Silver Lake Harbor at night. PHOTO BY ROBBIE BREITWEISER
Second of Two Parts
Robbie Breitweiser
The first week of 2024 brought mild and pleasant weather to the North Carolina coast, but it didn’t last long. On Jan. 9, severe thunderstorms hammered the middle third of our shoreline from Onslow up to Dare County or so, and travel conditions were intermittently dicey in the subsequent weeks and months. Sections of Highway 12 on the Outer Banks are still experiencing flooding and overwash, and ferry service frequently canceled. Forecasters are predicting we’ll have a rough hurricane season this year.
Everything worked out well for the New Year’s trip to Lake Mattamuskeet that I wrote about in the March issue of Community Sports News, but later attempts at beach camping have been challenging. Heavy rain, high winds, flooding, thick fog, and even tornadoes were in the mix. I was able to make overnight trips to Shackleford Banks in February and March, as well as to Little Tybee Island in Georgia, but my real objective was Portsmouth Island, at the northern end of the Core Banks, and so far my best efforts to get there have been thwarted.
Unless you own a boat, the only real way to get to Portsmouth is by going to Ocracoke Island and paying someone to ferry you south across the inlet, and even those folks who might be willing to make the trip in the off-season won’t do it if high winds and rough seas promise to make an ordeal of the five-mile run.
The main passenger service to Portsmouth doesn’t typically get underway until tourist season, but I’ve learned not to expect the locals to cater to visitors during the rest of the year. Aside from Christmas, the place can get pretty slow and quiet during the winter, so why bother? The scant money probably doesn’t justify the effort.
Having no financial stake in the matter, I love Ocracoke when it’s slow and quiet. And after getting home from Lake Mattamuskeet in early January, I kept thinking about the migratory birds there and resolved to return to Hyde County before the end of the month to see them again before they headed back north. This time, however, I would keep heading east, catch the Swan Quarter ferry out to Ocracoke and spend a couple of days there. I would bring my camping gear along and hang around Silver Lake Harbor to see if I could hustle up a ride to Portsmouth—preferably with someone I could trust to pick me up and bring me back the next day.
Of course, it didn’t work out that way. On the eve of my trip in late January, the weather looked a bit sketchy, but I purchased my ticket for the vehicle ferry anyway and headed out before dawn. When I got to the lake, I cursed myself for not having left earlier, realizing I wouldn’t have much time to enjoy the scenery before my 10am ferry departure. I needn’t have worried though, because when I rolled up to the ferry ticket booth and announced myself, the people inside looked at me like I had a screw loose.
As I quickly learned, a bank of dense fog had rolled into the Pamlico Sound overnight, and ferry service from Swan Quarter was canceled indefinitely. In fact, they said my ticket was actually for the Cedar Island-Ocracoke ferry, a meandering three-hour drive from Swan Quarter! I’m still puzzling over that—as best I can tell, unless I made a monumentally stupid error (which is possible), the ferry website must have defaulted me to Cedar Island the night before and I didn’t notice, kind of like when you try to order takeout from a closed restaurant and it bumps your pickup to the next day. At any rate, I wasn’t interested in making a 160-mile loop to get to a place 40 miles across the Pamlico Sound, so I returned to Lake Mattamuskeet to lick my wounds and ponder my next move.
After spending some time checking out the tundra swans, I decided to drive the long way around to Hatteras and hope that the ferry there would be running. It certainly made better sense than Cedar Island, which would take nearly six hours including the ferry, and that might also be out of service. This way, if luck was with me, I would drive about 2.5 hours and then be on the Hatteras ferry for another hour, getting me to Ocracoke by mid-afternoon, if at all. I checked the weather again and realized Portsmouth was off the table for that night, at least; nobody would be willing to cross the inlet due to high winds, fog and possible rain, and overnight temperatures would be too low for camping anyway. I grudgingly checked Airbnb, found a small sailboat docked at Silver Lake Harbor for rent (which sounded like it might be cool) and set off.
The detour turned out to be a blessing in disguise: traveling north across the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula on US 264, I passed through the Dare Game Land and the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge, along beautifully desolate stretches of road that made me forget all about the canceled ferry.
Turning onto 64 East, I crossed Roanoke Island out to Whalebone Junction and then started the long run south on NC 12, finally arriving at the Hatteras Ferry, which much to my relief was still in operation. Soon I was across the inlet and back on the road.
Continuing south on NC 12 along the 16-mile length of Ocracoke, I arrived at Silver Lake Harbor and “checked in” to my accommodations: the boat could not be locked and was underwhelming in most respects (also in need of a good airing out thanks to a chemical toilet that I mostly shunned in favor of a nearby port-a-john), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it or would rather have stayed at the Pony Island Inn, though Adam, my “superhost,” was a little bold to charge $100 per night. While I couldn’t bring myself to write a review, the boat suited me fine. It rocked and bumped against the dock in the blustery weather, but I slept soundly in the bow compartment and enjoyed sipping beverages in the open cockpit while looking out over the foggy harbor. I watched the ferries come and go once their service had resumed, and listened to the mournful sound of their foghorns.
The boat even came with a beat-up beach bike, which I rode out to the south end of the island late one drizzly night to enjoy the crashing of the wind-whipped surf. I ended up staying on Ocracoke for a total of four days, not seeing many people and talking to fewer, except during trips to the store or meals at one of the few open restaurants, which was nice.
Over dinner one evening I got into conversation with a local boat owner who offered to run me over to Portsmouth the next morning for a reasonable fee, but I decided to hold off until I could make a proper camping trip of it.
PHOTO BY ROBBIE BREITWEISER
Instead, I roamed the island and walked the trails at Springer’s Point, a beautiful, forested area that was supposedly one of Blackbeard’s favorite party destinations. Nearby is Teach’s Hole, a spot offshore where Royal Navy officer Robert Maynard slew the recalcitrant pirate and hung his severed head from the bowsprit of his sloop like a grisly hood ornament.
Definitely a bad way to go, but I give Blackbeard credit for allegedly knocking back a drink and roaring “Damnation seize my soul if I give you any quarters, or take any from you!” at Maynard before the battle was joined. If you’re gonna sustain five musket-ball wounds and twenty sword lacerations, you might as well say something memorable beforehand.
When my stay on Ocracoke was over, I caught the ferry to Cedar Island and drove home from there, across the Cedar Island Wildlife Refuge and through “down east” Carteret County, which is an even nicer route than I had taken north from Swan Quarter.
I’d had a great time but was a little disappointed at failing once again to make it out to Portsmouth Island. It sounds like a remarkable place, with its ghost village of 21 state-maintained buildings, established in 1753 and finally abandoned in 1971. In addition to its once-thriving fishing industry, Portsmouth originally functioned as a colonial “lightering port,” where cargo from ocean-going vessels was transferred onto shallow-draft boats capable of navigating the sounds and coastal rivers.
One look at a map also will tell you that it’s among the remotest spots in North Carolina for off-grid camping, and I have no doubt that the stars on Portsmouth Island are spectacular on a clear night. More than that I cannot say without the benefit of experience, but damnation seize my soul if I don’t make it there before summer arrives.