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THE HATTERAS - OCRACOKE FERRY
Marine Safety
While I was waving goodbye to Cape Hatteras, I was musing to myself, as is quite often my wont, especially when I don't have anyone else to muse to.
One thing I'd noticed about these small ferries that I've been on so far (and this ferry is certainly small) is that there is no record of who's on board them. They don't take the names of passengers, they don't even count the numbers, and they don't take the registration numbers of the vehicles on board. You just hand over your money (that is, where the ferry isn't a free one like so many of the ferries round here are, and like this one certainly is), get a preprinted ticket, and take yourself on board.
So what if the ferry were to get itself into difficulties? Now, while that would be difficult (but not impossible) to do on some of the short river crossings, on some of the others, especially the longer ones, it could easily be possible for a ferry to sink. Due to all kinds of reasons, including sudden storms and the like, there have been over 500 ships known to have been lost around here, as I told you elsewhere.
With the absence of details concerning the passengers, the authorities just wouldn't have a clue who was missing. It's not frightening for the passengers, because if you're sinking you're sinking, and there's not much you can do about it when it happens. It's rather late in the day to be worrying. But for the relatives, it must be worrying for anyone who has kin on any of the ships.
Especially when they realise that this is what you have to save you. This is the ship's lifeboat. Just by looking at this, you can tell that they've never had an accident to any of the ships since the whole of the North Carolina Ferry service started running.
If you are in a storm that is running strong enough to sink one of these ferries, then how far do you think you are going to get in an open boat like this? Lifeboat? It's more like a death boat if you ask me. This must be even more worrying to the relatives of the passengers.
While I'm on the subject of ferries, seasoned European ferry travellers know that regulations about emergency procedures are in force, and scrupulously obeyed. Instructions are given to the passengers by a series of blasts on the ships' sirens, the codes being read out to the passengers before the ship sets sail. I can't remember all of them, but it goes something like :-
"One short blast means move to an assembly point"
"Two short blasts means put on your life jackets"
"Three short blasts means take to the lifeboats"
"One long blast means that the siren is stuck"
This kind of ferry is known in Europe as a "ro-ro" (roll on, roll off) and I can quite easily imagine that a sudden storm (the kind of which can easily blow up over here without any effort at all) could turn them into "ro-ro-ro" ferries. For those of you who are unaware of the "Herald of Free Enterprise", this means " roll on, roll over, roll off".
Could you imagine going for a 40-minute sail across the open ocean - well it is the open ocean here exposed to the prevailing winds, although out is true to say that in some places it's sheltered by an outer sandbank, but can you imagine doing a 40-minute sail in Europe in similar circumstances on a ferry like this? Can you imagine going across the channel on something like that? Tony B liar and his British B liarite nanny state government would have apoplexy.
However, is any of the foregoing going to stop me sailing on them? Do bears live in the woods?
This photograph here on the left is of the southern edge of Hatteras Island, and once clear of its protection, as I would be any second now, I'd be crossing the open ocean. Next stop over there is the coast of North Africa. Ocracoke Island is ahead in the distance and we'll be there in 10 mintes
Renewable Energy
Hatteras Island is quite a low-lying island and it doesn't seem to give much shelter from the wind, as the Wright Brothers and myself will testify. But as soon as you pass into the exposed ocean and open water, you will feel the increase in wind speed. So much so, in fact, that you could even hear it in the dictaphone. Even the small amount of land that represents the Outer Banks puts up enough friction to slow down the wind quite considerably.
This means that there's a lot to be said for having offshore wind turbines. But never mind the offshore wind turbines - I'd simply cover the Outer Banks with onshore ones. The energy they could create around here would be phenomenal. At night, I'd use the unconsumed power of the wind to break down the seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen I'd release back into the air to redress the CO2 balance and to tackle in some small way the effects of global warming. The hydrogen, I'd capture it and process it as fuel for motor vehicles.
This would also have the effect of dealing with the polar melt that is threatening to submerge the Outer Banks by disposing of some of the excess water. Who needs fossil-fuel oil anyway, apart from the oil barons and their political friends?
The Free Market
There 's no doubt that a 40 minute crossing across part of an ocean on a boat like this for a fee of nothing is amazing (it's also exhilarating too, but that's another story). I wonder how much CallyMac charges for a ferry crossing around the Scottish Outer Islands. I know that the last time I sailed on a CallyMac in the late 70s with Bill Badger it was pretty extortionate and I don't suppose it's become any better with the passage of time.
But on another small matter, I bet that the residents of the Isle of Skye must be absolutely furious when they look at all these free bridges and free ferries floating all around here. How much did they have to pay to cross to the mainland, and the political storm that blew up over it once they went on a toll strike?
Britain has slavishly followed the "free market" principle that everything has its price and that this price must be paid no matter what - Tony B-liar even more than the Tories. This is of course American policy when dealing with impoverished third-worlders.
What most of these people don't seem to realise that all of this is just American rhetoric. The American government has absolutely no intention of respecting free market policies when it comes to its own internal markets. And it's not just the ferries and bridges either that we're discussing . Take a look at this
Do you remember the big outcry when the French ring-fenced their energy markets? At least they were totally honest and up-front about it. Not like the Americans who do it by stealth, deception and hypocrisy, or totally suckered in like the Brits.
You'd have really thought that the Brits would have cottoned on to all of this. But it just goes to show that with 24 hour drinking and 500 channels on the television, the citizens of the UK are simply too preoccupied these days to see the important things that are going on around them.
In the distance over here, you can see Ocracoke Island. This marks more-or-less the end of my journey by road across the Outer Banks, which was a shame. Just the drive across the island to take the ferry back to the mainland.
In a lot of respects (if not all respects) I can see myself being very sorry to leave here. I'd come to quite like the place. The Outer Banks were definitely for me.
We pulled into the small harbour past this weird dredger and the "Thomas A Baum" which was just setting off on the return journey and then, much to my surprise, the "Frisco" turned round in the harbour and reversed up to the jetty. Here I was, I'd been sailing on all of these ferries for days and I'd just simply rolled on and rolled off, and here I was having a ferry turn round and reverse into the dock not once but twice, at each end of the journey. I was being spoilt.
Sitting here in my car, I noticed another fact - that the ramps are electrically-controlled with large counterweights. Seeing as this was the first time that I'd been first in the queue, I can safely say that I hadn't noticed this before.
THEY ARE AT IT AGAIN
So, off the ferry and up the bank onto the main road (if you can call it "main"), and just look at this that greeted me. If it is serious, it is nothing but total paranoia
Can you imagine - the USA has had just two terrorist attacks, both of them on the WTC, (of course, Timothy McVeigh's attack didn't count - he was white-skinned) in almost the whole of its existence - and just look at this. This is absolutely incredible. Who would really want to do anything to anywhere out here? What is there out here that is worth attacking? And why does the USA think that anyone might want to, anyway?
Now what on earth would the USA have done if it had been busily blown to pieces by the IRA using British money in the same way that the IRA was doing to the UK was in the 70s and 80s with American money? Like I said before, no-one in the UK cared too much because they had a sense of proportion.
We even used to have "terrorist" jokes. Anyone remember Leila Khaled? "She was only the hi-jacker's daughter but she said "Take me to Amman!"".
Two terrorist attacks in 10 years, and the USA gets all of this fear. The Americans have this whole suicide bomber thing blown up out of all proportion.
This is the most absurd thing I have ever seen. Unless of course it's because of the fact that they know that I'm on my way here, in which case I'm extremely disappointed that I only merit a yellow and not a red.
Let's not forget - there was no control on that ferry. No-one had to sign in, register, pay, or anything. The car wasn't even searched. I could have driven onto the ferry with a car loaded with explosives and detonated it mid-channel and no-one would have been any the wiser (or even any better-informed either). No one would have known how many people were on board the vessel, and how many needed saving, and then there was only that single small lifeboat (and in most weather conditions it would have been more like a death boat) to have been put to any kind of use.
I bet you any money the people in charge don't believe any of this "terrorism" fear. They are just ratcheting up the fear and ratcheting up the tension so that the people will be willing to pay more money for arms, most of which money will go into the pockets of the bushbaby's cronies. There are just no tangible precautions whatsoever to stop any kind of terrorist threat.
Everywhere you go, and in the most inocuous of situations people are reminded of this terrorist threat that doesn't exist. It's force-fed into them day after day after day. All the bushbaby does then is to bang on about how he's fighting all the wicked terrorists, and denounces his opponents for lack of patriotism, so everyone votes for him. It really is the most subtle and perverse form of psychological propaganda I have ever seen.
Another famous person who used to use this technique was the Nazi minister Josef Goebbels. He was good at it and it is from the Nazis that the bushbaby and the b liar have learnt their technique. Just compare these two quotes, and see what I mean
Now of course, I'm not the only person to realise this, as you can see here
At the height of the American-financed IRA campaign in the UK there was no real fear or tension such as exists today. And this was all of course real terrorism, murders and explosions - not simply some political and media hype like the current situation. It's also important not to forget where all these IRA terrorists sought refuge when they fled from Northern Ireland, the Maze and places like that. Who gave them shelter and protected them from justice? Yes, it was the good old USA which, incidentally, also refused to extradite them back.
No wonder that 99.9% of the world refuses to take this American terrorist threat seriously, and those few who do, they simply look at the damage that the USA has caused to the rest of the world and simply reply that "the USA had it coming anyway with everything they had been shipping out to the rest of the world". And if you think I'm making all of this up, this latter quote actually came from a group of WASPs in Colorado.
Goodbye Outer Banks
When you see a sign like this that says "Welcome to Ocracoke Island", make the most of both the sign and the island because neither of them is going to be here long.
This is because the biggest threat to the Outer Banks is not the terrorism that comes from without, but the terrorism that comes from within. And that is even more frightening. Because the Americans haven't woken up to this particular danger, they aren't afraid of it yet. But they pretty soon will be, and it will put external terrorism into the shade.
With George Bush's refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol and his failure to seriously implement any kind of environmental emissions protection, he is provoking global warming at an unprecedented scale. This is causing the polar ice caps to melt and the sea level to rise, and sooner or later these Outer Banks will all be submerged.
The bushbaby says that he isn't going to surrender 6% of the United States' economy to environmental concerns. He hasn't realised that if he doesn't do something, not only is he going to be surrendering 6% to the rising sea levels, he's going to be surrendering 6% of the country's land mass too. If you live on the offshore islands or the coastal plains of the USA, what inheritance are you leaving your kids? And where are they going to live, if they survive the flood?
Has there ever been a more stupid president than this?
And if you think I am joking or merely exaggerating the seriousness of the problem, then you should be aware that Ocracoke Island was completely submerged to a depth of 30 inches by a hurricane in 1944, and you'll find even worse news further on.
Now you remember a couple of hours earlier that I'd had a good old moan about the police force and the military cosying up all nice and snugly together on Hatteras Island? Well, it seems like "here we are again". This time, however, it's the local sheriff's office - the Sheriff's office for Hyde County to be precise - that is the recipient of the army's largesse. I mean, what's going on??
Now, leaving aside the relative merits of the army and the police collaborating on some kind of joint venture, what I would like to know is what on earth the army are doing out here in the first place. Ocracoke is hardly the centre of the universe so I wouldn't have thought that it was all that important to defend. And then, of course, defend it against whom? Who on earth is likely to want to attack Ocracoke Island?
The second question that I would like answering is "what is there that is worth attacking out here?"
I mean, if you are a terrorist, your forces and your arms are somewhat minimal. You also know that you are only going to get at most one good shot. So you need to pick your target pretty well. It's for this reason that I am so puzzled that Mohammed Atta and his friends chose the World Trade Centre and the Penta-gone to attack. If it had been me, I'd have gone for that nice big nuclear power station on the New Jersey coast just outside Tom's River. A plane or two in there with the prevailing winds drifting all over the north-eastern United States would have caused many more than the couple of hundred people Atta and company did kill, and the effects would have lasted for centuries. Look at Chernobyl if you need any convincing of this. So which enemy of the United States is going to waste its one and only big shot out here?
What has probably happened is that a nuclear bomb has fallen out of an American aeroplane into the sea just off the coast here, in the same way that one did off the coast of Spain a good few years ago, and they are hoping to recover it before the local population gets to find out.
Meantime, I was back on the road, in the general direction of the Swan Quarter ferry terminal, which was my next stop. Another thing I noticed along the way was the existence of several motels. I would have been alright on here if I'd have made it across last night.
OCRACOKE
As I swept round a corner I suddenly found myself in the town of Ocracoke, as you can see from the photograph here on the left. This is apparently the main street, believe it or not.
The first thing you notice (well, you can't actually miss it, actually) are all the bikes parked up here for hire. It's quite evident that cycling is the way to go around here.
The second thing you notice once you travel a little further is the really picturesque harbour with a nice jetty that pushes out into the water.
It didn't seem likely that this was where the ferry was to depart from (although I have been surprised by things such as this before now), so despite the picturesque view, I decided to push on. The road still continued on some way, so I decided to follow it to see where it was going to take me.
And I wasn't to be disappointed. A few hundred metres further on, the road swept into a big parking area with a couple of large buildings at the end. This was where the ferry was to leave.
Pulling up at the ferry terminal, the first action to take was to go in search of some coffee. Yes, I must get my priorities right. Don't forget, I'd just been 40 minutes on a ferry. There was a refreshment cabin here, for which I was very grateful. They were selling "North Carolina Ferries" thermal mugs for three or four dollars and bearing in mind my principle that I always spend money in an attraction if I've had my money's worth, I bought myself one (and from which I'm currently drinking a nice hot coffee even as I type). What with all these free ferry rides, I've certainly had my money's worth from North Carolina Ferries.
In fact there are several factors that makes it a good idea to have a thermal mug.
The fact that if you buy your coffee in a fibre cup provided by the vendor it's $1.50 whereas if you supply your own mug it's only 95 cents so after half a dozen cups of coffee you're on a winner, is neither here nor there.
Back outside, I stumble across a few more interesting items. This is what they call in the trade a "combined subject" photo. Pictures of the local wildlife to please some, and pictures of motor vehicles to please others. And for interesting people, such as yours truly he said, modestly they can be pleased by both, and I certainly know how to please myself.
I'm a big fan of cats, as most of you know, so I had to take a photo of this beautiful moggy striding nonchalantly across the car park as if he owned the place (which, knowing cats as I do, he probably did).
After all, what is a holiday without a pussy or two? I have already set a precedent on a previous journey to the USA in this respect so one needs to keep up the habit.
But back to the photograph, I my self don't have all that much of an interest in these micro-pickups, but my friend Paul does. In fact at one stage he even owned an APE 50, that we dug out of a derelict yard in Brussels back in the late 90s. Whenever I'm on my travels, I always keep an eye out for any, just to keep him happy.
I've no idea what this particular model is, as I couldn't see anything that looked like a maker's plate on it. It's certainly fairly primitive, as you would expect, but it's more than just a "garden shed engineering" product.
None of the workforce could tell me very much about it, except that it's a petrol-engined vehicle. the guy in charge suggested that it had something like a lawnmower engine that kept it going. That was a disappointment. I'd have an electric vehicle if I were in charge of a place like this, and a large wind turbine to keep it charged up. But as you know, I have a thing about wind turbines. A couple of large batteries on this down on the farm and I would be well away.
One this that Paul was having trouble with on the APE was the drive train. This is the reason why I took the photograph here on the left, in case it would give him any clues.
You can see that it's just a normal toothed belt, the kind that drives a Pinto engine overhead cam, and it doesn't look like it's much stronger either. When you consider how much this pickup would weigh when it is fully loaded compared to the weight of a Cortina drivetrain, and how often the belts strip just pushing a set of valves down, this would cause me some concern, to say the least.
I'd be thinking of having a conventional drive with a propshaft so as to take the load, but this would probably be some kind of expanded pulley drive such as the old DAF variomatic system, which doesn't operate with a propshaft drive. All the more reason to go for an electric motor, if you ask me.
Next stop was the ticket office. And here, I was appraised of a major miscalculation in my plans. It seems that I was ... er ... misinformed by the guy at the ticket office last night, and that there is no morning sailing to Swan Quarter. Now, this is what I call a setback.
There wasn't really a great deal I could do about that. The next sailing was at 12.45 lunchtime-ish, all of about four and a half hours away. One thing though - a novel departure from the trend was that this crossing was the only place where they took my name. However this was merely for the purpose of making a reservation. On the longer ferries over to the mainland from Ocracoke it is highly recommended that you book your place in advance - especially in the summer season. This time of the year I probably could just have turned up and driven on, but bearing in mind that this is the last ferry of the day, something would be bound to happen, like a last-minute stampede which would mean that I wouldn't get on the boat. I considered it highly advisable to make sure that there was a place for me.
At least this enforced delay gave me a good chance to have a look around the island to see whether there were any secret arms dumps or nuclear reactors or whatever that the army might be guarding.
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