Living on an Island - Part One

My wife, Trish, and I live on Ocracoke Island.  Ocracoke is the most remote inhabited island at the southern end of the North Carolina Outer Banks. I have lived here nearly thirty years and Trish joined me here when we got married in February of this year.

The first thing you need to know about living on Ocracoke is that it is only accessible on land by ferry.  You could get here by boat or you could fly in to our 3,000 foot airstrip, but, for most people, coming by ferry is the normal way to get here.

There was no ferry to the island at all until the 1950’s and then the service was very sparse as were the roads on the island.  Today there are three ferry routes, and, new this summer, a passenger-only ferry that comes over from Hatteras Island.

The Motor Vessel Silver  Lake, a Pamlico Sound Ferry

We almost always use the Swan Quarter Ferry.  It crosses the Pamlico Sound between Ocracoke and Swan Quarter (population 324, the County Seat of Hyde County) four times each day in the summer and three times each day from the end of September to mid-May.  The ferry crossing is on large vessels that hold about fifty cars each and the trip takes a little bit under three hours.  The first ferry to leave Ocracoke is at 7:00 am and the latest return from Swan Quarter is at 4:30 pm.  From Swan Quarter the driving time to Raleigh is about three hours.  You have to plan well, especially for the return trip, or you will  be stuck until the next day.

There is also a Pamlico Sound ferry that travels between Ocracoke and Cedar Island.  Cedar Island is about forty miles from Morehead City and this ferry works if you are  traveling on down the coast of North Carolina. It is a slower route, however, to most of mainland North Carolina.  The Cedar Island Ferry crossing is about two hours and fifteen-minutes.

The third way to get on and off the island is by Hatteras.  The Hatteras ferries are much smaller than the large Sound ferries, but…they run from five in the morning until midnight and run every hour in the winter and more often than that in the summer when traffic is heavy.  The Hatteras advantage is that you have many more (and later in the day) departures, but, you have very slow traffic on the Outer Banks coming and going.  There are a half-dozen villages where the speed limit is 35 mph in the summer and a lot of heavy  tourist traffic.  If you choose to go this way to get from Ocracoke to Raleigh you will be driving a bit more than 100 extra miles compared with travel by Swan Quarter.  Sometimes, though, it is necessary, especially if traveling up the East Coast to Washington, New York, or New England.

New this year is the Ocracoke Express, a passenger only ferry that runs between Hatteras and Ocracoke.  You can leave your car at Hatteras, and, for one dollar each way take a fast passenger ferry that comes all the way down to Silver Lake Harbor in the village rather than to the north end of the island as the car ferry does.  Once on the island, there is a new Free Tram system that circulates among nine tram stops about every fifteen minutes through the course of each day.  (Anyone can ride the Tram…you don’t have to ride the passenger ferry to do this.)  The Ocracoke Express is bringing a lot of people over for the day without their having to wait in line for the car ferry and it keeps a lot of cars off the island.

The Ocracoke Village FREE Tram

We love the ferry ride!  In the morning you can get on the ferry and them you do not have to start driving for three hours.  It is free time!  Ferry time is time to read, time to sleep, time to write letters or pay bills.  It is a special spoiler if we are taking our Airstream trailer on the ferry with us.  Then we can fix breakfast, go back to sleep, or even watch a movie on the way.

The ferry trip home is just as delightful.  We get on the ferry in Swan Quarter and our driving is finished.  Now we can read, do needlework, have a snack, nap, watch a favorite program, or do absolutely nothing.  As soon as we are on the ferry it is like getting on to a time machine…we disappear from the time of the mainland and travel back to our island where each day is two days long and we don’t have to get into a car (unless we want to) until the next time we are leaving the island.

Will there ever be a bridge to Ocracoke?  Not if anyone who loves it here has anything to do with it.