THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250242
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DESTINATION HAMPTON ROADS
Staff writer Paul Clancy, aboard the Galatea, continues his report of
the two-week trip up the Intracoastal Waterway that will end at "Mile
Marker Zero" on the Elizabeth River.
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ABOARD THE GALATEA LENGTH: 79 lines
Belhaven, N.C. First light.
Southerly winds have rocked us awake.
A cormorant standing vigil on a red-flashing channel marker watches as we pass.
Off to the right, the Pungo River is slate gray; off to the left, dawn steeps like the water rosy peach.
We're underway Monday on the next-to-last leg of a 1,200-mile journey that began 10 days ago in the Florida Keys. This is the fifth in a series of stories on the snowbirds, who move their boats through Hampton Roads along the Intracoastal Waterway.
We just passed mile marker 110 and got some disappointing news. An Army Corps of Engineers sign advises that the ``controlling depths'' in the Dismal Swamp Canal is 6 feet. That's what our boat draws. We'll take the more traveled route through Coinjock, N.C., to the North Landing River.
Traffic is brisk on the Pungo. Big power boats go ripping by. Roger Thiele, whose grandchildren call him ``the Old Man of the Waterway,'' shouts from the bridge of his new $600,000 Ocean Sports Fisherman: ``When didya leave?''
``Five a.m.''
``We left at 8,'' he shouts and waves as his boat leaves a coffee-colored wake in the brown river. His boat holds 580 gallons of fuel, will go 28 knots and burns 40 gallons per hour. Within minutes, he's sinking below the horizon, heading for Portsmouth.
Tuesday night, he'll be in Cape May, N.J.; Wednesday, in East Hampton, N.Y.
Thiele has made the annual trek from Stuart, Fla., to Long Island on the Intracoastal Waterway each of the past 22 years, returning southbound in October. Like thousands of others, he uses the waterway as a route to better weather.
``Florida's too damn hot in the summer,'' he pronounced the night before, sitting on the afterdeck of his boat, two slips from Galatea at Belhaven's River Forest Marina.
Belhaven is one of dozens of towns along the Intracoastal that have thrown out the welcome mat for boaters on the move.
Beaufort, N.C., which we breezed through Saturday, calls itself ``the gateway to the Caribbean.''
Oriental, a one-time sleepy fishing town on the banks of the Neuse River, styles itself the sailing capital of North Carolina - and sometimes of the world.
``From the first of May to about now, we're full up every night,'' says Frank Swain, co-owner of the Oriental Marina, Hotel and Restaurant.
But some worry that the town is going too far too fast. A zoning proposal that would make it difficult to restore small fishing-village-type houses that give the town much of its character was defeated after much debate.
``It scared a lot of people, and rightfully so,'' said Thomas Suggs, a marine surveyor. ``These houses, they're the charm of the town. We feel like we're being squeezed out.''
Tall pines and spacious waterfront homes in Belhaven, a day's sail north, greet us. The town's centerpiece is River Forest Manor, an 1890s Victorian mansion built by John Aaron Wilkinson, who owed his fortune to the lumber mills and Norfolk and Southern Railroad.
In Belhaven, our shipmates Jim Trum and his son, Adam, depart for Northern Virginia. Nancy Hussey, wife of the boat's captain, John Hussey, joins us for the first time. She is founder and director of the Foundation for Underwater Research and Education.
The storms of last week are only a memory. The Albemarle Sound, notorious for inhospitable conditions, greets us with steady winds and favorable seas. We'll make it to Coinjock hours ahead of schedule.
Tuesday, Norfolk and home. MEMO: Next: A report Wednesday on the last leg, through Pungo, Great
Bridge and into Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: VP Graphic
Map
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