OUTER BANKS MILEPOST: ISSUE 10.1 by Matt Walker

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SUMMER IS COMING...

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A 19th century dreamboat sails past 21st century Kitty Hawk. Photo: Chris Bickford

Some say milepost we’re graphiccontent a sandbar. gokite

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I say we’re a ship. Self-contained. Semidry. Surrounded by water. Filled with hearty souls who booked a summer’s passage — and ended up on a lifetime adventure.

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When the wind howls, you can feel the island rock just a bit, sea and salt washing around rough-hewn beams. Once the storm wanes, you can feel the collective sense of relief as we put pieces together and push through. In-between, we cling to wooden decks, swilling grog and singing shanties. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

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No surprise, really. It’s canoes that fed and ferried our original peoples. It’s ships that delivered our earliest settlers. And it’s boats that first put the Outer Banks on the map — along with names like George Washington Creef, Warren O’Neal and Omie Tillett — laying the framework for our first, and only, real manufacturing industry. One that’s still thriving today. Wander the docks and you’ll find everything from high-tech luxury yachts that require millions of dollars and dozens of workers, to simple skiffs built by a single pair of local hands.

The bigger surprise? How quickly we forget our nautical nature. Once the dominant force of our economy — and essential tool for just getting around — most Outer Bankers today see boats as either a footlocker footnote from our piratey past, or a modern hobby for those with serious money. Until we see one doing its job. A commercial skiff stacked with crab pots as it cracks the dawn. A fully loaded ferry, carrying cars to Ocracoke. A sportfishing yacht festooned with flags of fighting fish, pounds of meat piled up on the dock.

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It’s boats that first put the Outer Banks on the map.

Sometimes, it just takes a mere glimpse of a fine craft in full sail to understand its true majesty. When a modern tall ship named the Peacemaker moved up the coast one

windy day last winter, you could hear the collective awe from Hatteras to Corolla, harkening back to the time when just the silhouette of a triple-masted beauty meant the difference between life (fresh supplies, a trip home) and death (Spanish invaders, lusty pirates, English disease).

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But even then, we don’t see what lies beneath: the months of labor attached to each plank and moving part, ensuring that goods get delivered. That discoveries are made. And that every passenger doesn’t just stay afloat — but alive. More than mere vehicles, ships are symbols: vessels of what’s possible if you pour your heart into a good design. If they’re built correctly. If they’re run correctly. If every person onboard does their duty and has the resolve to keep moving forward. Same goes for the SS Outer Banks. Pleasure craft? Sometimes. Workboat? Always. Ship of fools? Maybe so. But we’re stuck together now. From the greenest horns to the oldest salts. So, grab a rope and start heaving. Because, the one thing that don’t float here is deadweight. — Matt Walker

Thank you for reading Outer Banks Milepost. We hope you enjoy it. If not — before chucking this issue in the nearest dumpster — please consider one of the following equally satisfying ways of expressing your disgust: run a copy up the mast as a poor man’s wind vane; fire up the old Evinrude and feed it through the prop. Or simply toss it on that six-month stack of newspapers you’ve yet to recycle. (Trust us, you’ll feel better.) Then, send any and all feedback — positive, negative or just plain confused — to: editor@outerbanksmilepost.com. We promise to find some way to re-purpose them.

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“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” — Zora Neale Hurston “Whatever floats your boat.” — Unknown

Issue 10.1 Spring 2021 Cover: Vessel in Distress. Photos: Biff Jennings

Reader You Brushes & Ink Carnell Boyle, John Butler, George Cheeseman, Marcia Cline, Carolina Coto, Cloey Davis, Michael J. Davis, Fay Davis Edwards, Mary Edwards, Laine Edwards, Marc Felton, Travis Fowler, Adriana Gomez-Nichols, Amelia Kasten, Chris Kemp, Nathan Lawrenson, Dave Lekens, Alex Lex, Tim Lusk, Ben Miller, Dawn Moraga, Ben Morris, Holly Nettles, Rick Nilson, Holly Overton, Stuart Parks II, Charlotte Quinn, Meg Rubino, Shirley Ruff, Noah Snyder, Janet Stapelman, Alyse Stewart, Kenneth Templeton, Stephen Templeton, George Tsonev, Bri Vuyovich, Christina Weisner, John Wilson, Mark Wiseman, Mike Zafra

FUN • FRESH • LOCAL

Lensfolk Nate Appel, Matt Artz, Chris Bickford, Russell Blackwood, Don Bower, Aycock Brown, Mark Buckler, Jon Carter, Garnette Coleman, Rich Coleman, Kim Cowen, Chris Creighton, Jason Denson, Amy Dixon, Susan Dotterer Dixon, Lori Douglas, Julie Dreelin, Tom Dugan/ESM, Roy Edlund, Bryan Elkus, Ben Gallop, Cory Godwin, Chris Hannant, Bryan Harvey, David Alan Harvey, Ginger Harvey, Bob Hovey, Biff Jennings, Jenni Koontz, Mike Leech, Anthony Leone, Jeff Lewis, Jared Lloyd, Matt Lusk, Ray Matthews, Brooke Mayo, Mickey McCarthy, Nic McLean, Roger Meekins, D. Victor Meekins, Richard L. Miller, Dick Meseroll/ESM, David Molnar, Rachel Moser, Ryan Moser, Elizabeth Neal, Rob Nelson, Candace Owens, Anne Snape Parsons, Crystal Polston, Daniel Pullen, Ryan Rhodes, Terry Rowell, Cyndi Goetcheus Sarfan, Katie Slater, Tom Sloate, Wes Snyder, Aimee Thibodeau, Ed Tupper, Eve Turek, Chris Updegrave, Dan Waters, Kati Wilkins, Cyrus Welch, Jay Wickens Penfolk Ashley Bahen, Madeline Bailey, Sarah Downing, Laura Gomez-Nichols, Jim Gould, Steve Hanf, Dave Holton, Sarah Hyde, Catherine Kozak, Katrina Leuzinger, Hannah Lee Leidy, Dan Lewis, Terri Mackleberry, Fran Marler, Matt Pruett, Mary Ellen Riddle, Arabella Saunders, Corinne Saunders, Sandy Semans, Shannon Sutton, Kip Tabb, Hannah West, Clumpy White, Sharon Whitehurst, Natalie Wolfe, Michele Young-Stone Pointing/Clicking Jesse Davis Sales Force Laurin Walker

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Big Mouth In Chief Matt Walker Blame It All On Suite P Inc. PO Box 7100 • KDH, NC 27948 Office: 252-441-6203 • Sales: 949-275-5115 editor@outerbanksmilepost.com • sales@outerbanksmilepost.com Outer Banks Milepost is published quarterly (sorterly) by Suite P Inc. All contents are the property of Suite P Inc. and do not reflect the opinion of advertisers or distributors. Nor do their contents reflect that of the creative types (who would never, ever sell out). Comments, letters and submissions are usually welcome. Please include SASE for return delivery of all snail mail, however, Milepost and Suite P Inc. still aren’t responsible for any unsolicited materials. And don’t expect much else to move much faster than IST (Island Standard Time). Oh yeah: if you reprint a lick of this content you’re ripping us off. (Shame on you.) To discuss editorial ideas, find out about advertising or tell us we blew it – or just find out what the waves are doing – call 252-441-6203 or email: editor@outerbanksmilepost.com; sales@outerbanksmilepost.com. www.outerbanksmilepost.com

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roadmap gokite 03 StartingPoint

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Nautical by nature.

06 UpFront Farming energy, cooking mullet, and roasting Billy.

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18 GetActive These lands are your lands.

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20 Adrift An Atlantic crossing goes awry.

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24 Wanchese Calling Four skilled folks who keep our boat industry afloat. 32 GraphicContent We’re just yanking your anchor.

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34 L ight Craft A nautical journey through the lens of Biff Jennings. 48 GoHike The journey of 2,190 miles…

“Cleopatra” By Anne Snape Parsons Model: Jalen Endres www.annesnape.com

“Shooting portraits is my joy. My bliss. This March, I’m doing a Dare County Arts Council exhibit called, “Women Warriors: Past, Present and Future.” The photos feature twelve phenomenal women who are currently making a difference — like Helen Ford, who helped start Food For Thought, and Karen Sawin from Hotline — plus a dozen more younger women who are just now blossoming into the community. For the past I picked some favorite historical figures and thought, What model fits this subject? Queen Elizabeth I is Kathy Horne, who worked with Elizabeth R. & Company for many years. And Jalen Endres’ eyes have always struck me — she looks like Cleopatra. But I especially like shooting women who say they don’t like getting their photos taken. I enjoy bringing them into the studio, one at a time, then finding out who they are and getting the right expression. It’s like a journey to show them that how they see themselves is not how I see them; that they are absolutely, amazingly beautiful.” — Anne Snape Parsons

50 FoodDrink Banh appétit. 52 ArtisticLicense Ceramics meets scrimshaw. 54 SoundCheck Four bands, no covers. 57 OutThere Ground control to major mistake. 58 EndNotes Spring, ahoy!

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upfront soundcheck GREEN HORIZON

A renewable energy wave is on the rise. And the Outer Banks is poised to clean up. getactive Market forces. Global industry trends. Weakened political power. Call it a perfect storm of converging forces, but the prospect of oil drilling off our coast is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Last September, Royal Dutch Shell said they were reducing petroleum investment to focus more on wind and solar. In January, General Motors announced their global fleet would be 100 percent electric by 2035. Meanwhile, President Biden signed a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing in federal waters and land. Clean energy is the (near) future, baby! And our region is already ahead of the curve.

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With its construction plan recently approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Kitty Hawk Offshore Wind will start preparations to install a yet-to-be-determined number of turbines 27 miles off Kitty Hawk; all three phases are expected to be operational by the end of the decade. And last October, the governors of North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia announced a framework, the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Regional Transformative Partnership for Offshore Wind Energy Resources (SMARTPOWER), to advance more regional wind projects and leverage combined economic power.

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“Offshore wind development combined with our strong solar capacity will bring more high paying, clean energy jobs to North Carolina while we continue to ramp up our fight against climate change,” Governor Roy Cooper said in a statement. “This bipartisan agreement with neighboring states allows us to leverage our combined economic power and ideas to achieve cost effective success.”

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In addition to creating about 800 jobs in North Carolina and Virginia, the project is expected to produce $2 billion in economic impact by 2030. When completed, the project will generate 2,500 megawatts of electricity — enough to

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power about 700,000 homes, according to the contractor Avangrid Renewables. The energy will be transported via subsea cables to Sandbridge, Virginia, with comparatively few negative impacts. The turbines will have “little to no visibility from shore,” company spokesman Morgan Pitt said in an email. Also, he said that the surrounding area will be open and accessible for commercial and recreational fishing, noting that already “recreational fishermen have reported catching mahi and marlin near the currently deployed meteorological buoy.”

The nascent U.S. offshore wind industry is promising big benefits, even if largely indirectly, to the Outer Banks economy. As Tim Beacham, Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce Divisional Vice Chair of Economic Sustainability, wrote in May 2020: “As the chamber strives to encourage economic resiliency, offshore wind is perhaps one of the greatest opportunities that our community will have while protecting our beautiful environment at the same time.”

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Meanwhile, local scientists are looking further out on the green energy horizon, performing cutting-edge research on renewable projects that have both global and local significance to resilience and sustainability. The Coastal Studies Institute, which is affiliated with East Carolina University, does ongoing research into harnessing energy from waves, tides and currents, and using robotic underwater vessels to collect data and submarine kites to provide on-site energy for scientists. Mike Muglia, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Coastal Studies at ECU, leads a group that studies the Gulf Stream’s physical oceanography and its complex dynamics, as well as devices to harness its energy. He also does intensive research in hydrokinetics, the study of the motions of fluids and forces that affect them. Muglia views the ocean off Cape Hatteras — where masses of water in the vicinity of the continental shelf and the Gulf Stream get pushed north and south, up and down, warm and cold, churning and mixing — as a uniquely rich opportunity for researchers. “It’s like the Mason-Dixon line for oceanography on the East Coast,” he often says. Another CSI project works with a U.S. Department of Energy program that plans to help our island communities, such as Hatteras and Ocracoke, develop micro-grids to provide backup electricity.

“The availability of drinking water obviously is a major challenge for a lot of places,” Bonner says. “Even in eastern North Carolina, you get sea level rise and salt water intrusion. Reverse osmosis is very power intensive energy, so if you compound that with a renewable source, it may make a big game changer for a lot of places.”

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When completed, the project will power about 700,000 homes.

Suddenly, instead of playing defense against drillers and spillers, the Outer Banks is poised to be both a contributor to and a benefactor of the new “Blue Economy.” One that promotes clean energy — as well as sustainable fisheries, shipping and other maritime industries — while reducing global emissions to help lessen future impacts on local shores, from sea level rise and stronger storms.

Granted, after three decades of battling the threat of fossil fuel exploration, Outer Bankers can be forgiven for feeling cynical. A massive deposit of natural gas and oil still sits deep in the ocean floor about 40 miles off Cape Hatteras. And the petroleum industry is notoriously relentless. The difference now is the attitude.

“On the Outer Banks, they’re the first ones to lose power,” says George Bonner, Director, North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program. “And they’re the last ones to get it back. I’m excited about this program because I think it tackles that challenge.”

Not only does renewable energy — wind, solar, battery storage, hydropower, geothermal, and bio-gas power — have traction, thanks to increasing Wall Street investment, it also has the public momentum. Hellish wildfires, raging coastal storms, and record-breaking floods — and their associated billions of dollars in damages — have forced skeptics to take climate change and carbon reduction seriously.

Resiliency is also the theme at the Department of Energy’s “Waves to Water” competition — a challenge to create a system that produces clean water from wave energy — that CSI is sponsoring in the spring of 2022 at Jennette’s Pier.

As a result, governments and corporations — even fossil fuel companies themselves — are turning away from polluting energy sources. Despite decades of pressure to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, January’s

lease sale drew just three bidders — one of which was the state, itself. And if Big Oil isn’t keen to drill, politicians are less likely to push for permits — especially when the public is increasingly opposed. In 2017, the Trump administration opened nearly all of the nation’s coastlines to leasing. By last November, in an effort to sway voters, he signed a 10-year ban from Florida to North Carolina. As Natural Resources Defense Council’s Valerie Cleland wrote in her January 27 blog: “Coastal communities, businesses and elected officials see the threat that offshore drilling poses to the marine environment and their economies. They are tired of the dirty and dangerous fossil fuel industry that has a lousy record of cleaning up after spills.” So is the rest of the world. Just as fossil fuel industries went into a death spiral — with coal already on life support and oil and gas decimated by the pandemic shutdowns — in 2021, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, following up on the groundbreaking 2015 Paris accord, is focusing on global oceans issues, including acidification, rising seas and the decarbonization of shipping and maritime industries. Stewardship of the ocean is not “just a personal passion of a few nations or one nation,” former Secretary of State John Kerry, the newly appointed presidential climate change envoy, said at a recent meeting of the Ocean-Climate Ambitions Summit, sponsored by the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. “It’s a shared and mandatory responsibility for all of us…you can’t protect the oceans without solving climate change,” he said. “And you can’t solve climate change without protecting the oceans.” That’s positive energy for all coastal communities moving forward. — Catherine Kozak GOOD VIBES ON THE DUCK WATERFRONT

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SPLASH FROM THE PAST soundcheck getactive

Remembering when the humble mullet was highly celebrated.

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Mullets don’t always get the best rap. From ugly, neck-warming hairstyles to lowbrow, blue-collar nicknames, these humble fish have become virtually synonymous with “nothing fancy.” But just a half-century ago, this so-called baitfish was more than a backwater reference or backhanded compliment — it was the celebrated backbone of Carolina coastal culture. “Mullets are caught in every county bordering on saltwater,” reported the North Carolina Geologic and Economic Survey in its 1907 publication, The Fishes of North Carolina. “From the earliest days of the colony, mullet have proved to be a finny driver of the economy, as they were caught, cleaned and salted in barrels and exported to other locales.” The striped mullet (Mugli cephalas), also known as jumping mullet, is an elongated fish with large scales, big eyes, and an odd, small mouth. You might’ve seen one launch itself out of the water for a second before landing with a large splash. But they’re even more impressive — and more appreciated — when they migrate in massive numbers.

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Noted naturalist H.C. Yarrow included this description in his report, “Notes on the Natural History of Fort Macon, N.C., and Vicinity,” published in the Proceedings of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia:

gokite milepost “Who wants fish sticks?!” Photo: Aycock Brown/Outer Banks History Center

“From the month of May, when small-sized individuals appear, fishing continues during the entire summer with gill and small draw nets, and in the latter part of August, as the fish commence to school preparatory to migration, the regular seine fishing commences, and continues frequently until November. The schools appear to come from the northward through Albemarle, Pamlico, and Core sounds, gradually working their way to the southward.”

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A record haul was reported in the autumn of 1871 when more than a thousand barrels of fish were caught, most of which were mullet. “Fishermen were jubilant,” according to newspaper accounts.

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By the turn of the 20th century, commercial catches were as high as 8.5 million pounds. Each fall, fishermen waited on a shift in the winds known as a Mullet Blow. Crews would head to isolated spots along the barrier islands and set nets as the mullet moved slowly down the coast. When they were plentiful, mullet were prepared over an open fire at events known as “mullet roasts.” During the summer of 1938, Elwood Dowdy, proprietor of the Betsy Dowdy Inn at the foot of the Wright Memorial Bridge, on the Kitty Hawk side, advertised a mullet roast every Friday at 8:00 p.m. For the reasonable price of 25 cents, one could enjoy “selected mullets roasted on a stick, cornbread, pickle, tomato, etc.” Dowdy bragged that they were prepared by “one of the most famous mullet roasters in the state,” who had been cooking them for 40 years.

Fish were cleaned, seasoned and hung on a slanting stick over live coals.

Around 1950, the Griggs family of lower Currituck began the tradition of holding mullet roasts that drew hundreds of folks to partake in friendly fellowship and a meal of tasty fish accompanied by coleslaw, sweet potatoes, and corn bread. Walton and Ruth Griggs owned the Point Harbor Restaurant on the tip of the Currituck mainland, where the event was frequently held. They were assisted in hosting duties by Walton’s cousin and his wife,

Thomas and Bertie Griggs. Thomas was a businessman as well, establishing the Griggs Lumber and Produce Company.

The Coastland Times reported on the Griggs’ method to prepare the feast: “Here was demonstrated a way of cooking these fine fish that is unexcelled, doubtless just as the Indians cooked them on the same spot 300 years ago. The fish had been cleaned, and seasoned and hung on a slanting stick over a bed of live coals, and barbecued to a fine brown.” These gatherings were not only a chance for neighbors and far-flung friends to get together to share a traditional meal, but they also provided a chance for politicos to press the flesh and hear from constituents in the state’s most northeast county. In fact, Walton Griggs served in the North Carolina legislature during the 1957 and 1961 sessions. Judges and state senators were known to give an address or convocation at the annual affair. Today, tuna and mahi are the haute cuisine. And oyster roasts are the hot social ticket. But the mullet fishery continues to be an economic force. In 2019, over a million pounds of striped mullet were harvested in North Carolina with a commercial value of $929,261. — Sarah Downing Sources: Coastland Times, “Griggs’ Mullet Roast Big Event at Point Harbor,” October 21, 1955; Dare County Times, “Mullet Roasts Every Friday at Dowdy Inn,” July 15, 1938; Simpson, Bob and Mary, “A Multitude of Mullets,” North Carolina Wildlife, September 1994; Smith, Hugh M. (Hugh McCormick), 1865-1941. The Fishes of North Carolina. Raleigh: E. M. Uzzell & Co., 1907.

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upfront soundcheck getactive startingpoint roadmap A cheering, jeering gokite look at recent events and their potential milepost impacts.

WHO WANTS SHOTS?! You wanna get back to normal right? Hit the bar? See a band? Maybe just hug your mom? So why are you waiting to get vaccinated? Head to Dare County’s COVID Vaccine web page, at www.darenc.com/ covidvaccine, where a new dashboard shows which “phase” fits you, how many appointments are scheduled, and how many are waiting in line. You can even sign up to be notified when it’s your turn to bend an arm. THE NEW COLLEGE TRY Fans of low-cost, quality higher education were excited to see COA break ground on their new Manteo campus in Dec. Set to open as early as 2022, the state-ofthe-art facility will focus on industries that

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run Dare County — such as hospitality, property management, nursing, carpentry, public safety, and basic law enforcement training and firefighting — providing a solid foundation for future careers, right here at home. HATCHET JOB DC did away with their racist helmets. Cleveland’s in the process of fitting new ball caps. But don’t expect similar bravery from the Dare County Board of Education. Last fall, they endorsed keeping Manteo’s “Redskins” and “Braves” mascots, ignoring the pleas of 12,000 petitioners to get with the times — and the opinion of local tribal leaders — all to protect the feelings of a few “indigenous” white folks, whose brains are stuck in the 1950s, and heads are stuck in their… WE COME TO PRAISE BASNIGHT… On Dec. 27, the Outer Banks lost a true statesman when favorite son and 13-term

state senator Marc Basnight succumbed to a long battle with ALS — aka Lou Gehrig’s disease. For some, the Manteo native was a smiling, successful restaurateur who never forgot a name. For others he was the savvy politician who finally made Raleigh recognize Northeastern NC, bringing home roads, bridges and infrastructure — not to mention cultural perks like Festival Park, Jennette’s Pier, and Corolla’s Wildlife Center — while protecting our landscape and water. For an unfortunate few, he’ll simply be the name on the new Oregon Inlet bridge. But one thing’s certain: the Outer Banks will never be the same because of him. And it sure won’t be the same without him. KING OF THE HILLS Sorry, Mount Mitchell. You may be NC’s highest peak, but Jockey’s Ridge is its top draw. Last year, the East Coast’s tallest sand dune hosted a record 1.9 million people, capping a banner year for state parks and

recreation, as the pandemic pushed more people outdoors — and visitation numbers to new heights. (A total of 19.8 million visits, to be exact.) FEEL THE BERNIE Evil socialism? Good politics? Kind hearts? Government handouts? Whatever you call it, Dare County took a page from Sanders and broke out checkbooks twice in Jan. in response to COVID. First, they offered up to $350,000 in grant money to help childcare providers survive the pandemic. Then, they sawed off another $375,000 in one-time bonuses for EMS, police and other masked heroes who’ve kept the rest of us safe. TROUBLE IN THE SANDBOX The political playground got a little gritty this winter over beach renourishment. With Avon and Southern Shores seeking future projects but lacking funds — and Kitty Hawk, KDH, Duck, and Nags Head each receiving recent state grants to offset

their costs — the county opted to withhold $1.4 million earmarked for each town to fill in the shortfall without shortchanging the municipalities. Commissioners agreed to discuss more long-term solutions, but some still felt chafed. Hey, these things happen when you start throwing sand. OVER AND OUT! Outer Bankers lost a trusty, brick-and-mortar electronics icon — and a super solid vinyl selection — when Radio Shack signed off for good in Jan. Founded in 1978, the longtime go-to for gadgets and gear sold everything from antennae to phones, drones to dongles. In the process, they survived sweeping tech changes — including the Internet — by providing an endless supply of good ol’ analog customer service. WOO! WOO! WOO!... Is that a siren — or a cheer? Might be both. In Jan., Dare proposed teaming up with KDH and Kitty Hawk to put new EMS and police

stations along the bypass. The goal is to upgrade facilities to improve response times in the busy season. Both sound like music to our ears. WE’LL DRINK TO THAT Who’s thirsty? In an effort to lubricate restaurant coffers — and make up for the recent crackdown on late-night hours — Gov. Cooper relaxed ABC laws to allow folks to order mixed drinks to-go, all the way until Mar. 31. For a community that’s enjoyed drive-thru coolers and bike-ride beers for decades, a rolling white Russian may not be revolutionary, but it’s certainly welcome. (First round’s on you.)

For detailed reports on these stories and breaking local news on a daily basis — plus plenty of local discussion — visit www. outerbanksvoice.com, www.islandfreepress. org, www.obxtoday.com, and www. thecoastlandtimes.com.

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WHADDYA RECKON?

soundcheck

We got questions — you got answers.

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Matt Lane, 35 Grocer Rodanthe “My brother Danny; we know each other so well, it would just be easy with him.”

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Greg Hurley, 28 Coast Guardsman Kitty Hawk “Tom Hanks. He did it once, he could do it again!”

graphiccontent Devontae Armstrong, 29 gosurf Hardware Consultant Manteo “If I had a girlfriend, that would obviously be my first choice. But I’d really like to have my brother who passed away. He was like my other half.”

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rearview Ryan Velazquez, 31 Software Developer Kill Devil Hills “Tom Brown. He literally wrote the book on wilderness survival.”

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“Who would you want to be shipwrecked on an island with — and why?” Heidi Velazquez, 30 Full-time Mom Kill Devil Hills “CS Lewis. I feel like we could have some great conversations, and I could really learn a few things.”

Ace Velazquez, 6 Full-time Kid Kill Devil Hills “I’d pick Denny, my cousin. We’d have so much fun together. Or George Washington — in case there’s a war!”

Lee Whitley, 67 Realtor Southern Shores “Betty White. She’s got survival skills, a sense of humor, and she’s a national treasure — so the Coast Guard, the Navy, and everyone else would be out looking for her.”

Dave Barton, 61 Drywaller Kill Devil Hills “My wife. Because if I give any other answer, I’m sure I wouldn’t have a wife anymore!” Interviews and images by Tony Leone

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MADE YOU LOOK. Name this essential Outer Banks element, and win a joy ride with Island Cruisers.

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This issue’s image is just a tad twisted. It’s designed to bring things together — but comes with a hair-trigger. Loves to drive a point home, but is open to almost any task. Steel your brains, then shoot your guess — plus your name and contact info — to editor@outerbanksmilepost. com by April 20. We’ll discuss all the correct answers in our next safety meeting, then randomly pull one winner who’ll receive a $300 gift cert from Salvo’s Island Cruisers to use toward renting an ORV, golf cart, buggy — you name it! All rental requirements — 25+ years old, driver’s license, insurance, and credit card — and town/park service restrictions apply. (P.S. thanks to all the fun guys and girls who correctly ID’d last issue’s puzzler — a “puffball mushroom.”)

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“Slackers wanted!” Deflating tires is one of many duties park volunteers can help perform. Photo: Daniel Pullen

Not all heroes wear capes. Some sport tan shirts. And hats. And carry walkie-talkies.

keep things running smoothly, they create a better experience for everyone.

“That’s a park service thing — everyone has to look like a ranger,” says Michael Gould, a semiweekly volunteer at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

This winter, the campgrounds at Oregon Inlet and Ocracoke were open year-round — Oregon Inlet for its second consecutive year and Ocracoke for its first. And, according to National Parks of Eastern NC Superintendent Dave Hallac, “That is entirely a result of the incredible volunteer support.”

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“I was just thinking I would be in regular clothes, picking up trash,” the retired air traffic controller continues. “I didn’t know I would be interacting with visitors, doing ranger type stuff.” As part of the Volunteers-in-Parks (VIP) program, Gould is one of hundreds of helpful humans who donate time and energy to the NPS’ Outer Banks Group (Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, and the Wright Brothers National Memorial). Other VIPs work museums and front desks, mow the grass, lead children’s Junior Rangers programs, or feed the Ocracoke Island ponies on the herd staffers’ days off. In days of static budgets, the extra hands don’t just

Traditionally, both campgrounds are closed between Thanksgiving and spring break. But now VIP hosts live and work on-site, checking in guests and cleaning out grills. Duties that winter’s smaller staffs could never cover alone. “They are helping us fill gaps,” says Hallac, “but they are really helping us do more and do differently and offer experiences that we did not offer in the past.” And not just inside the Seashore. According to Scott Babinowich, chief of interpretation, education and visitor services, volunteers

allowed Wright Brothers and Fort Raleigh to develop a distance learning program and make over 1,000 educational contacts during 2020’s COVID months. “When I think about what we all went through this year, I feel the importance of public lands and the role that they play has really evolved,” he says. “There’s energy behind the parks right now and being active in them.” All told, Outer Banks Group volunteers — including Boy Scouts, alternative spring breakers, and retirees — number 200-300 and log 25,000-26,000 hours of annual service. Any volunteer who provides 32 hours a week, generally for a 3-monthminimum commitment, can receive free housing — be it an RV pad, campsite or park service housing if available. Volunteers tend to most quickly fill the long-term local campground host, turtle watch, and lighthouse positions. Campground hosts are generally retirees, but also include younger, homeschooling families. “The lighthouse positions are incredibly popular,” Babinowich says. No wonder. They’re among the most rewarding roles, providing plenty of oneon-one with curious guests. Usually, Gould answers questions. For adults, that means filling in details on the Hatteras lighthouse’s 1999 move. And kids? “Kids can throw a curveball,” he says. “One kid asked me how many ghosts lived in the lighthouse.” Some volunteers, like Gould, work a couple days a week near where they live. Others rove the country, pulling months-long stints in one park, then another, in exchange for housing and personal satisfaction. “Out of all the things that we’ve done, I like the turtles the best,” says long-time Tennessee resident Donna Ward. Ward lives in an RV, and usually spends

late June to late September volunteering in Buxton with the turtle watch program — the Outer Banks Group’s largest volunteer subprogram. (The 2020 turtle season saw 39 volunteers put in 2,219 hours). Ward and her husband worked in the evening, marking nests, patrolling the beach, chasing off ghost crabs, and educating passersby about sea turtles. “It hooked us just on that first experience, that very first nest coming up out of the ground,” she recalls. But every season could use some help. Posted openings as of January 2021 included two full-time, 4-month interpretation and visitor center volunteers at Fort Raleigh (one for this summer and one for fall) and two 8-hour-a-week visitor center “visitor services volunteers” sought through May — one at Fort Raleigh and one at the Wright Brothers.

“

Volunteers log 25,00026,000 hours of annual service.

Long-term positions often require background and reference checks. And even the short-term spots can fill up quickly. But for those who sign up, the benefits can be as clear and rewarding as helping a struggling camper set up their first tent — or seeing the Milky Way like never before.

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“A winter sky might be more spectacular in terms of the stars,” says Hallac. “The wildlife on the beaches may be different; you might see migrating birds instead of nesting birds. You get to see different colors and hues of the sky, and sometimes a more energetic ocean.” And — thanks to these VIPs — so can we all. — Corinne Saunders

Want to become a VIP? Go to Volunteer.gov, the national website for volunteer positions, and see what’s available. You can also help the NPS by supporting Outer Banks Forever. Go to www.obxforever.org for a list of current needs.

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adrift Chris Hannant reflects on an Atlantic crossing that nearly ended in tragedy.

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Photos by Chris Hannant and Ryan Diegelmann

In late December 2018, local photographer Chris Hannant brought his sailboat from Bermuda to Beaufort with the aid of fellow Outer Banks lensman, Ryan Diegelmann, and Captain Nevil Santchi. What follows is an edited transcript of Chris’ harrowing account. —Ed.

OUTER BANKS ORIGINAL CHRISTMAS SHOP...SINCE 1967

“The beginning of the dream is a picture.

It’s my mom and dad sailing their boat through the West Indies. I was conceived on that voyage — as my mother rather awkwardly told me one afternoon. Maybe it was growing up with those images. Maybe it’s genetic. But the whole idea of being out on the ocean, surrounded by nothing but water from sunrise to sunrise — of roaming the Caribbean using this pure, raw way of travel that’s been done for millennia — has always grabbed me. So, I had this very flowery vision of what was going to happen once I set off on this adventure: I’m gonna get this boat here, I’m gonna live on it, I’m gonna learn to sail, and I’m gonna travel. But that’s the thing about dreams: you always imagine them in the best way possible. You don’t imagine all the shit that could go wrong. Or how hard your dream is going to be once you get it.

Photo: Hannant

The truth is I never had any real experience on boats. My parents stopped sailing when they came to the Outer Banks in 1992. But when my dad later moved to Bermuda, he bought Cloud, a 1974 Bowman 36. It’s a blue-water sailing boat. It’s designed to cross oceans. They even call it the “Bentley of the Sea” because it’s such a good cruising vessel. But it was a piece of junk when he bought it. A whole section of the keel was ripped out. The deck was in shambles. It was like a step above a bare hull. He’d spent a few years fixing it up but as he got older he started to care less. So I bought it from him and we started making her seaworthy. I spent six years flying back and forth to Bermuda to work on Cloud. Finally, in the late fall of 2018, we got her to a place where we could sail back. Not comfortable — but safe. No running water. No stove. No cushions. No autopilot. We were basically gonna be on a camping trip in the middle of the ocean. But there was no way I could do it myself. I used a website called Find A Crew to secure a captain from Switzerland named Nevil Santschi. He was a couple years younger, but he had a ton of sea time and we hit it off immediately. All we needed was one more person to split up the hours at the helm. My friend Ryan Diegelmann and I were shooting a wedding when I casually mentioned it. To my surprise, he said he’d do it. So I bought the flights and ordered the sails and we flew to Bermuda. That was early December.

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Our first mistake was leaving in December.

I knew it was the worst time to leave because of storms. But my girlfriend, Janie, and I needed a place to live for the summer. If I could get the boat here in early winter, we could be living on it by May. And it only takes five days to sail from Bermuda to Beaufort, so I figured we could bide our time and wait for a window. After two weeks, watching and prepping, we finally saw our opportunity — five days exactly between storms. We could pick up the wind from the first system, let it shoot us out into the Atlantic, then slip into Beaufort just before the second system popped out — the perfect plan. The problem was we just weren’t fast enough. That was one of my first realizations about crossing the ocean by sailboat: how slow it is. We set sail on December 23 and it was almost a full 24 hours before we couldn’t see the Bermuda lighthouse. Our best day was Christmas Eve. We had the most distance between the two systems. There were blue skies with dolphins following the boat as we climbed over these big rollers. That night we had an amazing sunset. But even the good days were still pretty rough sailing. What kept me sane were the oranges. I would wedge myself in my little berth, and just lay there and peel them one by one. So it was hard, but we were making our way through it — until we weren’t. It was December 28 when we noticed the barometric pressure dropping pretty quickly. We only had about 100 miles to go. And, realistically, 30 mile-per-hour winds suck, but you can sail in them. So we just tried to power through. Except the pressure kept dropping. And the winds kept increasing. And the swell kept building. It just got gnarlier and gnarlier. We literally started getting thrown across the boat. I got hurled into a divider and broke the whole thing. Sea rails were getting snapped off. Plus we had a diesel leak, so fuel was building up under the floorboards, which made the whole boat reek. It was just physically miserable — and the mental strain was even worse. At some point, I decided to crawl up to the V-berth and wait for my shift. I basically turned totally inward. Curled up deep inside my skull, no emotions. I went into what I call “robot mode.” But I could still sense the stress on the boat. I was thinking of all the wasted work I’d put into it and imagining all that could go wrong next. But the sound was probably the scariest part. The noise of the winds whipping the rigging was like horror movie material. Even today, that noise is a PTSD trigger. It’s like, “Oh, I hate this...”

I don’t recall hearing the snap.

But. suddenly, Nevil is yelling, “All hands on deck!” I climb up and the headsail is fully out in the 40-to-50-knot winds. Waves are crashing across the deck. The boat has heeled over so hard that the keel is almost out of the water and the boom is almost dragging, which puts us in danger of losing the mast. Nevil decides to go forward into the maelstrom and cut the halyard. This is the moment I think, “So this is terror.” Because, this whole trip, I’ve been having this introspective fascination with my emotions. So far, I’ve been spooked. Anxious. Scared. But this is the first time that I’ve ever felt sheer terror. Because if Nevil goes over, what the hell are we gonna do? milepost

Santschi, Diegelmann and Hannant. The almost calm before the storm. Photos: Diegelmann/Hannant

He makes it forward and cuts the line. Then, legend that he is, he pulls the sail back in, lashes it, and crawls back to the cockpit. He’s understandably exhausted at this point, so he says, “I’m going down below.” Ryan and I stay on deck and hold course and it’s straight out of the movies. Super dark with 20-foot swells. The winds are blowing these rolling waves over the boat. It’s so loud we can’t even talk. I’ve done things that are physically demanding. And I’ve done things that are mentally demanding. But this is the pinnacle of both at the same time. It’s just constant focus: wedge yourself in, hold the course, crank on the helm. Just trying to stay balanced puts so much strain on your body. Even sitting down. Thank God, I’m not standing. First the wind dies. Then it switches. In a matter of seconds, we’ve jibed and the boom swings — crack! — right over my head, just missing us. Still, it rips the whole block-and-tackle system off and throws it into the sea. Ryan and I are screaming for Nevil, who comes up and sees the mainsail flapping wildly. He grabs the boat hook and snags the mainsheet and we all pull it tight and manage to cleat it off. It’s a jury-rig — but it’s kind of working. And thank God for Nevil — his leadership in this moment is incredible. If he’d shown more signs of anxiety and fear, I’m not sure Ryan and I would be holding it together. So now we’re all three in the cockpit. We’ve cleared another hurdle. We’re back making headway. And we’re still taking stock when we see flashes of lightning in the distance, which is never good when you’re in the middle of the ocean with a tall, metal mast. We start counting down seconds — five miles…four miles…three miles. Finally, Nevil takes the helm and sends Ryan and I down below. We’re wedged in, hanging on, when, out of nowhere, the whole boat lights up, followed by the loudest stroke of thunder, and Nevil basically falls down into the cabin, screaming, “I just got hit!” Later, he tells us the bolt hit 100 yards off the boat, and he watched the electricity spiderweb across the surface, strike the boom, and shoot out through the metal helm into his hand. Luckily — somehow — he’s okay. Super shook up and his arm’s sore — but he’s okay. We’re all below, waiting for the storm to pass. Nobody’s holding course. And every second we’re in the Gulf Stream, we’re drifting farther from our destination. Finally, the lightning stops. Ryan takes the helm for a couple hours before Nevil picks up his shift. Not long after that, Nevil yells, “All hands on deck!” Again. Now, the reefing line for the mainsail has chafed through. We officially have no sails. But the engine still works, so it’s like, “I guess we’ll just motor.”

It’s been 12 hours since the pressure first dropped, and we’ve only made it 20 miles. But the worst of it seems to be over. It’s still turbulent, but not violent. I take first watch at sunrise. Even today, I can picture it vividly. There is gray everywhere. Low clouds, the ocean is slate. And there’s this weird, dark feeling in the air. Almost apocalyptic. We motor for an hour and a half — and then the engine shuts down. We try to diagnose the problem, but none of us know anything about diesel motors. Officially disabled and drifting farther from the coast, we finally make the decision: it’s time; call for help.

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A few hours later, a U.S. Coast Guard plane spotted us.

Five more, and a Coast Guard cutter was on the horizon. Luckily, they agreed to tow us in. That was the most emotion I felt the whole trip: boarding that vessel and leaving Cloud. Just seeing her, bouncing in the swell with none-of-us aboard. I wanted to cry. But I really have to hand it to the Coast Guard. I was expecting them to be so patronizing. But they were so understanding. They got us food, coffee — the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life. They gave us hot showers and bunks to sleep in — the hardest I have ever slept. When we woke up the next morning, all I felt was relief. We had made it. Not the way we wanted to, at all, but at least we made it. The actual storm, even now, is an experience I think I’m grateful for. Nobody got hurt. No lasting damage. And it’s made me safer with Cloud. Because I was the dude who was trespassing on carelessness. The heaviest storm of all was the one in my head after we got home. The boat took on a ton of water during the tow. It ran up to the cabinets, ruining the interior. There was food everywhere. It looked like a hurricane had hit her. And my brand new engine was destroyed by saltwater. In fact, from December 28 through early spring, my world was pretty dark. Every day was like, “What do I do? Do I give up completely? Do I revisit this dream later? Is trying to live on this boat the biggest mistake of my life?” Here’s where I have to thank Janie. I told her getting Cloud back to square one was going to be hard, and that now was our chance to just let it go. But she said, “No, we can do this.” It took a ton of work, but by spring, we had Cloud back in Manteo. By summer we were living onboard and learning to sail with the help of friends. The past two years we’ve been making her more comfortable. And every day we get more skilled. But I think the moment that wiped any residual doubt came that August. One day, Janie and I took Cloud out into the sound and hoisted the mainsail — just the two of us. That was the moment I said, “It’s all going to be worth it.” Because that was the moment I had always dreamed of.

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Profiles by M. Leigh Ward Portraits by Chris Bickford

alling

THE DESIGNER Every Bayliss dreamboat starts with a set of Pete Buescher plans.

Pete Buescher didn’t set out to work in the sportfishing boat industry. But he feels damn lucky to have landed in the thick of it. As design manager at Bayliss Boatworks, he is responsible for helping dream up some of the most renowned custom yachts in the world. Not that landing in Wanchese was his original vision. “Fate and time just ended up leading me here,” Buescher says. “But boats have always been intriguing to me, because they are functional pieces of art.” Growing up in Virginia Beach, Buescher developed an appreciation for small, wooden watercraft, like speedboats and runabouts. When he was 15, he built his own 15-foot rowboat/sailboat in the stitch-and-glue method. Knowing he wanted a career in boats in some capacity, and that a career in small wooden boats wasn’t necessarily one to bank on, he headed off to Virginia Tech to major in industrial design, which he describes as a hybrid of product design and architecture. He even stayed on to get a second degree in ocean engineering. But at most naval architecture schools, the focus was on huge, slow boats, like Navy ships, barges and tankers — not elegantly designed wooden or recreational vessels. And certainly not the ones built for speed. “Everything I’ve learned about fast boats I’ve learned not through school but through my bosses,” Buescher says. “I’ve worked three places, and I’ve had three amazing, hall-of-fame-style bosses.” It began during college summers and on winter breaks, when he worked as an intern at a wooden boatyard in Maryland and learned about cruising boats. After finishing his degrees, he got a job with DLBA Naval Architects in Chesapeake, where he spent 15 years. In 2018, John Bayliss lured Buescher to Wanchese to design his sportfishing yachts in-house and full-time — the Outer Banks’ only full-time naval architect, as far as Buescher knows. It’s more than imagining big ideas. Buescher works directly with clients, owners and captains alike, to fit their wants and needs into a boat that runs efficiently, functions well, looks good, and meets the Bayliss standards — without letting them totally lose the plot.

Thus begins the “design spiral,” and the creation of the specifications document that drives the build. Throughout the project, Buescher communicates with the office staff and workforce to make sure that what’s on paper ends up on the boats. Design and its implementation, and frequent changes, continue throughout the life of the build. And with several builds going on at one time — usually around three or four in the active build stage, three or four in the design process, and a few potential clients — Buescher is constantly busy. He says the Bayliss company culture of always improving and striving for perfection makes his job “consuming.” “You can’t stop thinking about this stuff,” he says. “There are so many things to get right. Every decision creates a cascade of effects throughout the boat, and that keeps us thinking all the time.” Buescher does most of his work using computeraided design (CAD), but prefers drawing by hand. Even now, sketching is one of his main ways of sharing ideas, which is why he carries around a little black notebook that expresses his thoughts on even the minutest details. “But I’m not really drawing boats by hand anymore,” he says. “We’ve gotten so good and efficient at developing them on the computer.” When not staring at a screen, Buescher checks on all the builds in the shop each day, carrying his notebook of ideas and mockups with him. From then on, it’s usually solving problems and putting out fires. Designing, he says, is the easy part of his job. Working with various personalities and keeping all the people happy is the part that creates the most challenges. While, professionally, Buescher enjoys working on luxury yachts, personally he’s still hung up on those small wooden boats. At home, he’s currently building a 25’ runabout, a small, elegant little piece of art that’s all pleasure — and no work. Well, maybe a bit of both. “It’s a lucky thing for people to know at a young age what they want to do,” he says. “Of those who know what they want to do, there are very few who are actually lucky enough to be doing it. It has worked out well for me.”

“With custom boats, there are limitless options,” Buescher says. “But we reign them in.” milepost 25

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THE CARPENTER Whether laying fiberglass — or trading banter — Maggie Ingram feels right at home in Wanchese.

Young and beautiful. With long, black braids trailing down the front of her slicker, Maggie Ingram might be the last person you’d expect to find in the trenches of a custom boat shop. Until you see her at work, building bulkheads, laying fiberglass, and swapping barbs with her band of “brothers.”

At a small shop like Harrison’s, everyone does a little bit of everything, and every project comes with some new responsibility. In her fourth year now, Ingram mainly works on the hulls just after they are flipped, building and installing bulkheads, putting in decks, installing structural foam, side sealing, and fiberglassing — but she might also be found painting or prepping, cleaning the shop, fixing rot, eyeballing and taping waterlines — or one of many other tasks. “I love getting really good at what I’m being asked to do,” she says. She also does paint and varnish work for other boat shops. Not once does she worry about working in an all-male industry. “I feel like I’m goofing off and getting mad at my brothers all day,” she says. “I have two brothers at home. Now I have eight.” Off the job? People’s reactions vary to her choice of careers. Guys tend to be more excited and consider it “cool.” Women aren’t sure what to think. Her high school drama teacher flat out told her she was disappointed.

“Don’t make this photo look too pretty,” laughs the lively 23-year-old, pulling screws at blazing speeds. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“A lot of people don’t want to do manual labor, but I’m all about it,” Ingram says. “I don’t want to sit at a desk all day. I might think differently in 20 or 30 years, though.”

For the past three years, Ingram’s been a key part of Harrison Boatworks’ crew. But her path to Wanchese began six years ago. All the way back in high school — and far up in Mystic, Connecticut — where she stumbled into the oddest of after-school jobs: doing varnish and paint work on lobster boats for a man named Tom Townsend.

Adding to her enthusiasm is that she just learned from her phone that she walks at least five miles every shift. But, more importantly, she says, her parents are super proud of her.

“I had to force myself to be good at school,” Ingram says. “I got good grades because I tried really hard, but it didn’t come naturally to me to be book smart. What did come natural was being good with my hands.” After graduation, Townsend recommended to Ingram that, instead of a four-year college, she should head to The Landing School in Arundel, Maine, to study boatbuilding. In 2015, she enrolled — one of two women in a school of around 80 students. But, the learning curve proved to be a larger shock than the male-to-female ratio. “I grew up on the water in a boat-centric town,“ she explains. “But I was ignorant to the nuances of boats. And I didn’t even know how to use tools. I was thrown into the water. I had to learn everything, and everything hit me at once. “I remember thinking, I really don’t know if this is a good decision,” she continues. “But it ended up being the right one.” All that doubt ended her first year, when her team built a 12’ flat-bottomed skiff known as a Yankee tender, as well as an Arundel 19’. “For someone like me, who gets a great deal of satisfaction from seeing something through from start to finish, it was awesome to see it completed,” Ingram says. She spent one more year taking the marine systems curriculum before heading back to work on the lobster boats. Soon after, a former schoolmate convinced her to come to Wanchese to do the paint and varnish work for Harrison Boatworks. By the time she arrived, her friend had moved away temporarily, so at 19 Ingram found herself in a little village where she knew no one — and the boat she planned to live on cold and crawling with roaches.

“I know they miss me, but I think they are really happy for me.” Ingram also applies her skills to her personal life. She built all the furniture in her house in Columbia, from the couch to the kitchen island to the closet shelves. “Everything adds up, and you can apply it somewhere else,” she says. In her free time, she practices wood burning, which she taught herself after a breakup and before she’d met many friends in town. Working on any piece of lumber she could find, she created art out of an open garage in Wanchese. People began stopping in to see what she was doing, then they started commissioning her for projects and gifts — everything from business logos to fish, boats and scenery. All images and experiences inspired by her coastal roots and an old fishing town near Mystic, called Noank. “I think my biggest attraction to Wanchese is how tightly knit everybody is,” she says. “My favorite part is driving through town, and anybody who has seen me even remotely will wave as they’re driving by. That’s a huge deal to a New Englander. Where I’m from, nobody even says hi. Here, everyone welcomes you with open arms.”

“It was scary,” she admits. But it wasn’t long before she found a new house to settle into and discovered warm, adopted family on the job. “I feel like I’m part of something,” she says. “Part of a team.” milepost 27

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THE PAINTER Sergio Carrillo pours his heart into every job — and applies himself to every task.

He came here as an electrician who didn’t speak English. Two decades later, he’s the lead painter on one of the largest and most unusual boat projects to ever be undertaken in Wanchese. That’s the story of Sergio Carrillo, who succeeds by paying close attention to the task at hand — and applying high standards to every job. “What I did is always watch what others were doing,” says the 45-year-old Peruvian native, “and try to do better.” Carrillo first arrived to the Outer Banks in 2000. The former factory electrician followed his aunt and uncle here, lured by a promise of more reliable, and more lucrative, work. He soon had two jobs: by day, block-sanding hulls at Davis Boatworks for $7 an hour, and, by night, washing dishes at Lone Cedar Café. After a couple of months, he found a slightly better paying job at Paul Mann Custom Boats in Manns Harbor, but not speaking English made advancing in any shop nearly impossible. “There are lots of guys I know who’ve been here a long time and don’t speak the language,” he says. “It builds a wall.” Carrillo knew to keep climbing the ladder, he first had to break down that wall. He tried taking traditional English classes, but that proved difficult. Instead, he turned to movies. With the sound in English and the subtitles in Spanish, he slowly taught himself, repeating lines from the movie aloud, then practicing applicable sentences with his uncle and the American guys on the job. “It was hard, but you have to go through that,” he says. Carrillo soon found more success. At home, he settled into family life with his wife. And at work, he found his big break when he joined Bayliss Boatworks, just as the sportfishing yacht leader was finishing up its first hull. Carrillo did what he was asked to do — a little of everything at first — and put his heart and sweat into every task. “One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes people just work for the money,” he says. “They’ll make something take all day because they are working by the hour. This is not the way. I never asked for a raise, but I always got one because I always did a good job.”

Carrillo excelled not just because he’s good at it, but because he enjoys it. “I love the satisfaction of doing a good job,” he says. “What I like is when the owners see the finished project and they say ‘Wow!’ I’ve seen owners so proud. I’ve seen owners cry they were so happy. So that’s my motivation.” Eventually, Carrillo left Bayliss to work for Smith at Global Yacht Coatings, where he spent three years traveling the East Coast, painting hulls and burnishing his reputation for quality with every assignment. So, when Felix Herrin was looking for a lead paint manager for his new H2 Project, Carrillo was an obvious choice. “We were looking for the brightest and the best for a project of this caliber, not just bodies to fill positions,” Herrin says. “So we targeted Sergio to lead our paint crew.” Now Carrillo has a crew of four or five guys working for him. He spends his days in a full face respirator, spray suit and gloves, sanding, varnishing, fairing, spraying, top-coating, or doing whatever needs to be done on a 110-foot powerboat — one of the largest ever built locally (with the exception of military patrol boats built here during World War II). Adding to the complexity of fairing and painting on the H2 Project is the fact that the boat is constructed of aluminum. In all, the project includes approximately 18,000 square feet of surface area. “It’s a cool project, I really love what I do,” Carrillo says. “It’s a lot of work, but it gives me opportunity to help others. I pay well and they come happily to work for me.” He doesn’t just cut bigger checks. Carrillo takes time to teach his crew new skills, the same way Bayliss, Smith and other coworkers mentored him. “I always try to teach,” he says. “Some don’t want to teach because they think someone will take their job, but that’s not me.” It’s that generous spirit that’s allowed Carrillo to build such a productive life here in North Carolina. Twenty years later, he and his wife now have two teenagers. He’s found a spiritual family at the Ark Church, and made a lot of good friends. Now he’s the one helping newcomers find employment and translating for non-English speakers. In each case, his main message is to find joy in your work. “Guys will tell me they’re not happy where they’re at,” he says. “I say, if you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re in the wrong place, you’re doing the wrong thing. One of my cousins told me, ‘I’m going to be happy five years from now when I make $30 per hour.’ I say if you’re not happy now, then you’re not going to be happy then. You have to do what you do with love.”

Carrillo ended up staying at Bayliss for 15 years, eight of those as the righthand man for paint supervisor Brett Smith, learning the basics of paint prep, painting and top-coating, but also the essential yet complex skill of fairing — the process of streamlining a hull by removing highs and lows on the surface before applying primer and paint. milepost 29

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THE MOVER Between the yard and the water lies a crane, a trailer — and Luke Meekins.

Might be after the hull is complete. Or before the engine’s ready to go on. But when the heavy lifting begins, they all call Luke Meekins. With a stockpile of military trucks, trailers, cranes, and forklifts, the 32-year-old Wanchese native can move boats, install towers and engines, or flip cold-molded boats from keel-up to keel-down. All told, Meekins has personally handled hundreds of millions of dollars in maritime vessels. And for one good reason.

“On my 18th birthday, I got my commercial driver’s license so I could drive the trucks,” Luke says. Not long after, Meekins was running the show with his dad’s help. Eight years ago, Meekins legally purchased the operation at the tender age of 24. Even today, wizened boat owners might be taken aback to see a relative whippersnapper pull up to flip or move their most precious possessions. But the local work crews were never concerned. “Everybody trusts him to do it, because he’s been doing it so long,” says Harrison. And he does it well, pouring his heart into every aspect of the job. When Luke took over, SouthSide Services had one truck and two boat trailers. Now it has five trucks, six trailers, two crane trucks, a forklift, and a dump trailer. “When Dad had it, it was somewhere between a hobby and a business,” Meekins beams. “Dad said I made it a real business.” Another way SouthSide Services has grown is by adapting to the ever-changing needs of the market. When Gunboat was building sailing catamarans in Wanchese, Luke and Lish designed and built a new trailer for launching the massive cats. Now that Gunboat is gone, SouthSide Services uses that trailer to help out Croswait Composites. “We find a need and design something to fill it,” Meekins says. “We call ourselves practical engineers. We just evolve with everything.” Meekins’ favorite of their inventions is a hybrid military truck and salvaged crane that Lish sketched and designed in chalk on a metal table.

“He’s comfortable working with enormous, expensive objects,” says Patrick Harrison of Harrison Boatworks. “He knows how to lift them, but more importantly, he knows the limitations of his equipment.”

“We took the crane part off, cut the army truck in half, put them together, and made an army truck crane — and it works,” Meekins says. “That took eight months to build, and we’ve had if for five years. I’m really proud of that truck.”

Luke’s father, the legendary Ulysses “Lish” Meekins, started the business — SouthSide Services and Towing — back in the mid1980s, and it has since launched nearly every boat built in Dare County.

Among other things, they use the truck to flip boats from keel-up to keel-down. And when Meekins isn’t moving tonnage, he’s pushing paper — pulling permits for every job and dealing with insurance, billing, invoicing, scheduling, payments, inspections, and keeping his wide-load escorts certified.

Lish — whose Roanoke Island roots date back almost three centuries — recognized a boat-moving niche that needed filling when, after high school in the 1970s, he started working at the “railway” at Wanchese harbor. The railway was the place where commercial and recreational boats would be winched to and from the water for repairs, but getting the vessels to and from the ramp required calling and waiting on an out-of-town boat mover. Lish learned how to weld, then built a trailer of his own design that could move boats from yards and shops to the boat ramp.

“I work reverse banker hours: five to nine, sunup to sundown,” he says. “Saturday is for personal stuff, and every Sunday I rest and spend time with family.”

Renowned builders Warren O’Neal and Buddy Cannady were some of his first customers. And before long, every boatbuilder, as well as captains from across Dare County, were requiring Lish’s services. In the early days, 50-foot boats were considered big, but over the years the boats got bigger (70 then 80 and 90 feet), so Lish hand-built bigger trailers to do the work. He also hired some fresh help from in-house. “I started riding shotgun in the tow truck with dad when I was eight years old,” says Luke. “I got paid $20 a day to get him stuff and run the hydraulic lever.”

What he likes about the job is that it’s different every day. “There is a challenge onsite every time,” he says. “We get stuck in the mud, there’s a tree in the way, a powerline needs to be moved. But you can’t let it bother you. You just have to adapt and overcome. And we enjoy a challenge.” Lish passed away in 2018, so now it’s just Luke running the business, looking more and more like his dad every day, with his thick, black beard and friendly demeanor. He also keeps adding more aspects to the business — marine and otherwise. He salvages boats that wash ashore, demolishes derelict boats, and transports houses, planes, automobiles — whatever needs moving or removing. And he keeps building and maintaining the fleet of vehicles with the help of Jay Hooper, a retired machinist. At last count, between his business vehicles, personal vehicles, and recreational vehicles, like motorcycles and four-wheelers, Meekins says he has 178 tires on the road. “I’ve always been passionate about mechanic work,” he says. “It started off with small toys, like four-wheelers and golf carts, and progressed. I just get it. I most recently bought a large forklift, so I’m studying that machine and how it works and what I can do with it. At night, my wife reads books, and I read parts manuals.”

It was only supposed to be a Saturday gig. Later, a part-time job. In fact, when Luke graduated from Manteo High School, he made plans to sign up for the Coast Guard, following in the steps of both of his grandfathers. But when Lish was diagnosed with cancer and needed a stem cell transplant, he asked Luke to stay home for a while longer and help him with the business. milepost 31

LOST AT SEA… 1. You should have a life jacket on board for:

2. Which of the following are recommended sources of short-term and long-term forecasted weather information?

a. Every person under 12 b. Every person onboard c. Every time the marine patrol pulls you d. Every beer in the cooler

a. Tea leaves b. Magic eight ball c. Looking out window d. Cashier at 7-11

A B 3. Why is it important to wear a personal flotation device (PFD) at all times when in or around the water?

4. What is the leading cause of boating fatalities?

B a. Heat stroke b. Carbon monoxide poisoning c. Alcohol poisoning d. Arguing over how to back in the trailer

rearview

gohunt

outthere

5. What does this orange diamond, non-lateral marker indicate?

gosurf

graphiccontent

a. Failure to wear a PFD while boating can lead to harsh fines b. A PFD takes some time to fit properly, especially in an emergency c. Wearing a PFD reduces the chances of capsizing your vessel d. To cover your man-boobs

6. By law, a boat captain must wear two of the following? a. HOV lane b. Diamond Shoals c. Geometry problem ahead — turn around! d. You forgot to eat your Lucky Charms

a. Captain’s hat b. Ascot c. Thong/Speedo d. All of the above

Never driven a boat? Don’t know starboard from port — or the galley from the head? Who cares?! This handy quiz will put you on course for the nautical knowledge that matters most. 7. Which boating gear is mandatory for every excursion?

8. What does one prolonged blast emitted by boat “A” indicate?

A a. Its intention to turn right b. Its intention to turn left

9. Which of the following is a disadvantage of a Type III: Flotation Aid PFD?

a. Can’t show off your six pack b. Leaves hairy shoulders exposed c. Clashes with swimwear d. Makes you look like a wuss

c. Its intention to stop d. “Check out my dinghy!”

11. Before hailing the Coast Guard for help, be sure to…

a. Exhaust all safety options b. Administer medical care if necessary c. Use the right frequency d. Ditch that baggie!

10. When a storm hits while a vessel is underway, the operator should do which of the following? a. Google “what to do when storm hits while vessel is underway” b. Make a fist and curse the sky c. Sacrifice youngest female passenger to mighty Poseidon d. Poop pants

Reflecting on boats, photos and life with Biff J

LIGHT CRA

Jennings.

AFT

“The first thing I stress when talking photography is this: stop taking pictures of things, and start taking pictures of the light on things. Once you extract the light — the shape, the form, the texture — and remove it from context, that allows you to reveal a moment’s inherent visual beauty.” His whole life, Biff Jennings has relied on light to reflect beauty in the world around him. It began nearly 60 years ago in Eastern Kentucky, where he’d tromp through the woods with his dad’s Kodak Brownie, snapping shots of trees, critters and other natural wonders. (“Ansel Adams was an early inspiration.”) As an adult, he converted his talent into a career in mail-order catalogs, popping flashes and staging moods to make modern electronics look like sexy supermodels. Then, one day he decided he had it all backwards.

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“The Outer Banks is such a nice quiet place with great fishing and tons of cool stuff to photograph,” says the 65-year-old Colington fixture. “I realized I was working 50 weeks a year to spend two weeks in the place I really wanted to be.” So, in 1987 he moved. For nearly a decade, he did studio and processing work at Jim’s Camera House, a local icon from our film-driven past, before founding Shooters at the Beach, a collab of hired guns who’ll capture everything from intimate weddings to sprawling homes. And while Jennings may have long ago switched to digital, those Kodachrome years never faded from memory. “Taking pictures used to be an act of faith,” he says. “When you only have 12, 24 or 36 shots — you have to make them count. And that instills a frame of mind to get it right in the camera. There was a reason you hit that button in the first place — I try to stay true to that vision.” Today, chasing that vision translates into a number of passions. Might be marking the moment when a Special Olympics athlete crosses the finish line. Or revealing a jazz trumpeter taking a breath between jams. Or immortalizing a lifelong infatuation with pleasure craft of every kind. “Yes,” he laughs. “I, too, am burdened by boats. Especially that gorgeous Carolina flare. Nowhere else has boats with that compound shape. It’s so graceful. It’s like the curves of a woman. And the way to reveal that is to look for the light and the tell-tales that give those curves away.” For the past 15 years he’s wandered docks from Colington to Swan Quarter — eyes open, mind wide — waiting for the perfect image to rise to the surface and touch his imagination. A dew dappled deck. A worn cleat. Or the way the setting sun ignites yachts in glowing color. Not to show off in any upcoming book or exhibit — not for any special reason at all, really — except to keep shooting. “I’m not documenting anything,” he explains. “There’s no end product. It’s more of an ongoing love affair. And boats are just naturally romantic.” — Matt Walker

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“ The first photo I ever shot that was kind of serious was at Sea World in Florida. We went down to visit my grandparents when I was six or so. And they had a show where these dolphins would jump up and grab a ring off a post that was way up high — like, 20 feet in the air — then take it back to the trainer. I saw where the dolphin’s shadow was landing in front of the bleachers and thought, ‘That would be a cool photo.’ So I borrowed my dad’s camera and went over and set up where I saw the shadow was coming and snapped a silhouette at the peak of the action. I’ve had a fondness for silhouettes for the past 60 years because of that day.”

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MIRROR, MIRROR “ I love playing with mirror forms. On days when the water just lays down like a glass sheet, you can take a half-interesting composition and do all sorts of cool things. You can double an object to make something new — or show an entirely new perspective. I watched this boat sink for well over a week. It was in the canal, waiting — an unfinished composition. Every day I drove down Colington Road, it changed a little. Until one morning when the wind laid down, totally flat, and the hull was only half there, and it became this symmetrical, arrowhead-teardrop-eyeball — whatever it is. And only at that exact moment did this image exist.”

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“ My least favorite days to shoot are the super sunny ‘bluebird days.’ They’re uneventful — and unemotional. I like weather of any form. Clouds and fog are cool because they’re so melancholy. They can also reveal things. Subjects that were once lost in their surroundings become isolated. Suddenly, all of those super shiny monstrosities at Oregon Inlet fade into the background — and this humble boat full of decoys becomes the focus. To me, this shot says a lot about the area, because those luxury boats can be seen from Maine to Mexico, but this duck hunting boat — that’s just this place. And when I saw it, I thought: what do those guys who work on those pastel boats across the harbor do when the owner goes home? This is what they do when the owner goes home.”

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DIFFERENT TACK

“ Over in Wanchese marina, there’s an out-of-the-way corner where lots of little boats tie-up. I went over there one day, just prowling for shapes. The compound curves on this sailboat were just so cool; that skinny little crop knocks out the wheelhouse and pilings and creates a sweet little arc. But, while I appreciate sailboats from a visual perspective, I have zero interest in ever owning one. I like the kind of boat where I turn the key, point it in the right direction, and go, ‘Vroom!’ Especially those days when the water is just greasy flat. You get the boat up on a plane where it’s not splashing or thrashing, it feels like you’re flying. I tend to go fishing up in Kitty Hawk Bay. Sunset comes along, the light goes soft, the horizon disappears, I put the hammer down and head for Colington — it’s almost like floating inside a big blue marble.”

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LIVING LAYERS

“ Any interface where land comes to water — wherever those boundaries touch — is always unique. Head toward Swan Quarter, there are harbors with maybe four or five boats, some of which have had three separate lives. They have inches of paint and Bondo and caulk, layers of repairs where someone fixes it up, lives their dream for a while, and then it becomes a vessel for someone else who comes along and lives their dream for a while. This Stumpy Point oyster boat was abandoned. And up on blocks. And if you saw the whole boat, rotting away and disintegrating, it meant something totally different. But I laid on the ground and shot up at it with absolute symmetry. And it created this spade shape, like a set of cards, covered with oysters and barnacles — covered with a layer of new life, really.”

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“Everything in photography — and probably life — is about relationships. Whether it’s the relationship between light and dark, love and hate, one person and another. In the end, it’s between the object being viewed and the viewer. This morning, it was absolutely glassed out, but by the time I answered some phone calls the wind was up. So, now I’m looking for something different. And here come these waving lines and reflections, dancing and rippling across a purple hull. And it’s just gorgeous. And you don’t have to see the flare of the bow or the flags of fish fought and caught to appreciate the vessel; you can just appreciate its inherent beauty. All thanks to that interplay between light and shape. Those relationships — those emotions and feelings — that’s really what I’m trying to get across. But the boat is what makes it all possible.”

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33 Years of Kindness & Community Spirit

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Y E A R S

Local ladies find their mountain legs on the Appalachian Trail Stephanie Hall couldn’t find her friend. Huddled in the dense Shenandoah National Forest, she crouched low to the ground as the torrential rains and winds of Hurricane Delta tore through the mountains. It grew darker, the temperature dropped, and she knew the chances of hypothermia would increase if she didn’t take shelter. After pitching her tent as much out of the wind as she could, she climbed inside and attempted to rest.

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“Of course, everything was calm again in the morning,” Hall laughs. “I started looking for her, and it turned out she’d pitched her own tent less than a mile away.” That’s just one of the countless adventures the 27-year-old KDH resident encountered while completing the Appalachian Trail last fall. She left for her trek on August 5. Starting

out from its northernmost point in Katahdin, Maine, she made her way south with nothing but a backpack. She finished up on Springer Mountain, Georgia, on November 18 — 2,190 miles later. The trail typically takes about five to seven months to complete from start to finish. Hall, however, did it all in 105 days — about three-and-a-half months. While friends and family met her along the way to hike for a few days at a clip, for the most part, she was on her own. That allowed for a rapid pace. She averaged 21plus miles per day. Some days were shorter. (Hurricanes made getting anything over ten miles a challenge.) And others were longer. (One “marathon week,” she walked at least 26 miles every day.)

“I started telling people, ‘I want to be home by Thanksgiving,’” Hall says, then laughs, “I had no idea what I was getting myself into.” But she certainly knew why. She got the idea while talking to an older man who’d hiked portions of the trail when he was younger. “I mentioned that I was thinking of hiking it. He was like, ‘You can’t do it … you’re a woman.’” From there, conquering “the AT” became part physical challenge, part personal mission. Backpacking was new to Hall, and she wanted an experience that pushed her body to the limits. There was also the urge to prove to others that she could do it herself, though she took comfort in the company of others whenever possible — whether visiting friends or fellow travelers. “Definitely some parts of me were scared, but the trail draws such a great community,” Hall says. “If I met any weird hikers, I just kept to myself and kept on going.” Every week and a half, she stayed in a hostel for a fresh shower and laundry. Beyond that, she camped or spent the night in shelters, if they had space. If they were full, Hall pressed on. “You have to get in this mindset of, ‘Why am I out here? What are my goals?’ and just keep repeating it to yourself,” she says. Unlike Hall, most people hiking the entire AT opt for the easier northbound route. (Apparently, there’s an easy way to hike 2,190 miles.) They start in Georgia in March or April and head northward. This gives them time to develop their trail legs by the time they reach the towering peaks in New England. But, rarely can hikers dedicate half a year to completing the trail, so they do it in pieces. Brandy Foard and Cindy Jones fall into this category. The duo has hiked various sections since 2014, focusing on trails in North Carolina and Virginia. They head westward a few weekends each year and go 30-or-so miles at a time. “We’d been doing many adventurous things over the years,” Foard says.

One, prior to first starting the trail, was a trip to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. While there, the friends met a couple of thru-hikers who spoke of the trail’s wild environment and brimming challenges. It instantly intrigued the women. They read up and planned their first hike, packed their bags (too full, as Jones recalls) and ventured out for a three-day hike, going 15 miles a day. Between mileage and baggage ( Jones’ pack weighed 50 lbs.), they instantly identified what to tweak for future trips. “We knew the first time we’d be making a whole lot of mistakes,” Jones says. “Even though it’s tough, I still loved it. I wanted to get better at it.”

“

One “marathon week,” Hall walked at least 26 miles each day.

Now, they piece out hikes in seven-mile days and have invested in lightweight gear. The mix of sudden thrills and natural beauty mesmerizes the women each time.

“It’s just so rewarding,” Jones says. “The views, the mountains rising, the sun coming through the trees. The unexpected aspect makes it beautiful, like you really don’t know what’s around the corner.” Foard agrees: “You just have to go out into the wilderness to experience that sort of thing.” Once you do, it’s impossible to forget. Weeks after returning, Hall can still recount every detail. The freeing feeling of leaping into a mountain lake on a hot day. Hiking the White Mountains, which cover a third of New Hampshire. Scarfing down gallons of ice cream to replace thousands of calories she burned per day. She waxes on and on, each step and memory adding up to the ultimate escape. “Physically, I’m still here,” she laughs. “But mentally I’m still on the trail.” — Hannah Lee Leidy

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO: Wanna tackle the AT? Hall, Foard and Jones offer top advice for researching, packing for, and executing a hike: Getting Prepped • Hall mapped out her hike and researched her plans using books, YouTube videos, podcasts, and Facebook Groups. She also tried to go on regular runs while wearing her pack. • Foard and Jones researched using the book Exploring the Appalachian Trail, which features hiking guides for varying abilities. They trained at the Wright Brothers National Monument, walking up and over the hill as many times as possible. Packing • F or long-term hikers, traveling light is key. Hall’s backpack had an ultralight “base weight” of 11.3 pounds, including sleeping bag, tent and other essentials — but without food and water — which helped her fast pace. Before starting the trail, she recommends serious hikers get a “shakedown”, where an experienced hiker goes through their bags and remove unnecessary gear. • F oard and Jones, along with other short-term hikers, can afford to indulge in a few creature comforts from home — like boxed wine to toast the end of each day. Still, Jones recommends investing in choice pieces of lightweight gear, depending on how frequently, and how seriously, you plan to hike. Best Thing to Bring • Hall credits her Zpack blanket for getting her through those 20-degree nights. • J ones got her backpack specially fitted at REI, and it’s now her prize piece of gear. Helpful Additions • Ibuprofen/low-grade painkiller • Band-Aids • Superglue • Emergency sewing kit •H eat source to cook food (Pros: Hot meals! Hot coffee! Cons: Heavy; requires fuel.) •A small container to cold-soak food (if not using a heat source). An old Talenti pint was Hall’s weapon of choice. Things to Leave Home •H all: “Anything that requires batteries.” •W hile Foard loves bringing along portable French-press coffee cups, she admits they may not be necessary for long-term hikers. “Since we’re only out there a few days at a time, we’re pretty bougie about it,” Foard laughs. Hiker Slang NoBo: A North-Bound Hiker SoBo: A South-Hound Hiker Tr ail Angels: People who help hikers along the way, whether by offering rides, leaving extra food at shelters, or pain relief when needed. Tra il Name: Leave your identity behind and accept the new name the trail gives you. Hall’s was Puffin, and she referred to a friend as Armadillo. It’s unclear if either know each other’s actual names. Tra mily: Your trail family: people you meet along the way, befriend and hike with. “One of the best parts is all the thru-hikers you meet along the way,” Jones says. “Hike your own hike”: A hiker’s way of saying, “Be self-sufficient.” milepost 49

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A VESSEL questionauthority WITH upfront VERVE endnotes

Wanna give soundcheck your tastebuds a vacation? Let the Banh Mi getactive take you away. Crumbs fly. Lips glisten with a joyful sheen. Soft yet crunchy. Bright, tart, and rich all in the same bite. A juxtaposition of flavors and textures, so exciting — so revolutionary — your taste buds aren’t sure if it’s Bastille Day or the Lunar New Year. Call it both, because the Banh Mi was born from both French and Asian cultures, forged together in conflict and destined for greatness.

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“People see it on the menu,” says Aaron Wooten, who owns and operates Nags Head’s Woo Casa Kitchen with his wife, Katie. “And even if they don’t know what a Banh Mi is, they end up loving it because of the complex flavors.”

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Mi without them.”

Rumored to have been born in Saigon, the Banh Mi was the perfect fit for the hectic urban lifestyle long before takeout containers were even a thought. As Vietnamese cuisine traveled the world, so did their take on the quick, business lunch. What started as a grab-and-go sandwich for breakfast or lunch has now expanded into a global, culinary delight.

What is a Banh Mi you ask? Broken down, the name literally means “wheat bread” and is the result of French Colonialism in Vietnam. Since wheat wouldn’t grow in the region, the French would import baguettes, then fill them with their favorite meats, cheese and butter.

Today — when to-go is more go-to than ever — you can find local chefs using any combo of exotic proteins and fresh produce. A Brewing Station special might pair tuna and spicy micro greens. Duck’s Village Table & Tavern’s menu adds apple radish slaw to shrimp. Even Stack’em High mixes sliced ham and chicken. But what fixates Banh Mi fans on Woo Casa is their modern twist on the traditional approach.

Once the French were ejected by the Vietnamese in the 1950s, Banh Mi was revolutionized to include local ingredients. Mayo replaced dairy. Crisp veggies and spicy peppers replaced pricey cold cuts.

“We like to use an Amoroso roll,” Aaron says. “It doesn’t crumble everywhere like a baguette. Next, we add our Woo sauce, which is mayo-based. Then Asian style marinated cucumbers, carrots, red onion,

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Armed with years of experience as a restaurateur/executive chef, as well as the inspiration that travel provides, Mark got to work with his partners to create the perfect Banh Mi for Greentail’s. “For us the bread is key,” he says. “We hooked up with Proof Bakery for a Frenchstyle hoagie.” With bread as the baseline, the next trick is establishing a balance of flavors.

One tasty trip. Photo: Ellis Dee

and the aromatic cilantro — which you have to have. The protein is a 24-to-48hour marinated, grilled and sliced pork tenderloin.” And that’s one of the many beautiful aspects of this sandwich — it can be as simple or as complex as your palate desires. And it can transform to whatever fresh ingredients are available.

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It can be as simple or as complex as your palate desires.

For Greentail’s Seafood Market and Kitchen, that means doing something different with the catch of the day. With a focus on local fish and vegetables, and a strong undercurrent of Asian inspired items, it’s no surprise that the Banh Mi is a staple, especially when you consider Greentail’s founders’ decades in the business — and their time on the road. “I love ethnic style cooking,” says Mark

“We start with a garlic-y, soy-based aioli,” Mark explains. “Then, instead of pâté, we use our house smoked fish dip (which could be anything from Bluefish to King Mackerel, as long as it’s local). Our pickled veggies include onion, cucumbers and carrots. Then we add scallions, cilantro and mint.”

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Newsome, who runs the Nags Head favorite with fellow local restaurant fixtures Brandi Midgett and Bryan Whitehurst. “I actually spent time in Thailand and Laos. Laos actually had something similar to a Banh Mi, with all the components outside of the bread, and their sausages had almost a pâté feel.”

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And for the final protein? This decision is not an easy one. “If they are in season, you can add a fried softshell crab, oysters, fish, or shrimp,” Newsome shares with a smile. “I’m not the biggest fan of using chicken or lamb, but really any protein will work. You could even be over the top and use something like Foie Gras.” Spicy, tart, smokey, and rich. The Banh Mi hits all the marks when it comes to flavor profile. While some may feature Daikon radish and sliced chilis, others may have Maggi seasoning and sardines. That’s part of what makes this sandwich so versatile and approachable.

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Once a humble, flaky sandwich found in food trucks as a means to get the day going, the Banh Mi has evolved into a vessel that chefs worldwide approach with a glimmer of excitement in their eye. “As long as your flavors are in line,” Mark says enthusiastically, “the sky is the limit.” — Fran Marler

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THE ORIGINAL Since the 60’s

fooddrink ARTIST: REDEFINED endnotes From wedding shots to coffee mugs, Genevieve Stewart makes art on her terms.

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The images started popping up on Outer Banks Instagram feeds in early 2020. Matte black coffee mugs etched with moon phases, birds and sea life. Adorable, palmsized tumblers in abstract, southwestern color schemes. Perfectly shaped, beach inspired cereal bowls. All handcrafted and hashtagged by a mysterious newcomer: #SoundsideRoadPottery.

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Somebody had been busy. Busier than you might imagine. “I was looking for a way to find myself as a human, instead of as a business owner, mother and wife,” says Genevieve Stewart, who took her first pottery class the year before. “I wanted something just for myself, external of all my other roles.”

Fresh focus. Stewart’s ceramic images are 100-percent analog. Photo: Ryan Moser

A wedding photographer on the Outer Banks for the past eleven years, Stewart, 36, was searching for something new when she stumbled into pottery. On a whim, she took a ceramics class with Robin York at College of the Albemarle in Manteo, and things took off from there. It is not the first time Stewart has reinvented herself. As a student at Manteo High School, she took AP classes and hit the books hard to get into UNC Chapel Hill with the goal of being a doctor. But, once she got there and discovered art, philosophy and religion classes, she knew pre-med wasn’t for her.

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“I came into the discovery that being creative is the heart of who I am,” she says.

Switching from the planned path was scary, but she followed through, transferring to the film studies program at UNC Wilmington. A few years later, with a Bachelor of Arts in hand, Stewart headed to NYC to test the waters but soon ran out of money. Back on the Outer Banks at the end of 2008, she hustled between waiting tables at Lucky 12 and videography. She put every extra dollar into lenses and camera equipment, and by 2009 had immersed herself in wedding videography and photography, full-time. Her husband, Chad Stewart, joined the business in 2010, and they established themselves as stalwarts in the Outer Banks marriage industry. But in April 2019, after more than a decade

of balancing the family business with mothering two young daughters, Stewart began to feel an itch to have something for herself. Hence, the pottery class. “I just fell in love with it,” she says. “I was doing something creative and something for myself, something artistic in a totally different way.” Jumping across artistic mediums was not a stretch for her. “Being artistic is what makes me most fulfilled as a woman and as a human,” she says. “My need to create is deep. I’m not sure the medium matters.” After taking several more classes and enrolling in a fifth, in December 2019 Stewart brainstormed on whether the pottery hobby could be a side gig in the quiet of winter, when the wedding biz slows down. She scraped together her extra money and bought a kiln and wheel, fixed up the shed behind their house on Soundside Road, and got busy. “The game plan last winter was to push myself to see where I could go with this, knowing I would stop when the photography started again,” she says. “But then COVID hit.” Couples postponed their ceremonies. Families canceled summer portraits. Between remote teaching two Spanishimmersion elementary schoolers, Stewart put all her efforts toward pottery. “For me it was a blessing in disguise,” she says. “I was really wanting to keep doing pottery anyway.” In March 2020, she started an Etsy page, uploaded three mugs and sold them for $20 each to three friends. “That opened my eyes that maybe I could do this,” she says. Much like her personal tattoos, her pottery designs are nature driven. Images she carves into her clay include ocean creatures, moons, birds, and waves. “I’m not drawing arbitrarily,” she says. “Generally, there’s a lot of personal meaning

in the choices I make, so I just cross my fingers and hope that someone likes it, too.” Judging by demand, plenty do. Stewart mostly sells via Instagram, populating her feed with covetable photos of her work, then announcing a sale when she has built up enough stock to sell. At first, her clients were all locals, though now she’s selling all over the country, often to return customers. While it still feels like a creative outlet more than a job, she says it’s not easy. “Pottery is a very humbling art,” she explains. “I spent all last winter feeling like it was a half-step forward and five steps backward. It takes dedication and persistence. I have to remain humble and keep picking myself up. I’m learning while doing.”

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“My need to create is deep. I’m not sure the medium matters.”

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Stewart admits she was unprepared for the impact this new venture would have on her. One surprise has been the relationships she’s formed with fellow female creators and entrepreneurs. “They’ve been really important and helpful this last year,” she says. “It’s nice to be in this place as women and to feel these relationships with other women.” But most valuable to her has been the rediscovering of self. “As a parent, as a woman, you go into survival mode where life is all consuming,” Stewart says. “What do you do when you come out of that? I had a need to value myself and find out what matters to me and what makes me feel happy. Pottery seems like an arbitrary answer, but I can’t be that best version of myself if I’m not fulfilling myself. It took me a long time to realize that, and now that I have it, I’m not letting go.” — Terri Mackleberry

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When live music goes on pause, local bands hit “record.”

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But that doesn’t mean local bands forgot their fans. In fact, the time off was a welcome chance for top acts to give their core audiences something more tangible — and more true.

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“Recording was a nice change of pace,” says Zack Mexico guitarist Matt Wentz, who worked on four different passion projects. “We got to get into the creative zone and make stuff we really want to make.”

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That’s when the best stuff usually happens. Here’s your chance to pay them back for countless nights of quality music. Head over to Bandcamp.com and purchase one or all of the following releases — even better, snag a vinyl version where applicable — all for less than a single night’s bar tab. — Leo Gibson Ed. note: If you’re committed to supporting live music in these tough times, the best way is to purchase the music off Bandcamp. (Spotify pays fractions of pennies per stream.) Even better, buy a shirt or some other merch. And next time you see a tip jar, give ‘til it breaks.

The Cat Movie Soundtrack

Dream Life

Blue Cocaine

Diving for Light

Matt Wentz

Cor De Lux

John Saturley & The Slumber Party

Laura Martier

One jam. That’s all Zack Mexico played between January and December of 2020. But that left whole months for Matt Wentz to finish up two passion projects. The first is a long-awaited album of original songs penned for the “Harrison & Wentz Presents…” Vaudeville series. (Due to go live in early 2021.) The second? Well, we’d better let him explain.

Truth? Every track on Cor De Lux’s debut release was recorded before COVID struck. But that don’t mean the pandemic didn’t take its toll on Dream Life.

If you’re jonesing for your summer fix of Zack Mexico/Hound Dogs/Tiki Disco/ Harrison & Wentz, etc., then Blue Cocaine is your new favorite party favor. Start with the lineup, which features all the top creative collaborators who pushed the limits of on-stage antics and musicianship the past ten summers. Now add extra time to explore new ideas — and expand on old habits.

Think you’re sick of social distancing? Last January, Laura Martier was gearing up for a jam-packed year of major festivals and intimate performances, from Kitty Hawk to California. By April, her calendar was as empty as a COVID-era concert hall.

“It’s called The Cat Movie,” he laughs. “It’s hard to describe, but it’s got cats in it. Real cats.” Six to be exact. All of which Wentz filmed about three years and two houses ago. When the pandemic struck, he finally stitched together a 20-minute YouTube film of the furry critters doing feline things — swatting tails, licking paws, patiently waiting at screen doors. And while subtitles stitch together a semblance of a narrative, it’s the music that tells the real story. “My ultimate goal in life is to score movies or video games or what have you,” he says. “I decided to make a film that would show what I can do.” Needless to say, the soundtrack is not so much musical melodies as orchestral passages, allowing Wentz to unpack his whole bag of big ideas and instrumental tricks. There’s both synthetic French horns and real-life guitar. Complex, choral compositions and randomly-plucked notes. There’s also purrs and chirps and any number of odd feline noises, creating moods that rise and fall with the occasion. The very best harken back to 70s car chases, slasher flicks, or even porn scenes — anything that might end with a crash or scream. “I really like the concept of making music for tension,” says Wentz. The perfect soundtrack for your next 5pm dash through the Food Lion.

“We were supposed to come out last March,” says guitarist Tim Lusk. “Then the record company emailed me a video of them shutting the machines down while they were pressing the album.” Instead, it was fall before the indie fourpiece unveiled their debut in shiny, white vinyl. It’s worth the wait. Each amorphous track flows with the spontaneous, urgent energy of the live shows that carried Cor De Lux from local coffee houses to Raleigh nightclubs in under a year — which makes sense when you consider its genesis. “We didn’t plan to release an album,” Lusk explains. “We started recording so we could hear stuff back and work on arrangements. But then we liked how they sounded — even the scratch tracks. It’s a lot of us trying to find ourselves, I guess.” It’s that feel of self-discovery that’s so contagious. Sparkly guitar melodies ripple and reform over rumbling basslines and drumbeats, haunting vocals and lyrics yearn for answers, all of it flowing together — or refracting like waves off a jetty — building and reforming, before smashing into dissonant bridges and revelatory crescendos. It’s like a heartfelt fossil record of a band in flux; one that can’t stop evolving. “I guess you’d call us ‘shoegaze’ or ‘dreampop,’” says Lusk. “But we’ve changed so much in the past year, it’s crazy. We wanted people to have a piece of our beginning because some of these songs may never be played again.” The good news? “Our newer stuff is even freer.”

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There’s even a disco ditty that’ll boogie woogie on your brain.

“In Zack Mexico, we do this thing called ‘Yesology,’ where we get together and play and don’t say ‘no’ to any ideas,” says singer/songwriter John Saturley. “We’ve had a lot of cool stuff come out of taking all the pressure away. So, this time, I wanted to do a really professional recording session with that method. Some of the songs were written and recorded in the same day.”

Rather than feel like a loose pile of rambling ideas, Blue Cocaine is a powerfully cohesive collection of tightly polished pieces that run a full range of indie sounds and moods, from trippy surfadelic to 80s-era New Wave. At times syrupy and loose, and at others aggressively manic, some tracks allude to the best prog-rock acts ever — Pink Floyd, Pixies, Devo, Velvet Underground — while still feeling totally original. There’s even a disco beat ditty that’ll boogie woogie on your brain. (You guessed it — the title track.) Just don’t get the wrong idea. “It’s not like some drug-fueled, evil album,” says Saturley. “We thought Blue Cocaine was a fun juxtaposition to the band name. It felt very memorable, very…sticky.” Sticky? The whole damn package is downright addictive.

“COVID was a real wake-up call,” says the veteran singer/songwriter. “It was like, ‘What am I doing? What do I need?’ This record was the answer. It was my medicine.” It’s actually medicine for all. A healing salve of jazzy tones and positive messaging that blends all the life skills we’ve come to expect from the legendary diva: the burning vocals of a sizzling chanteuse; the earthy, song-smithing of her acoustic duo, Birddog; the cool, mystical missives of Meditation Sound Journey. All of it pouring out in melodic moments of pure inspiration. “It’s like an intuitive download,” says Martier. “I wrote a song every day starting on June 1. I’d wake up in the morning, grab my guitar, and see what came down. Then I asked Matt Wentz to chart the songs and produce the album.” In-between, she asked family and friends to help flesh out the tracks: husband Dan and son Josh play twin percussion; Ed Tupper on upright bass; her nephew’s band supplied sax and piano; her niece sang back-up. The result is seven tracks that sear, flicker and occasionally roar. Horns and keys float like embers around lyrics of self-affirmation and female empowerment — “we are the salt of the earth, we are the water of life” — over warm harmonies that border on hymns, all of it forged together into a fiery, first solo effort. Hard to believe, right? “Oh, I’ve made records before,” laughs Martier. “But not like this. These songs are mine.” And now they can be yours.

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PREPARE FOR LIFT-OFF

Art by Travis Fowler

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I guess you could say I hit the panic button. When word came down they’d filled all the spots — with no room left for us guys doing the work — I snuck aboard, found the bridge, and pressed “LAUNCH.” I can still see the looks on my scaffold crew’s faces as the thrusters rumbled, then roared. A sad mix of shock and betrayal as they quite literally melted in the distance. From there, it was nothing but pressure. Then awe. Looking back on our humbled planet. Once so robust and mighty, now a withering, disease-stricken crust of its former self. Then amazement, as I took in the space around me: outside, nothing but black emptiness; inside, floor upon floor of slick metal and moving parts, stacked together into taut levels of brightly lit technology. At first, I frolicked in my sneaky, newfound freedom. Strolling from bow to stern, top to bottom, I explored the mighty craft designed to house hundreds of thousands of would-be interstellar settlers. The multiple gyms needed to ensure fitness in zero gravity. The massive galleys meant to pack on pounds. I opened every door on every fridge. Sniffed and inspected each meal pack. Took swigs and bites. Sips and nibbles. Cast them aside in a pile of plastic, just to watch the robo-scooper come along and swallow the mess with puppy-like energy. Some nights, I’d wake and switch bunks just for fun. Walk naked from deck to deck. Roll in the endless unmade beds. Occasionally, some noise would wake me. I’d grab the blaster from beneath my pillow and scream, “Who’s there!?” But, of course, there was no one. When I found the transporter room, I beamed from sick bay to engineering and back again, examining every inch in a matter of minutes. And once I came upon the holodeck, I very nearly never came out. So many pleasures. So much time. But that soon got weary. There are only so many perfect bodies and empty coastlines you can plunder before the passion wears out. So, I took to learning.

“

I’d grab the blaster from beneath my pillow and scream, “Who’s there!?”

I devoured every great work in the library. Then I cracked open the training manuals. Fixing stuff that wasn’t broken. Understanding the underlying mechanics of each genius advance, from the polished, pulsar engines that propel the hulking vessel to the tiny circuits that keep the LEDs blinking. The only sign of life I’ve seen in more than a decade. Lately, I’ve started flying lessons. So, when the time comes to land — if the time comes to land — I’ll be able to put this baby down with the same delicate grace of a little girl

saving a ladybug. Sometimes, leaving the simulator late at night, I hear those same noises. Only now, I call out, “Is anybody there?...” No such luck. The only spot I’ve yet to investigate are the cryochambers. Between them, the metabolism inhibitors, and the supplies on board, the computer says I can easily last another 1000 years. Just not sure I want to. — C. White milepost 57

endnotes “Spring fever meets global flu.” That’s the unfortunate headline as we move into the warmer months. Will scheduled events “phase out” as virus cases spike? Or will vaccine rollouts ramp up more things to do? Only time will tell. But definitely check the latest details on all listed events before making plans. • The good news? Vidant Health is keeping Julie Tortelli on as Dare County’s Community Health Worker to facilitate access to services and help address peoples’ concerns — including COVID vaccination education. If you’re experiencing hardship or just have questions, call her at 252-256-3480. And keep tabs on the latest numbers — and see when it’s your turn for a shot — by finding the Dare County Health and Human Services page at www.darenc.com, home to updates on everything from caseloads to crowd limits, to fresh injections of vaccination info. • COVID’S not the only community health concern. For anyone dealing with a cancer diagnosis — yours or a loved one’s — the Outer Banks Hospital is continuing its monthly support group series in pandemic-safe form. Coping with Cancer meets on the second Wed. of each month, 11am-12pm. The Breast Cancer Support Group meets the third Wed., 11am-12pm. And Caring for the Caregiver meets on the fourth Wed., 11am12pm. For more info or to reserve your spot, call 252-449-2314. • Save a life on Mar. 9 by signing up for the Elizabethan Gardens’ Red Cross Community Blood Drive. Visit www.redcross.org to schedule an appointment — or just roll up your sleeves and walk in from 11am-3pm. All donors get a 10% shop discount in return. More info at www.elizabethangardens.org. • The Baum Center may be closed, but seniors can still stay healthy via Virtual Fitness Classes. Just call 252-475-5644 for info and to learn how to register. And stay tuned for news on whether the Senior Games will run as usual, leap into a virtual format, or take a necessary breather. • Calling all would-be actors of all ages! The Lost Colony is hosting local auditions on Mar. 13. If you’ve ever wanted to play soldier, noblewoman — or just run around half-naked — here’s your chance to relive those fond childhood memories in front of a live audience. Find deets at www.thelostcolony. org. • Get ready to cry tears of joy. Wanchese’s Secotan Market will perform Mar. 13 & Apr. 10, from 8-10am, with a pop-up production of organic meats, produce and preserves — plus handcrafted pottery, jewelry and fabric. Come back May 1 when hours expand to noon — and the show continues every Sat. through summer. Find full calendar — plus the latest on a TBD mini-market at Waveriders Coffee Deli & Pub at www.secotanmarket.com. • Will it be a socially distanced streak of green vests, top hats — and facemasks? Or a DIY digital race determined by GPS technology? Nobody knew at press time, but the Running of the Leprechauns will certainly return Mar. 13, helping to raise funds for the Dare Education Foundation and the Outer Banks Relief Foundation. Sign up and get the latest on this and all other Outer Banks Sporting Events at www.obxse.com. • For a shorter run — and a longer buzz — head to the Outer Banks Brewing Station, Mar. 13, when the St. Patrick’s Day Beer-Mile brings out the little chugger in all of us. 2pm. (More at www.theobxrunningcompany.com.) Or strengthen your knowledge of brewing without taking a step by enjoying a Virtual Tour — that features a real tasting — every Wed. at 11am. $10. Sign up at www.obbrewing.com. • Sadly, there will be significantly less drinking and marching this spring, as the Kelly’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is taking one more year off to let the pandemic wear itself out. You save your liver, we’ll save you a space on the Beach Road for 2022. • Likewise, spring’s Outer Banks Wedding Weekend & Expo got a case of COVID-induced cold feet and has elected to kick the can down the road to 2022. Keep trying on dresses, then come back next year to nail down venues, photogs, caterers, and more. More at www.obxwa.org. • And prepare to feel even more blue as Couture By the Shore also canceled their spring fashion event — but will come back full-color in 2022. In the meantime, kick some extra green at the Outer Banks Community Foundation by visiting www.obcf.org. • Still sad the Hatteras Village Oyster Roast couldn’t happen this winter? Make sure next year’s festivities come back strong — and help the North Carolina Coastal Federation refill local waters with healthy bivalves — by supporting their Adopt an Oyster program at www.nccoast.org. And if you’ve got a local eatery with a love for shellfish, learn about the North Carolina Oyster Trail by visiting www.ncoystertrail.org. •

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M ak e M e m ories !

Discover the Other Side of the Outer Banks! Sail the Albemarle Sound

aboard the 41 foot Movin’On for afternoon and sunset cruises. Couples, families, groups.

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Reservations by calling: 1-877-359-8447 Visit our website: sailingouterbanks.com • obxsail.com

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presents The Network for Endangered Sea Turtles’ spring fundraiser’s been scuttled for now, but they would like to thank everyone who rallied for winter’s online auctions and raised more than $2500 to help our flippered friends. Stay tuned to future events, and join the N.E.S.T. cause, by visiting www.nestonline.org or following on Facebook. • The creative spirit marches on, all month long, at Dare County Arts Council. Don a mask and make your way to Manteo, Mar. 5-27, as Anne Snape Parsons’ “Women Warriors: Past, Present, Future” exhibit fills the courtroom gallery with interpretative portraits of inspiring females. Meanwhile, Jim Bumpas and Julien McCarthy carve out space for some Wood Therapy in the downstairs vault. And sign up for Mar. 30’s free Expressions of Hope & Healing Workshop, where Pocosin’s James Webb will offer artistic tips via Zoom from 3-4pm. Class is free, but pre-registration is required online. Head to www.darearts.org for details. • On Mar. 20, see the inside of a working brick sculpture — then take in Corolla’s breathtaking landscape — at Currituck Beach Lighthouse’s Opening Day. Can’t make it? Come back any day after, from 9am-5pm. (At least until Dec. 1). Details at www.obcinc.org. • Cig butts. Plastic bits. Fat chunks of concrete. The closer you look, the uglier our coastline gets. Luckily, OBX5Minute Beach Clean-ups are clearing the decks for several DIY litter removals this spring. No set dates at press time, but be ready to tidy up your favorite access as early as Mar. 20. Follow along on Facebook and Instagram. • Cleaning your plate in Corolla won’t be a problem when Mike Dianna’s Grill Room reopens late Mar. Be ready for the return of the popular Burger Night — plus a new brunch menu combining favorite brekkie items with tasty mid-day meals — all of it available via outdoor seating, takeout and free delivery. Get updates at www.grillroomobx.com and their social media feeds. • Watch for Awful Arthur’s to also re-open in Mar. — which means Prime Rib Night returns every Fri. Find updates and a full menu at www.awfularthursOBX.com. • And come Mon. head to Rundown Café’s Fried Chicken Night, where the golden, finger-licking goodness starts at 5pm, and continues every week all the way to May. 24. More delicious deets at www. rundowncafe.com. • Hit the greens to support higher education when the College of the Albemarle “T-Off” comes to Kilmarlic, Mar. 26. Beer and wine tastings at each hole keep the whole day swinging — plus Firehouse Sub lunches, awards, signature tasting glasses, and swag bags. Cost is $150 per person/$500 per team of four. Or skip the game and sit

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MOLASSES CREEK, COYOTE COMING THIS FALL

Less stares, more stairs! Go climb Corolla’s Currituck Beach Lighthouse, starting Mar. 20. Photo: Sumdum Bastid

FOUR SEASONS CHAMBER MUSIC

SATURDAY, MAY 15 • 7:00 PM For additional information about this tickets, locarno, and streaming platform, visit

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Our endowment managed by the The Best Bankers. Hometown Banking. The Best Bankers. Hometown Banking.

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endnotes down for a 1pm High Tea featuring paired sips and eats from COA Culinary Arts program. org for deets. • Wanna score some eye-popping coastal pret-a-porter — while helping save $75 a pop. Visit www.albemarle.edu/t-off to register. • Only a fool would miss Glenn Eure’s future pets’ lives? Head to Duck’s Waterfront Shops, Apr. 2-3, as the 33rd Annual Barr-ee Ghost Fleet Gallery’s 26th Annual Artist Self-Portrait Exhibition. Station Tent Sale donates a portion of proceeds to the Outer Banks On display, Apr. 1-May 6, this always fun-loving, and often selfSPCA. It’s a perfect time to pick up new fashions — and perhaps even deprecating, tradition invites artists of all skill levels and media to show take home something in fur. More at www.obxspca.org. • Hang with a off their creative side by submitting a selfie in a full range of media. super-sized flying octopus — or wrap your tentacles around colorful Watercolors, wood, — even the written word — all come together in a prizes — when Kitty Hawk Kites’ Flying into Spring and collective show of community solidarity and good times. Learn more at Easter EGGstravaganza returns to Jockeys Ridge, Apr. 2-3. See 30- to www.glenneureart.com. • Now that your pen’s nice and sharp, take a stab 100-foot kites decorate our highest dune to kick-start National Kite at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum Legend and Folklore Month, then cross the bypass for a picture with the Easter Bunny and Writing Contest. Entries should be original works of fiction that speak join the Easter Egg Hunt. Find all the details at www.kittyhawk.com. • to the feel of Outer Banks culture — no more than 800 words — and will Then run like a rabbit over to the Elizabethan Gardens’ Easter be judged on creativity, writing proficiency, and how the work relates to Eggstravaganza on Apr. 3. From 10am-3pm, the grounds are full of local life. Open to people ages 18+ who have yet to publish a work of spring blooms and hidden prizes for families to find. This year’s weatherfiction. Prize is $100 and a membership. Find complete rules, entry form, dependent event requires a timed-entry reservation (purchased online and more at www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com, then be sure submit by only) and compliance with current federal and state mask mandates. Apr. 1. • Does just the thought of heading “down south” make you wanna Limited to 50 guests at each entry time. Standard admission prices apply. pop a tent? The National Park Service’s Cape Point and Frisco And flutter by anytime, Apr. 1-30, to celebrate the magic of flying Campgrounds will open for the 2021 season on Fri., Apr. 2. (Oregon fertilizers at the annual Butterfly Festival, where games and activities Inlet and Ocracoke locations are open all year.) Make reservations and will fill the John White Butterfly Center. Pre-reserved tickets required. payments at www.recreation.gov. • Then it’s back to Manteo for more Learn more at www.elizabethangardens.org. • Meanwhile, Jockey’s Ye olde show-and-tell comes to Island dazzling indoor sights, as Dion Burroughs fills the Dare County Arts Ridge plans to celebrate the Year of the Beetle with a series of socially Farm’s Homeschool History Day, Apr. 14. Council’s Vault Gallery with powerful new works, Apr. 2-30. Meanwhile, distanced outdoor programs — such as nature hikes, children’s activities, Photo: Ladd Bayliss Rick Daley’s award-winning paintings post-up upstairs, Apr. 2-24. And on and games. All will follow health and safety guidelines, gathering limits, Apr. 27, the latest Expressions of Hope & Healing Workshop brings you a free Zoom etc. Webcrawl over to www.ncparks.gov or find their Facebook page for the details. • On class with Alexis Spina, 3-4pm. (Pre-registration is required online.) Head to www.darearts. Apr. 6, the 1800s come back to life as Island Farm reopens, recreating history via live

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demonstrations on traditional agriculture, blacksmithing, food preparation, hearth cooking, weaving and spinning wool, and feeding livestock. Come back Apr. 14 for a Homeschool History Day filled with hands-on activities. And on Apr. 24, Sheep Shearing Day shows kids how to process wool from clippers to cloth. Pricing and updates at www.obcinc.org. • Got a pressing primrose concern? Or a cucumber quandary that simply can’t wait? Ask A Master Gardener, every Wed. in Apr. at the Outer Banks Arboretum (aka the Baum Center). From 9-11am, volunteers will be available to answer questions or assist in identifying weeds, plants and other problems. Please wear a mask and practice safe social distancing. For more info call 252-4734290. • Is sampling top-notch local cuisine your definition of nectar? Be ready for the return of 2021’s OBX Taste of the Beach, Apr. 1618. Rather than cancel this popular event, the Outer Banks Restaurant Association is reinventing the activities to accommodate for COVID guidelines — including both brand new ideas and traditional favorites — allowing diners to safely bounce from one delectable dish to the next. Check www.obxtasteofthebeach.com for deets and tix. • On Apr. 17, take a break between bites to walk off some calories — and save a few bucks — with a free stroll around the Wright Brothers National Memorial, as the NPS waives all entry fees to celebrate National Park Week. • Or lose even more pounds — while helping fatten bank accounts at Dare Education Foundation and the Outer Banks Relief Foundation — by participating in the Outer Banks Sporting Events’ Flying Pirate Half Marathon Weekend, Apr. 17-18. Races go from Fun Run to 5k to 13.1 miles — they also might switch to a virtual format if COVID starts running amok. Get the latest news at www.obxse.com. • Duck decoy aficionados and fans of fine woodwork are fixin’ to descend on Apr. 17’s 3rd Annual Ocracoke Island Waterfowl Festival. Local carver

Nathan Spencer headlines this year’s collections — along with food, painting sessions and a head carving contest. But all that could change if we see a fresh flock of COVID cases. Keep a sharp eye on www.ocracokealive.org for complete details. • Hop on a chopper and burn rubber over to Vertigo Tattoo, Apr. 21-24, as the Outer Banks Bike Rally puts on “four days of mayhem” to benefit the Dare County Motorcycle Toy Run. Regular hijinks include a Harley-filled vintage bike show, a tatt-filled $1000 bikini contest, a fun-filled poker run, and a thrill-filled “Wall of Death.” Follow ’em on Facebook for the leather-clad latest. • Real rebels read! On Apr. 24, celebrate Independent Bookstore Day at Manteo’s Downtown Books, where exclusive merch and fresh giveaways make free-thinking manifestos even more fun. Find updates on the Manteo Reads Facebook page. • Help to map and protect our local flora and fauna — while joining in Planet Earth’s largest citizen science event — when Jockey’s Ridge State Park, the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education, Coastal Studies Institute, and Nags Head Woods Preserve co-host the 2021 City Nature Challenge. All you need is a smartphone and the free iNaturalist app. Then, spend Apr. 30-May 3 wandering your world, taking photos of wild plants and animals and uploading them to the web so scientists can get a clearer picture of local ecosystems. Learn more at www.citynaturechallenge.org or find City Nature Challenge OBX on Facebook. • Go online for wildlife adventure via NC Aquarium Roanoke Island’s Virtual Programs. Meet animal ambassadors such as snakes, turtles, lizards, and invertebrates. Or get a fuller look at the whole space on a Virtual Quarantine Tour, Virtual Shark Exhibit Tour or a Virtual Behind-the-Scenes Tour. Get pricing and details at www.ncaquariums. com. • Tube hounds. Wave hogs. Certainly a few snakes. Be ready to meet every species of surfer from Delaware to South Carolina when the Eastern Surfing Association’s MidAtlantic Regional Championships swarms Jennette’s Pier from Apr. 30-May 2. (Monitor

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endnotes houseplant — when May 15’s Dare Master Gardener Volunteer Plant Sale takes over www.surfesa.org for heat times and a possible webcast.) Wish you could become a competitive animal? Sign up with the ESA Outer Banks District at https://obnc.surfsignup. KDH’s Baum Senior Center parking lot. From 9am-2pm, buy professionally grown pieces of com. (First contest is June 5 in Kitty Hawk, so you got plenty of time to practice.) • Got a non- greenery, and hit up the “Ask a Master Gardener” table with your horticultural concerns. profit project idea to help your neighbors — but need a little extra dough? Apply for an Please wear a mask and practice social distancing. For more info, call 252-473-4290. • Take a Outer Banks Community Foundation Community Enrichment Grant. They’ll consider moment on May 21 to celebrate Jennette Pier’s “re-birthday.” Ten years since the state any charitable act, including animal welfare, arts and culture, children/youth, disaster relief/ officially re-opened our one-and-only concrete pier, it remains a favorite for outdoor mitigation, education, the environment, health, historic preservation, and other human recreation and education — and a shining beacon of eco-friendliness. Catch a wave, a fish — services. But you better act fast: the deadline to apply is midnight, Apr. 30. Get full criteria at or just some rays — then keep tabs on www.jennettespier.net for future ways to party. • www.obcf.org. • Then buckle your seatbelts, gearheads. On Apr. 30-May 1, the OBX Rod & Sadly, the annual British Cemetery Ceremonies in Buxton and Ocracoke were both Custom Festival roars back into town for two full days of automotive excellence, from oldpushed to May 2022 due to COVID, though residents and visitors are still encouraged to school nostalgia to futuristic flash. At press time, details were still as fuzzy as a set of mirror make a donation to Ocracoke Preservation Society to support future events. (Write dice, but you can bet they’ll be “British Cemetery” in the memo pimping out parking lots from line and mail to: OPS, Box 1240, area businesses to historic Ocracoke, NC 27960.) And the landmarks. (Provided the fate of Memorial Day pandemic don’t pump the Weekend’s Ocracoke VFD brakes.) Find the latest news at Firemen’s Ball was still TBD at www.obxrodandcustomfestival. press time. But with any luck, com. • Fossil fuels are a nonthe annual fundraiser will be a starter when Coastal Studies 5-alarm funfest of BBQ, live Institute hosts the 3rd Annual music, and auctions to fuel North Carolina Renewable firefighting efforts for years to Energy Competition. On May come. See www.visitocracokenc. 1, students from elementary com for the 411 — including all school to undergrad will updates due to COVID compete to create the most concerns. • Wanna burn efficient device in either solar, calories? Or just prep for a wind or ocean energy — plus, good sweat? Run up to Corolla, the KidWind Challenge lets May 26, as the first Lighthouse regional competitors showcase 5k kicks off the summer race and test their handcrafted season. Get full details at www. turbines. (If teams cannot meet theobxrunningcompany.com. • in-person, they will most likely On May 27, enjoy an early taste offer a hybrid event.) Visit www. of summer when the year’s first coastalstudiesinstitute.org for Dowdy Park Farmers Market more info and ways to runs from 9am-1pm, with plans participate. • “Finders keepers” to continue every Thurs. At is the driving force behind May press time, it was too early for 1’s Ocracoke Island-Wide Dawn of a new decade. This May marks ten years since the rebirth of Jennette’s Pier. Photo: Dick Meseroll details, but expect a favorite Yard Sale, as various residents assortment of organic foods and handmade crafts. Follow their Facebook and Instagram and businesses clean out their attics and closets, then haul the contents to the curb for feeds for the latest updates. • After a yearlong intermission, the 84th Season of The Lost strangers to scour. Hop the ferry and find detailed maps of each yard sale location at Colony is ready to take the stage, May 28, and show off a brand new director and Ocracoke Variety Store and Ocracoke Visitor Center in Community Square — choreographer, Jeff Whiting. What else is different? Go to www.thelostcolony.org and book assuming COVID don’t shut the whole idea down. Watch www.visitocracokenc.com for your tix to find out. • Can’t find Bluegrass Island anywhere on the spring music calendar? updates. • For a finer display of abstract items, head to Manteo’s Dare County Arts Don’t worry, the Outer Banks’ favorite twangfest didn’t get wiped off the map — it just Council, where Jill Block’s modern mental canvasses color the downstairs vault, May 7-29. floated further on into fall. Block off Oct. 21-23 for now, then keep tabs on www. And head upstairs, May 2-29, for the 24th Annual Mollie Fearing Memorial Art Show, bluegrassisland.com for lineups, tickets and latest changes. • With any luck, Outer Banks starring works of every medium by the best creative finds on the beach. More at www. Sporting Events’ Band In the Sand will kick up its heels, live and in-person, May 29, mixing darearts.org. • The fabric of Jockey’s Ridge will always be flexible wings! So, on May 13-16, live music and family fun runs for a one-of-a-kind event surrounded by glowing tikis, killer Kitty Hawk Kites will host the sport’s oldest continually held competition — the 49th tunes, cold beer, and a cook out. (But it could always go virtual, too.) See www.obxse.com for Annual Hang Gliding Spectacular and Air Show — where pro pilots compete in a free latest updates, plus tickets — including meal/band option for non-racers. • Unfortunately, public display of affection for flying. More at www.kittyhawk.com. • “Cellllooo!” Meet and greet your fellow classical music fans, May 15, when the Bryan Cultural Series brings ECU’s state restrictions on mass gatherings forced Whalehead to cancel this year’s Memorial Day Four Seasons Chamber Music Quartet to a TBD venue — assuming folks can safely gather. Beach Blast — but! — you can treat your mind and body to a well-deserved, weekly holiday when Yoga in the Park with Rosie Sharkey stretches out on the south lawn, every If not, they’ll stream it live on the interweb. For more information, head over to www. Thurs. at 7:30am, starting June 3. bryanculturalseries.org. • Play “stump a green thumb” — and get your hands on a new

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