fish. The fish-eating otter video is now posted on YouTube.

People often ask me if I get tired of walking in the same area. I do try to get over and hike the beaches when the weather isn't so cold, but I rarely am disappointed with my walk around the marshes. While the cast of characters is often the same, I usually find them in a new spot or doing something different.

The numerous great blue herons that visit are my favorites. It takes some patience and care to sneak up on a great blue and actually take a few photos. It is a challenge that I enjoy.

I figure that my passion for taking pictures of wildlife is a great hobby. It gets me outside, but it is a lot easier than owning a dog. I also get to take pictures from our skiff and my kayak. I have gotten some fantastic pictures from the kayak. For some reason it is easier to sneak up on the big birds in the kayak than it is on foot.

You can enjoy many of the photos that I have taken in the area this fall at this photo album. If the photos make you want to come for a visit, you can find more information at this page.

Before the Blow

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 22:41:00 +0000

We're lucky to be living tucked in by the water not far from the beaches of Emerald Isle, North Carolina. Being protected just off a big river without pine trees close around your home is a pretty good recipe for staying out of trouble in the winds and storms of the Crystal Coast. It is also very convenient when you want to enjoy the area's waters.

Our home is on Raymond's Gut a little more than half a mile from the center of the White Oak River. The White Oak depending on how you measure its width is close to two miles across where we live.

Swansboro and the Intracoastal Waterway even with some zigging and zagging around oyster rocks are only about three miles down river. The beach over by the Point at Emerald Isle is about six miles away as a pelican flies.

A trip down the river in our skiff takes only six or seven minutes once you have idled out our inlet. The total ride is about ten minutes and another ten minutes will put you well out Bogue Inlet and almost in the Atlantic Ocean. We live in a place where the water provides easy access to many neat areas including Hammocks Beach, the Point, and Bogue Inlet. These pictures of a ride down to the marshes south of Swansboro provide an idea of the beauty of the area.

It does not take many years of living near the beach to learn to appreciate a few miles of separation from the Atlantic Ocean. Usually the wind blows a lot harder over by the beaches. The cold seems to penetrate a little more by the ocean, and in the spring it seems to take a little longer to warm up the ocean compared to the river. The beach is a little cooler in the summer, but I have heat pumps for that if I can't find some water to cool my body.

I truly enjoy going to the beach, but I don't mind the short commute from our home. It comes with a lot of advantages. One of those is protection from most storms. As we are sliding toward the holiday season, the weather is definitely changing. We are seeing more frequent storms and being a little farther away from the incubator of the storms is definitely an advantage.

In the last three weeks, we have witnessed Hurricane Sandy and two Northeasters. When the storms are coming that regularly, any protection from the power of the Atlantic Ocean is welcome. Of course as we have all learned, no place is immune from the power of Mother Nature.

Timing and location are often very important. We have been lucky to to be witnesses to the formation of the Northeasters instead of seeing them at their peak power. We also ended up on the less powerful end of Sandy. My wife and I were traveling in Canada when Sandy started up the coast.

As soon as we realized the magnitude of Sandy, we turned and headed down the coast. It seemed like we were seeing the stormy weather of Sandy from over a thousand miles away. Yet being those six miles inland often provides a more protected life on the coast even with a huge storm like Sandy.

Barrier islands and marshes are the keys to protecting homes from storms. We're really lucky to have Emerald Isle and its well-treed hills standing tall between our location and the power of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the wind and rain was slamming against our home on this Sunday before Thanksgiving 2012, it was easy to imagine just how much stronger the winds might be over on the shore. I would love to open my door and go down to the beach to fish. However, that pleasure comes with a bit more challenging weather than we have inland.

We often can tell when the weather is going to be bad. The pelicans and herons will often abandon their more coastal haunts and come ride the storms out in our inlet. They seem to enjoy the protection of our trees and marshes that keep much of the wind away from their perches.

I've written before about one spot where the Herons go to hide. I'm very fortunate to be able to see that place from our upper deck and our dock. One of the especially protected corners of the aviary requires a walk over to the community boardwalk, but I have seen several herons in there at one time. When there is more than one heron in there, you know the weather is going to be bad because herons are not noted for being social.

Sunday morning before our latest Nor'easter, we had a pelican swimming behind the house and two great blue herons jostling with a younger great blue heron for a prized perch in the rookery. I knew with all those big birds wandering around our cove that we would likely get a dose of nasty weather.

The rain and winds came early Sunday afternoon, but we just turned on the gas fire place logs and had a peaceful nap while the weather raged outside. The knowledge that we were just far enough away to miss the worst of the storm made our nap just that much more peaceful.

Life by the River

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Living on a coastal river is a very different experience than living on a river in other places. One thing is that coastal river are often very wide. The river near where we live is close to two miles wide.

While rain often causes flooding along rivers that are in the hill country or the mountains, if you live on a coastal river that is close to the ocean, the tide can often take care of a lot of problems.

In the summer of 2010 I wrote a piece called How to Enjoy a Coastal River. Now that I look back at it, I was only beginning to understand the White Oak River when I wrote that post.

It is no joke to say that a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the summer of 2010. In September of 2010, we had a freak rain storm in Bluewater Cove, the subdivision where we live. We got over twenty inches of rain in less than twenty-four hours.

I have seen the Roanoke River where we lived in the mountains have serious flooding with less than half that amount of rain. Fortunately for us the day we got the twenty-plus inches of rain on the coast, it came just as the tide was reaching its peak. As soon as the tide turned, the high water at my dock started dropping even as the rain continued.

That the tide could take away all that water left a lasting impression on me. Still the river had other lessons to teach. In August of 2011, Hurricane Irene came for a visit.

Irene was an impressive storm, but our area came through in good shape. Our power was out less than four hours. The day after Irene came through the area, we went over to Emerald Isle and enjoyed ice cream cones. I am certainly not belittling the power of hurricanes in saying we managed to survive in "good shape."   Another day things could have been different.

However, hurricanes are not strangers to the area. People try not to have too many trees close to their homes here. People in areas that are flood prone have foundations that let waters move through them. Fortunately our beaches and marshes have not been over developed. There is plenty of vegetation on Emerald Isle compared to many other coastal areas.

Our geography also helps us a little. Just a little north and east of us, the Neuse River is much more subject to flooding because there is no land mass to slow the water of Pamlico Sound from blowing into the Neuse when conditions area right.

Even with these advantages life on the river has still been full of surprises. On May 30, 2012 a very rare event happened. We were brushed by a tornado.   Before May 30, I had heard that tornadoes normally dissipate as they approach the ocean waters. It turns our that while it is very rare, we can have tornadoes just like the rare tornado that visited our friends in the mountains by Pulaski, Virginia. Fortunately both in Pulaski and here in Peletier no one died from the tornadoes. Our tornado lasted less than a minute.

The lessons of the last few years have taught me to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. No matter where we live, we all live close to very powerful forces of nature. Those forces are closer than we care to admit. We just have to realize that we cannot control mother nature.

In spite of getting a close hand look at the power of nature, I would not trade where we live for any of the many places that we have lived or even the ones that we have visited. There is incredible scenic beauty here on the coast. While there are times to be very respectful of the forces that surround us, there are other times when it almost seems that nature opens its arms for us.

The third week in April of 2012 I anchored my kayak in the middle of our river. Sitting there are the oyster rocks, it was hard to think of a more peaceful place. Especially one that can so easily renew your appreciation of the world where we live.

It often seems like our world along the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina is one which has no walls. There are times that the water, the horizon and the sky seem to merge in a world of blue.

Because our water is so accessible, it is a big part of our life. The morning of June 25, 2012 on my boat ride down river I saw hardly any ripples.   The same river nine hours later is a mass of white caps and foam. The morning river ride was a wonderful pleasure. Yet even I wouldn't challenge the river and its impressive whitecaps later in the day.

Respecting the weather and the water comes naturally when you have seen the awesome power that mother nature can unleash. That the calm water pictured in the post can have whitecaps on it in the same day is just one of the wonders of being alive.

March Winds on the Coast

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:08:00 +0000

Spring has arrived on the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. While we might be surprised with the early dose of warmth that 2012 has delivered to us, no one who lives here on the coast is surprised by the wind which is nearly a constant companion this time of year.

It does not matter whether you are on the river in a skiff as in the picture at the top of the post or walking along the beach. Things are usually all stirred up by the winds through much of March and April.

We live on a very sheltered cove just off the White Oak River. It is not unusual for spring winds to blow directly into our cove and create waves on our normally very quiet little inlet.

Waves on our inlet are not much cause for worry, but waves out on the river and sounds are a different story. When you are trying use a skiff to get from one point to another and there are white caps on the river, you have to get your boat up on top of the waves and hold it there even as the winds and waves change.

If you don't, it can be a bumpy ride it. Handling a boat on top of the waves takes some practice, and even then sometimes things get rough. A ride down the river with choppy water is nothing like a ride down the river on a quiet summer morning when the river is glassy smooth. Still riding on some rough water is part of spring.

While we have great days in spring, there is no shortage of wind in the spring. While the winds make the water rough for a time, they don't keep us at the dock all of the time.

As one of my fishing buddies is fond of saying, "All you have to do is find the right spot, and you will be out of the wind." Sometimes in the spring and even in the fall, we will use Bear Island (Hammocks Beach State) as a windbreak. There is a great channel behind the island. It is often sheltered from some of our more persistent winds. Where there is will, there usually is a way to get on the water.

No one questions that our world of dazzling water exposes us to lots of wind and weather. However, we are fortunate that we can count on our weather to nice more often that not here along North Carolina's Crystal Coast.

How many ofter places can you plant your tomato plants and go wading in ocean water in March and the next day cool off in the neighborhood swimming pool after mowing your yard for the first time in 2012? I wonder how April 2012 could possibly top March? Then again, April 2011, was certainly a month to remember.

Maybe the winds will stop in early April this year. It is the coast, and since we usually don't know the weather until we wake up in the morning, I wouldn't be surprised. Whatever happens, you will find me on or near the water most days because living here is all about the water.

December on the Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 04:05:00 +0000

It is hard to believe that the four days leading up to Christmas Eve have had temperatures over 65F along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks. While it has been a warm winter so far on the east coast, it has been terrific along the south facing beaches of the Crystal Coast.

The Crystal Coast runs roughly from Beaufort, NC to Swansboro, NC. It is just enough off the beaten path to miss the huge crowds during the summer. Most of us living here year round enjoy the few weeks each year that we have tourists. The area seems festive and busy for about eight weeks during the summer.

Then we slide into the fall which is the favorite season for most of us. The water is warm, the beaches are empty, and this fall the fish were biting. It is the best time to be on the coast. As the fall progresses and the water cools, the fish don't bite as much, and most of the fishermen start thinking about next year.

As late November arrives, usually we cool down considerably. That didn't happen this year. December has been full of days when the temperature got to seventy degrees and even better. It has been shorts weather all through our last month of 2012. There have been some stellar beach days.

When the holidays get close, the beach gets very quiet. A few restaurants close for part of December and January. As the new year gets into sight, residents often wander inland to visit family and friends. A lucky few enjoy the piece and quiet along the waters along Bogue Sound and our coastal rivers as Santa makes his rounds.

With crab pot Christmas trees adorning many yards, and few places to go crazy shopping, the peace of the Crystal Coast seems to remove some of the commercialism from the holiday season. It is a very quiet time on the coast, but there are still boats on the water and even a few fishermen trying their luck. The beaches, while uncrowded, are far from deserted. You can still buy some fresh shrimp and a nice flounder for dinner without much difficulty.

Only during the coldest weather do the beaches become completely empty. When we do get our cold weather, usually defined by temperatures during the day of just under 50F, the herons, egrets, and pelicans retire to the sheltered creeks and marshes where they find protection from the cold winds.

Winter rarely lasts long. Even last year's record winter started to fade in the middle of February. By the end of February the warm North Carolina sun always heats up the soils of Carteret County. By March things are starting to grow, and sometime between late March and the middle of April, the strawberries announce the beginning the berry season.

By late April or early May, the fishing begins to show some life. The tourists start showing up on weekends during the spring, and by the second or third week of June, we're back to being a tourist beach.

The rhythm of life along the Crystal Coast doesn't change a lot. It is a pleasant mix of warm and cool weather with plenty of outside festivals to keep us busy. We have visitors just long enough to make us feel festive.

Join us in the coming year if you have never been or you can't make it down for the 2012 holidays. If you need to relax and find the real you once again, we are a good place to start looking. More information is available on this welcome page.

Fall on the Crystal Coast

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 02:40:00 +0000

We're lucky along North Carolina's Crystal Coast. Fall sometimes is the most gentle time of the year. It is not unusual to wake to cool mornings, but by the time you get moving around after a cup or two of coffee, the air temperature is already quickly warming. With little humidity, a bright sun, and cloudless skies, you cannot complain about the weather, especially the beautiful brilliant blue skies. By late morning, it is usually warm enough for shorts and a tee shirt. Fall in 2011 has been just such a year.

The weather is so good that it is easy to forget the work that needs to be done. In the last week, I have boated, walked the beaches, kayaked, biked and fished. Saturday afternoon, November 12, I was so tired from paddling around the river, that I couldn't help myself from a little napping.

It was one of those perfect naps where you are still aware of what is happening, but your mind is resting peacefully. The warm sun was shining on me, and my interest in football was so little that napping seemed much more important.

This summer we were on a roller coaster of weather. Fall, however, has been pretty amazing in comparison. There are times that I have suggested that the weather was good enough to bottle. At the same time, we have had more moisture than we did during the summer. The fall plants have been gorgeous. We still have some beautiful geraniums and our hydrangea has some great blooms on it.

Unlike the bluegrass and fescue yards of the Piedmont and mountains to the west of us, our centipede yards have been dormant for a while. No grass to mow just gives us more time for the important fall things like fishing. We have also managed to plant our fall snap dragons and pansies. We will enjoy their blooms all through the winter.

The week of November 7, 2011 has been the best week that I have had for fishing in a while. I have fished three times this week. One day my fishing was just a few minutes, and the other two days, I fished for a couple of hours. I caught fish each time, and on November 12, I caught a nice 20" trout that weighed 2 lbs and 3 oz. The trout was the perfect size for dinner for two. It is nice to have fish in my backyard. This week it didn't seem to matter whether I was in my kayak or skiff, I was catching fish.

Water access here along North Carolina's Crystal Coast cannot be beat, and in late fall, there are no crowds. If you want to get on the water, there are plenty of places to do it even with the Cedar Point Wildlife Resources Ramp being closed for a month, it is still easy to find a spot to launch. Even if you just want to walk the beaches, there are plenty of places to do that. It is also cool enough to walk the trails at the Cedar Point Croatan Access.

I watch a couple of the beach areas, Emerald Isle's Third Street and the Point, pretty closely, and it is not unusual for the beaches to change from day to day even in the fall. We were at Third Street about a month ago, and were surprised to find a huge amount of sand had disappeared. About a month later, the waves put the sand back.

On Thursday, November 11, I walked about 2.5 miles along the beaches at the Point on Emerald Isle. I wore shorts and a tee-shirt, and I was very comfortable even wading in the water at times. While the water is cool, it isn't bone chilling like it is in early spring.

The only problem that I have this time of year is that there isn't enough daylight left to do everything that I want to do. I have to pick and choose my activities, which is okay since I would rather have too much to do than not enough.

It you have never visited the Emerald Isle-Crystal Coast area, there is no better time to do it than fall. The annual Christmas Parade in Emerald Isle is coming up soon on November 26. This is a movie of the 2008 event. The town always loves to have visitors. Without lots of visitors during the parade, there is always a risk that there will be more people in the parade than there are watching it.

When you drive across the Emerald Isle bridge this time of year and look out at Bogue Sound, it is hard to not be impressed with the beauty of the scene, the blues, greens, and golds are never prettier than they are now. The view like many others in the area will renew soul and stretch your imagination.

If you need some quick information on the area, visit my free online guide to the area.

High water at the dock

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:09:00 +0000

The more that the out of doors is part of your life, the more attention that you pay to the weather.   Yet each place you live usually requires paying attention to different things.

Not many in this generation of Americans have the experience of spending most of their lives in one area. I have some family members who are living within ten miles of where their grandfather and great grandfather were living in 1910. I have some friends in Canada living in a settlement not far from where their families first put down roots in the late eighteen hundreds.

I never got the chance to walk the banks of the long-gone millpond where my mother grew up with her family. My grandfather and the millpond were gone before I had a chance to learn about them, but I did get to visit the site of the old dam once. I still remember the walk through the woods.

I can imagine that if you were living on a millpond, dependent on water flow in a small stream, when and how much it rained would have been very important. However, the first public weather forecasts did not show up until 1925. My mother and the family had moved away from the millpond by then.

The early years of my own life showed a strong taste for wanderlust. I moved to Saint Croix Cove on the shore of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, and only marriage stopped me from giving Newfoundland a try. When we lived in Nova Scotia one of the most important things in the weather during the summer was fog.   A partner and I were trying to farm with a few cattle. Making hay in the "summer" was how we got feed for the cattle in the winter.

We lived on the north mountain of the Annapolis Valley. The mountain sloped rapidly down to the Bay of Fundy. The scenic beauty of the area and the charm of the old farm were undeniable. Yet the almost inevitable fog during the summer made it really hard to make good quality hay. As so often has been the case in my life, there was no real local weather forecast. The only way to figure out the fog was to become a keen observer of the signs which were often followed by fog.

We eventually moved to just north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. We happened to end up in Tay Creek, which was known locally as a "snow belt." Our first year there, I measured twenty-three feet of snow. Once again it did not take long to figure out that the only real local forecasts would have to come from us. Fredericton, which is the capital of New Brunswick was twenty miles away and much lower in elevation. I came to learn that Fredericton could easily be eight degrees Fahrenheit warmer than Tay Creek. In a Maritime climate that makes a huge difference in how much snow you receive.

As we went through our city phase, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Columbia, MD and eventually Roanoke, Virginia, it was easier to find forecasts that matched reality until we moved to Roanoke where we ended up living on a high mountain above the city. Sometimes the weathermen would call for rain, and we clearly got snow. While living on the mountain was great for getting beautiful sunrises, it made getting an accurate weather forecast challenging.   Once again, we had to learn how to watch the signs and predict our own weather. Fog also came back into our life. There were mornings when the fog made the rest of the world invisible.

Now that we are living on the North Carolina coast, I think we might be in the most complex weather area of our lives. While we have a number of reporting weather stations very close by, it is rare that they can accurately forecast our weather. When I see a long-range forecast I just chuckle knowing that the odds of it being right are very slim.

Yet here at the coast, the weather is a huge part of our lives. We have to get ready for events like Hurricane Irene, and often what we are hearing from the weathermen is more focused on other areas than our spot just off the White Oak River. When Irene visited, I took to issuing my own forecasts to a number of neighbors. It was helpful to me and them. Things are a lot different than in the days of the millpond. Much of the information needed for a forecast is there, you just have to know where to look and how to interpret it.

It is October 11, and for days we have been hearing about a tropical low that forecasters were guessing would dump up to three inches of rain on our area. Three inches of rain doesn't mean a lot to our area which has seen some extreme precipitation over the years. However, the forecasters were also calling for high winds and tides. I knew to watch the morning tide to see if I needed to raise my boat a few inches. Sure enough, at about 11 AM, I had to raise my boat a little. However, so far the rain total is only eleven-hundredths of an inch at 1 PM and the sky is significantly lighter than when we got up this morning. I suspect that my feeling that most of the rain was going to miss us is going to play out accurately.

Snow, heavy rain, and fog might not be problems here, but high water and winds can make us pay close attention to the weather. The attention we pay is not much different I suspect than how my grandfather watched for rains around the millpond. I would love to know if he got some great weather suitable for bottling just like we have recently seen.

A perfect beach day is always around the corner

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:39:00 +0000

Few people on the east coast would disagree with the statement that "This has been a hot summer." There are also plenty of folks in the southwest that are still being slowly baked. The middle of August uncharacteristically has turned out to be a lucky time to be on North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks. August certainly doesn't have a history of being a time when we have our most pleasant weather.

However, the one thing about living at the beach is that you get to hang around until the weather turns perfect for a beach trip even if it is in the middle of August.

July 2011 was the hottest July that we have seen in our five years of living in the Crystal Coast portion of North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks. The Crystal Coast is often defined as the area in Carteret County from Emerald Isle to Atlantic Beach sometimes including Beaufort. For all practical purposes, the area runs from Swansboro in Onslow County to the east to Beaufort in Carteret County.

Usually in our little piece of paradise, July can be a relatively pleasant month. Sometimes we have have our windows open at night and in the morning through early July. This year things warmed up quickly, and the heat was almost inescapable except for a few nights in July when we were able to have our windows open.

The heat of the 2011 season has been compounded by a stubborn drought which started in early May and is still clinging to the area. With the drought came some wildfires which were started by lightning in some large natural preserves. Three have been three of those this summer, and we have had some days when we needed to escape the smoke. You know it is dry when the swamps are catching on fire.

Since we live near the beach, we go to the beach a lot especially to escape the heat. This spring, I walked all the beaches within the town limits of Emerald Isle at least three times. That is a lot of beach walking. I am approaching 100 miles of beach walking for the season. It is not unusual for me to go for a noon beach walk over on the beautiful sand at the Point. However, when the heat is on, even I avoid the beaches.

In July 2011 and the early part of August hotter than normal temperature that kept me away from the beach more than I like. Even our evenings were warm, and the area waters heated up so quickly that there was little relief from the day's heat even at night. It was still more pleasant at the beach, it just wasn't pleasant enough to lure me out regularly.

So when the middle of August 2011 rolled around and our high temperatures dropped to the upper eighties from the low nineties, and we had some lows in the sixties, I knew it was time to get back to the beaches.

I boat several times a week during the summer, so I am acutely aware of the winds. I will often take our skiff down to the marshes on the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway at Swansboro. It is a good way to know what the water temperature is doing and how the winds are blowing.

On August 16, my morning boat ride told me that the White Oak River had cooled to slightly under 80F which was a drop of almost eight degrees in a week. I also found some steady winds from the north. In my mind, that along with the day's beautiful blue skies, set up the possibility of nearly perfect beach conditions.

We had some errands to run early in the afternoon which was fine since low tide wasn't until 4 PM. I enjoy the beach on a falling tide or even right at low tide. It is the best time for a beach walk. It didn't take us long to finish our chores, and head across the bridge to the beaches of Emerald Isle.

This time of year when some of the larger beach areas can be crowded, it doesn't take much to convince me to drive east along the beach for a few miles. Somewhere just before mile marker 12.5 we usually turn right off of Emerald Drive and then left onto Ocean Drive until we get to Third Street Beach. It is one of our favorites. It is rarely crowed, and there is a nice picnic table with platform where my wife can relax if she doesn't want to get her feet wet.

I almost always want to get my feet wet, and August 16 was no exception. While I didn't go on one of my long beach walks, I did stand knee deep in the surf and enjoy what I thought was nearly perfect water with just the right amount of breeze under a wonderful blue sky. There was just enough heat in the air to make the water pleasant. August 16 was a perfect beach day, and I am glad that I knew enough to head over to the beaches and grab a taste of it. This is a YouTube video that I made while standing in the surf.

I am hoping it is just the first of many this season since we are headed slowly but surely towards fall which is often the best time to come to the beach.

Fourth July 2011 on the Southern Outer Banks

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 03:13:00 +0000

The beach and boating season is here. It has been a challenge to enjoy the last couple of weeks. Finally as June departed we got a taste of our blue skies which have been hidden a number of days by smoke from North Carolina's two large coastal wildfires.

We have been prisoners of the fickle winds which control whether or not we have blue sky and sun or just smoke. It has been been strange waiting for the smoke to go away so we can get out on the water. We have had enough bad mornings that I was happy recently when I figured out that we were having a fog event instead of another smoke attack.

Our preparations for the Fourth always include some early grocery shopping. One of the things you don't do on the Southern Outer Banks if you are a local is go to the grocery store on the Fourth of July weekend for any significant shopping. You might sneak in for a few items, but a major grocery trip is not a good idea. If you happen to live actually on the beach at Emerald Isle, it is unlikely you could find a parking place at Food Lion even if you wanted one.

The other option would be to leave the island, but then you would have to come back across the bridge which can take a long time. Most holiday weekends leaving the island if you are a resident or visiting the island if you are a local main-lander is not a good idea, but this July 2 was even worse than normal. Some of the longest traffic backups since 2005 were seen in the area according to some knowledgeable locals whose opinions I respect.

I did have to go out to place some real estate flyers on Saturday, July 2, so we rode down to Swansboro. If you have never been to Swansboro, Front Street is a something of a challenge even when there is little or no traffic. The main street is a two way street with parking on both sides of it, but unfortunately there is only room for one lane of traffic. Locals tend to operate by the rule of the biggest vehicle gets the right of way. With the holidays, we have a lot of folks who have no idea of the way things work. They often refuse to yield on Front Street so it doesn't take much for the whole system to fall apart and gridlock to take over Swansboro's main street. We were close to that yesterday for a short while. It is a good thing Front Street has a high quotient of cuteness with lots of little shops.

Fortunately we lucked into a great parking spot at the far end of Front Street, I went to deliver the flyers to the tourist office while my wife checked out the crafts fair by the new Pavilion where the Fourth of July concert will take place on Monday, July 4..

Afterwards we had lunch at Church Street Deli. The sandwiches were delicious but at $8.95 each they were a little pricy for what we got. My wife's Reuben was the best choice. We should have gone across Hwy 24 and eaten at Trattoria like we usually do. There a split cheese steak sub is more than enough for the two of us and the meal is five dollars cheaper. After lunch we headed back towards Cape Carteret with the plan of dropping some clothing off at the local consignment shop. We never made it to that stop.

Traffic was backed up in both lanes of Highway 24 all the way from the bridge to Walston's Hardware so we took a back way through Marsh Harbour over to old Highway 58 and then VFW Road which brought us back to Highway 58 North and the way home to Bluewater Cove.

Later I had a form to deliver to our real estate office so we headed out again at around 3 PM. Unfortunately traffic was even worse. After getting the form to the office and making some copies of a flyer, we took the long way once again and went home for good.

Still it is great to see lots of people here. I am willingly yielding my home turf for a few days. I was at the beach July 1 and out on our boat on June 30 so I am happy to wait until July 5 before venturing over to the beach or dropping our boat into the water again. The local businesses need the traffic to survive the quiet season, but I do wish people wouldn't drive like idiots.

I had a car full of youngsters zig zag around me at close to sixty miles per hour after I pulled out of the real estate office. The speed limit by the office is thirty-five, and usually anyone driving over forty-five will get a quick ticket. Yesterday my only satisfaction was they got caught in the mess at the intersection and had to wait to pass me yet again another mile down the road.

We get the privilege of living here all year so sharing the beach with tourists for a few days isn't much to ask. Our area is a little off the beaten path. That is one of the reasons we chose the area. It has always been my experience that the easier the beach is to reach, the higher percentage of bad tourists that you get.

Fortunately you cannot take an interstate highway directly to us. We are a location which takes a little work to find, and I think that the people who come here in general come because they love the area. They often come year after year and mostly treat the area like their home. Of course there are always exceptions, but I don't think we have as many exceptions as some of the more convenient beaches. It doesn't hurt to have Emerald Isle's very efficient police department either.

So I welcome those who come for a visit and want the area to stay as nice as it is now for their children's children. The world needs more people like that, and I am proud that we are the vacation spot for many of them.

I have a webpage with quick links to information about the area. There is a link on the page for a downloadable PDF map for those who would like a visual aid for my narrative. Or if you are in the area, you can pick one up at the local tourist bureaus.

A May to remember on the Southern Outer Banks

noreply@blogger.com (Ocracokewaves) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 02:26:00 +0000

While summer has been elusive to many people in the Northeast and Canada, it has found us along the Crystal Coast of North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks.

Anyone who is worried about not having enough warmth along the beaches in late spring of 2011 should immediately banish those thoughts.

On the last day of May 2011, the temperature along our coast soared into the upper nineties. Those temperatures are rare any time of the year here, and almost unheard of in May. With all the warm air, the water temperature along the beaches of Emerald Isle has been pushed to 80F.

While some places above the Mason-Dixon line have been straining to see the sun, we have seen no significant rain since May 7. The skies have been blue, and sometimes clouds have been completely absent. And for the most part, we have had steady breezes to keep us relatively cool in the warmth.

Unfortunately our winds died down somewhat on May 31 which I'm sure will turn out to be the hottest day we have seen in a long time. If I heard the forecast correctly, the winds are coming back later in the week.

Stunning is perhaps the best way to describe most of our May beach weather. Even with the weather being fantastic, we have just seen our first crowds this Memorial Day weekend.

One of my many beach hikes took me to Emerald Isle's Point at lunch during the week before Memorial Day. The beach was almost empty. With so much great weather, it has been challenging figuring out the best ways to enjoy the area.

All the water at our doorstep tends to push me towards boating and kayaking with some fishing thrown in for good measure, but this spring, I have spent a lot of time hiking the beaches.

In addition to beach and water time, the weekends have been filled with things to do. If you mix the local festivals with great water access and some fantastic weather, you get the essence of the Crystal Coast.

2011 has been a great spring to be on the coast, and if you are thinking of moving, there is no better time to start checking out potential homes or cottages.