Daphne Bennink, owner of the Back Porch Restaurant, talks to ‘The Ocracoke Kitchen Project‘ host David Tweedie prior to her demonstration on Ocracoke Alive’s new YouTube cooking show.
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By Taylor Fuller
Ocracoke Alive’s new YouTube series called “The Ocracoke Kitchen Project” will promote Ocracoke’s favorite recipes to people around the world.
The video project features local chefs sharing their backgrounds and favorite recipes.
The first episode opens with a camera flying over the island while a jaunty reel plays underneath, then catches host David Tweedie at the Community Center dock to interview the first chef, Daphne Bennink, owner of the Back Porch Restaurant.
The action moves to the Back Porch Kitchen where Bennink demonstrates a traditional classic French preparation of fish– flounder meunière, which is flounder dredged in flour and cooked in butter sauce.
Episodes will focus on a specific local chef, looking into the lives of the chefs in Ocracoke and give insight to their favorite recipes. Information about the chef’s family history and background is given, as episode one talks about Bennink’s French background and its influence on her cooking.
Tweedie said Ocracoke Alive decided to start this series to “showcase an important part of Ocracoke’s community,” looking to attract people to the local restaurants here on the island.
“We’re thinking of the series as a community-wide project, not restricted to merely businesses but also well-known chefs around the island,” he said. “The subject of local recipes on Ocracoke has been under-represented but it is such an important part of the community quality in terms of businesses and the care that the local restaurants put towards their food.”
By the end of the year, Ocracoke Alive aims to have all six episodes of the first season on YouTube.
Episode two will feature local chef and owner of Eduardo’s Food Truck, Eduardo Chavez.
On the upcoming episodes, you can expect to see local restaurant owners and other well-known chefs in Ocracoke showcasing their favorite recipes.
“We wanted to think of it as a way to help promote local recipes to the foodie who might be off the island and not aware of Ocracoke,” Tweedie said.
All episodes will be linked on the Ocracoke Alive website at ocracokealive.org, as well as on The Ocracoke Kitchen Project’s YouTube channel.
The series was filmed and edited by Gary Mitchell and Corey Yeatts along with volunteers Lachlan Howard and Daniela Garcia.
Daphne Bennink cooks flounder meuniere.
Island native Taylor Fuller is a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill and is interning at the Ocracoke Observer.
The hopper Dredge Murden begins the day in the South Ferry Channel off Ocracoke’s north end to bust through shoaling in the Hatteras Inlet. At night, it will work in Big Foot Slough in the Pamlico Sound just off Ocracoke. Photo: C. Leinbach
The N.C. Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division will extend the reduced schedule on Pamlico Sound between Cedar Island, Swan Quarter and Ocracoke through April 19 as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues 24-hour dredging to combat shoaling issues in the Big Foot Slough ferry channel just outside Ocracoke’s Silver Lake Harbor. See prior story here.
The schedule through April 19, weather permitting, is as follows:
Ocracoke to Cedar Island: 7:30 a.m., 1 p.m.
Cedar Island to Ocracoke: 10:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m.
Ocracoke to Swan Quarter: 7 a.m., 1:30 p.m.
Swan Quarter to Ocracoke: 10 a.m., 4:30 p.m.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Dredge Murden and Dredge Merritt are currently teaming up in the Bigfoot Slough channel to perform 24-hour dredging.
On Monday (April 19), the Ferry Division will make a test run in the channel with its largest vessel, the M/V Swan Quarter.
If water depths and channel widths are at acceptable levels, the Ferry Division will resume its regular schedule on both routes Tuesday.
Shoaling occurs when sand and sediment fill into a ferry channel, making water depths too shallow and the channel too narrow for safe operation of the ferry system’s largest vessels.
For up-to-the-minute information on schedule changes on the Cedar Island and Swan Quarter routes, please follow @NCFerryPamSound on Twitter.
Members of the Ocracoke Occupancy Tax Board are, Bob Chestnut, foreground, and from left Trudy Austin, Lena Austin, Nancy leach and Ann Warner. Hyde County Manager Kris Noble and Corrinne Gibbs, Hyde County finance officer, are at right. Photo: C. Leinbach
By Connie Leinbach
The Occupancy Tax Board will decide at 6 p.m. Monday about approving the more than $643,000 in grant requests made by several Ocracoke community groups.
Tuesday night’s meeting in the Community Center was broadcast live on the Hyde County Public Information Facebook page. The public may watch Tuesday’s meeting and Monday’s deliberations on the same Facebook page.
Chair Bob Chestnut said he is interested in receiving public comments on the various requests before Monday’s meeting. Citizens can send their comments by email to Chestnut at bob@surfocracoke.com.
The grant fund comes from the 5% occupancy tax levied on all island lodgings. Two volunteer community boards manage these funds.
The Occupancy Tax Board manages 3% of it and is authorized to make grants “for any legal purpose.” The 2% of that fund is managed by the Ocracoke Tourism Development Authority (OTDA), which is an independent body and is mandated by state law to spend at least two thirds of their portion on marketing.
While the Occupancy Tax Board is advisory only, the Hyde commissioners typically approve their appropriations. Of the total occupancy taxes collected, Hyde County receives 10% of the 3% fund and 3% of the 2% fund for administration.
According to a financial forecast supplied by the Hyde County Finance Office, by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the 3% pot might be $512,661.56. Additionally, $264,470 was unspent from last year, Chestnut said.
In conjunction with the passenger ferry between Hatteras and Ocracoke beginning May 25 to Sept. 9, Hyde County Manager Kris Noble asked for a $35,000 grant to help fund the free tram operation in Ocracoke village.
Noble explained that since tram service began in 2018, when the passenger ferry was supposed to begin, operations have not really had a full year of service.
The state reimburses the county for half of the expenses, she said. A normal year would incur $150,000 in expenses for the tram, with NCDOT paying for half of that, or $75,000. Noble asked the Occupancy Tax Board to fund $35,000 for 2021 with the county to absorb the balance, or $40,000.
Joseph Ramunni has a five-year contract to run the trams, she said.
Hyde County also asked for $10,000 to help pay for the McClees Consulting lobby group that works the Raleigh legislators.
The Ocracoke Preservation Society asked for $203,941 for three projects: $4,800 for the British Cemetery Ceremony in 2022, which will be the 80th anniversary of this event. This year’s ceremony is canceled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
It asked for $14,000 for the Fig Festival this year, which will be Aug. 6 and 7.
This group also is seeking funds for the Island Inn/Odd Fellow Lodge restoration project: $12,500 for landscaping and $17,641 for partial payment of the mortgage.
Administrator Andrea Powers said the OTDA pays the other half of the mortgage.
Tom Pahl, contractor for the project, said the foundation has been stabilized and building is scheduled to be raised next week.
The OPS asked for $5,000 for outside beautification of its museum but Chestnut suggested that if an event, such as the Fig Festival, is designed to make money, those proceeds could go toward beautification.
The OPS also asked for $150,000 to build public restrooms, which would be managed by the OCBA. That project stalled in 2019 when there were no local bids and the two off-island bids received were more than twice the society’s budget for the project. After that, Hurricane Dorian hit followed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ocracoke Alive asked for $20,000 to help fund the Ocrafolk Festival and $6,000 to fund its Ocracoke Kitchen video project that promotes local food.
The Ocracoke Civic & Business Association asked for $102,350 to fund the following: $49,100 for Blackbeard’s Pirate Jamboree Oct. 29 to 31. While this event will be on Halloween weekend, activities will be focused on family fun and end by 5 p.m. Saturday night and not impinge on island business celebrations, said Connie Leinbach, who spoke for the OCBA.
$8,250 for this year’s July 4 activities; $30,000 for fireworks for 2022; $4,300 to refurbish the community holiday lights; $1,460 to help fund the Holiday Market on Nov. 27; $1,140 for two island-wide yard sales, one Sept. 18 and one next May TBD.
The Ocracoke Interfaith Relief & Recovery Team asked for $112,090 to help pay for the building of an addition to the Life Saving Church on Lighthouse Road for emergency housing for any future catastrophes.
A number of displaced residents have been in county-purchased travel trailers while their homes are being rebuilt, said Alicia Peel, OIRRT administrative assistant. When Hurricane Isaias threatened the island in August prompting an evacuation, these people had to scramble to find shelter at short notice while their trailers were taken off the island.
This project would add to Ocracoke’s resiliency by not having to rely on non-resident property owners to supply housing as was needed after Hurricane Dorian, she said.
The building would include laundry facilities and a kitchen. Three bathrooms would be available inside the church.
Volunteer labor is expected to arrive in September to build this expansion. Partnering with the Life Saving Church obviates the need to purchase a parcel of land, Peel said.
In response to Chestnut’s question about the capacity to sleep 36 people and feed 60 to 90 people, making it like a hotel, Peel said that this would be an emergency shelter. It could be for disasters or other emergencies such as housing sports teams overnight should the ferries not run.
After Chestnut asked a question about septic capacity, Ivey Belch, pastor of the church, said the church housed 65 people after Dorian hit. He said the septic system for the church is already being expanded and the addition would not require further expansion.
Chestnut noted that should there be a falling out between OIRRT and the church, then the church has a facility paid for with tax money.
Belch said that as long as he was pastor, that wouldn’t happen.
“Before the OIRRT, both churches were our disaster relief,” Peel noted. Both the OIRRT’s and the churches’ missions are entwined, she said. She said a memorandum of agreement is still being drafted between the OIRRT and the church.
Other requests were $51,570 from the Ocracoke Community Center with $33,000 of that for new flooring and siding and $18,570 for operating expenses.
The Ocracoke Turkey Trot asked for $5,000 to make this Thanksgiving Day 5K run an official timed event with T-shirts and medals.
The Ocracoke School asked for $5,350 for Arts Week.
The Hyde County Sheriff Department asked for $4,300 for more speed radar signs.
The Ocracoke Friends of the Library asked for $4,165 to install “StoryWalk” signs. This is a nationwide project in which pages from a children’s book are installed along a public path. Ocracoke Community Library Manager Sundae Horn said that local carpenter Clifton Garrish would be hired to build weather-resistant stands for the books.
Ocracoke Fire Protection Association asked for $83,189 toward the new truck fund and for equipment maintenance.
The MATTIE Arts Center in Swan Quarter asked for $600 for advertising.
Point of disclosure: Connie Leinbach is the volunteer events coordinator for the OCBA and the secretary of the OIRRT.
Passenger ferry service between Hatteras and Ocracoke will be from May 26 to Sept. 9 this year. Photo: C. Leinbach
To catch up on Ocracoke news and much more, click here
By Connie Leinbach
The passenger ferry between Hatteras and Ocracoke will begin May 25 and continue until Sept. 9, Hyde County Manager Kris Noble announced at the Occupancy Tax Board meeting Tuesday night.
Noble was among several groups seeking Occupancy Tax grants and was asking for a grant to help pay for the free trams that will operate in the village during the same time as the passenger ferry.
Tim Hass, N.C. Ferry Division spokesman, said in an interview that for now, the passenger ferry will be leased again from Seastreak out of New Jersey. This is the same company that the Ferry Division has used since the passenger ferry under construction was sidelined because of numerous faulty welds.
However, Hass said that a new company, Waterline Systems, which is in the same building in Hubert that housed US Workboats (formerly known as Armstrong Marine Inc.), the original builder, has resumed building the “Ocracoke Express,” an aluminum-hulled catamaran capable of carrying 124 passengers.
Waterline also has an operation in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
A search on the web shows that US Workboats is “permanently closed.”
Hass did not know when it would be completed, though possibly this summer. If that happens, the Ferry Division would switch out the leased boat with the new one.
The $4.15 million ferry under construction was expected to begin service between Hatteras and Ocracoke in the spring of 2018 but was still not finished by the season end.
When the boat still was not ready in the spring of 2019, the state rented another catamaran, at a cost of about $1 million, to carry passengers between the two islands from late May until Labor Day.
Ridership on the substitute “Ocracoke Express” in 2019 exceeded expectations. The substitute ferry was put into operation again last year, but passenger numbers were reduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Noble noted in the Occupancy Tax Board meeting Tuesday night that a full season of operation for the passenger ferry has not happened just like it hasn’t for the tram.
As for possible passenger ferry service from Washington, Beaufort County, Hass said this is just an idea—part of a study by the Institute for Transportation Research Education out of NC State.
“It’s a two-year study,” he said. “They’re studying the current passenger ferry routes and possibly others.”
Nathan Spencer, this year’s Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival’s featured carver, loves the challenge of carving all kinds of birds, including the festival’s featured decoy, his Ring-necked Duck.
He has spent a lifetime on Ocracoke having been born on the property where his house is located on Lighthouse Road.
The Waterfowl Festival will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 17, at the Berkley Barn and grounds.
A graduate of the Ocracoke School’s class of 1968, Nathan has had a variety of jobs over his career. Many know him for his work as the meat cutter at the Variety Store the past several years. For 10-plus years, he worked the dredges for the N.C. Ferry Division. Then for a long time, he became a commercial fisherman working his trawler, the Miss Miriam, named after his youngest daughter.
His fishing included shrimping, floundering, crabbing and “anything that I could do in this area.” He would sometimes take his boat down to near the Georgia line.
“I never did go into Georgia,” he said. “I went down to Hilton Head, South Carolina, for shrimping.” He also worked on other trawlers up to the Virginia line.
In 1999, he sold his boat, ending his fishing career, and took what he thought would be a temporary job for Hyde County, running the solid waste facility, now called the Ocracoke Convenience Site.
“At that time, it was nothing but recycling,” he said. The “temporary job” lasted until 2014 and included monitoring dredged sand removal at the N.C. Ferry’s South Dock on the north end of Ocracoke.
Both responsibilities aided his wood carving. At the solid waste facility, people would drop off vegetative matter for grinding in a woodchipper. “I got a lot of wood I could use for carving,” he said, such as red cypress from old homes being renovated, juniper from wood planks and a lot of red cedar.
He credits his great-uncles, Charlie and John Tolson, who mentored him into becoming a fisherman, with piquing his interest in wood carving.
“They taught me how to handle a knife,” he said. “We used to make little boats out of cedar shingles and sail them across the creek. That’s when I started working with a knife and working with wood. I kept it up, pretty much all my life, even though most of it, I was a full-time commercial fisherman.”
While at South Dock, he had time on his hands waiting for the dump trucks to come and go, giving him the opportunity to whittle.
“I initially carved mostly boats,” he said, “but my friend, Tom Leonard, who was an excellent carver said, ‘Why don’t you try carving birds?’” Nathan got another source of inspiration from some family members. In his early teens, he would observe his uncle Herman whittle in his home located where Spencer’s Market is today.
“Around the time Tom got me interested in carving, my wife Janet and I cleaned out a shed for Patsy Williams, who is my cousin John Simpson’s mother,” he said.
John is one of the founders and current president of the Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild. In the shed was one of John’s carvings of a bird in flight that he carved when he was very young.
“I brought it home and studied it and I thought, ‘I can do that,’” Spencer said.
Nathan’s workshop. Photo: P. Vankevich
That was his start on the birds, first with geese and since then just about any bird. The carvings were small at first, and he progressed to making larger birds mostly because he was asked to make them by different people.
“I pretty well taught myself what to do,” he said. “I’m gonna say it comes natural. Put a piece of wood in my hand. It’s in my head as to what I want it to look like. And my hands make it look that way.”
But he says the painting was a bit hit-and-miss, a challenge because he had never painted before.
“When I started, I couldn’t draw a stick figure,” he said. “That just wasn’t in my bag; I just couldn’t do it. I can sit down now and draw myself a pattern. And a lot of my birds are my own patterns — not out of a book or somebody else’s pattern.”
For waterfowl carving, he prefers species he is familiar with and which he has held in his hands. Those would be local birds like Brant, Redhead, Bufflehead, Northern Pintails and Red-breasted Mergansers and, of course, the Ring-necked Duck.
One of his biggest challenges came from his friend Jimmy Willis to carve a King Eider, a bird seen in the waters of the far north and a rare visitor to the Outer Banks.
“I had never seen one in my life,” he said. “I pulled up some images on the computer and looked at them in my books and ended up ordering a pattern. The images didn’t show the bulk and the unusual face pattern was a challenge.”
When he says he can carve just about any bird, he means it. In addition to waterfowl, he loves carving local birds including herons, egrets, Brown Pelicans, Double-crested Cormorants, and especially the smaller shorebirds like Sanderlings, Dunlins and Piping Plovers that he can carve using a single piece of wood.
Like most artists, he relies on inspiration but says it has been hard to find since Hurricane Dorian struck Ocracoke in September 2019. The hurricane’s unprecedented seven-foot-plus storm surge tore through Ocracoke village and especially his “Down Point” neighborhood of Lighthouse Road, causing massive damage to the old homes.
“I say, you have to be into it,” he says about his art. “You have to have that feeling, or you can’t do it. Since Hurricane Dorian, it’s been a struggle to go out in my shop and work because I haven’t had that inner feeling. I guess for the first year after Dorian I was still in shock.”
Despite these challenges, he is looking forward to this festival and meeting fellow lovers of the art of waterfowl carving.
The Sanderlings of Ocracoke are one of Nathan’s favorite shorebirds to carve. In the background is a miniature Ring-necked Duck. Photo: P. Vankevich
A few members of the group that will march in Ocracoke in honor of the Bataan Death March. Sergeant Kyle Yancy of the Gaston County Police Department; Jack Dee, a junior at Gaston Day School, Phil Dee of US PATRIOT and Michael Ginther. Photo courtesy of Phil Dee
Reprinted from the OBX Voice. Headline corrected. It’s on Friday, April 16.
By Michelle Wagner
When the COVID-19 pandemic turned the annual Bataan Memorial Death March at the Sands Missile Range in New Mexico into a virtual event, Retired U.S. Army officer Phil Dee hit upon an ideal location for his group to hold their 26-mile memorial march.
Dee, of Kings Mountain, NC, will lead a group of seven, including his son Jack, on a march that will take place on Ocracoke Island on April 16. After taking the ferry from Hatteras to Ocracoke, they will hike 13 miles along the beach and N.C. 12 and then turn around and march back to the ferry dock.
The Bataan Death March of 1942 involved 75,000 U.S. and Filipino soldiers who surrendered to Japanese forces after the Battle of Bataan, according to the Bataan Memorial Death March website. Deprived of food, water and medical attention, they were forced to walk 65 miles through jungles and horrendous conditions to confinement camps. Approximately 10,000 soldiers – about 1,000 of them U.S. soldiers – died or were killed along the march. Those who survived faced the hideous conditions and the brutality of their captors.
The soldiers captured represented multiple branches of the U.S. military, including members of the 200th Coast Artillery, New Mexico National Guard. There are only three U.S. survivors of the march still living today.
“It’s probably one of the most horrific [incidents of] POW treatments,” Dee stated, noting that many of the prisoners were put on what were called “hell ships” and transported to other islands. Dee added that his father was a Navy officer stationed in the South Pacific during World War II and that he had a cousin who had died on one of those ships.
“What these men have endured, physically spiritually and emotionally, is unlike anything any of us can even fathom,” he continued. “For ourselves, we all need to recognize that we can handle much more than we know. Just look at the Bataan survivors. On top of that, they learned to forgive. And that skill is probably what has saved them…Selfishly, we want our sons and daughters to know their story and try to understand what these men have done. And then apply it to themselves and know they can handle so much more than they think.”
Dee said that when the group was deciding where to do this year’s march, they settled on the Outer Banks, agreeing that would be interesting to do it there and that the unpredictable weather adds a challenging element.
The group and trip are being sponsored by US PATRIOT Tactical, a military and public safety gear and uniform company that Dee is a partner in.
Dee’s group, which plans on catching the 5 a.m. ferry to Ocracoke to begin the march, is among between 7,000 and 8,000 people across the country registered for this year’s virtual event that can be done anytime between April 9 and 18.
Dee and his group are shooting to return to the Ocracoke ferry dock for the 3 p.m. ferry and knowing that they will be without supplies or water until they reach Ocracoke Village, they will carry in what they need.
Noting that he is a former tank commander with the U.S. Army and his wife, Sandie, is a former U.S. Army pilot, Dee acknowledged that those they are honoring “are our people.”
(Anyone wishing to march for a few miles with Dee’s group on April 16 is welcome. Phil Dee can be reached at 704-898-2210.)
The Ocracoke Interfaith Relief & Recovery Team will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 20, to discuss the progress of home rebuilding and recovery on the island from flooding by Hurricane Dorian on Sept. 6, 2019.
The meeting will be held on Facebook livestream on (OIRRT)Facebook page.
Questions for the group can be emailed by 5 p.m. April 19 to Alicia Peel, administrative assistant, at apeel@oirrt.org.
Pamlico Sound ferries are back in business on a modified schedule while dredging continues. Photo: C. Leinbach
The N.C. Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division resumed modified service on Pamlico Sound between Cedar Island, Swan Quarter and Ocracoke today.
Service will begin with a two-boat, alternate schedule while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to dredge in Bigfoot Slough.
The schedule for April 13 to 16, weather permitting, is as follows:
Ocracoke to Cedar Island: 7:30 a.m., 1 p.m.
Cedar Island to Ocracoke: 10:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m.
Ocracoke to Swan Quarter: 7 a.m., 1:30 p.m.
Swan Quarter to Ocracoke: 10 a.m., 4:30 p.m.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ Dredge Murden and Dredge Merritt will continue working in the Bigfoot Slough channel throughout the week to clear the shoaling, but dredging operations are dependent on weather and tides.
Once the dredging work is complete and water depths and channel widths return to acceptable levels, the Ferry Division will resume its regular, three-boat schedule on both routes.
For up-to-the-minute information on schedule changes on the Cedar Island and Swan Quarter routes, please follow @NCFerryPamSound on Twitter.
An afternoon respite on the Community Square dock. Photo: C. Leinbach
Tuesday, April 13 Ocracoke Health Center will hold a COVID-19 vaccine clinic for its patients and will offer vaccinations from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. or until vaccines run out. Those residents who aren’t patients may register on the spot.
Ocracoke Occupancy Tax Board will meet at 6 p.m. in the Community Center but the meeting will only be available online to the general public via the Hyde County Public Information Facebook page. The live stream will begin when the meeting is called to order. You do not need to be a Facebook member to view the live stream but can access our Facebook page by going to the following website https://www.facebook.com/HydeCounty.
Saturday, April 17 Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Berkley Barn grounds. See story here.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ has received approval to dredge around a huge shoaled area, in red above, in Big Foot Slough just outside Ocracoke.
Correction: The Ocracoke Waterways Commission will meet at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 20.The story is corrected belowand updated as modified ferry service resumed today (April 13).
By Connie Leinbach
After several days of plugging away at the shoaling in Big Foot Slough, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has initiated a tag-team approach with two dredges.
The ACE on Friday received approval for the emergency operation of dredging to the immediate west of the federal channel through which both the Cedar Island and Swan Quarter ferries traverse to get to and from Ocracoke.
The severe shoaling in Big Foot Slough just outside Ocracoke forced the suspension on April 7 of the Pamlico Sound ferries. Resumption of these ferry runs began Tuesday (April 13).
Since these are under federal control (rather than state), the ACE is tasked with conducting the dredging. Shoaling occurs when sand and sediment fill into a ferry channel making water depths too shallow and the channel too narrow for safe operation of the ferry system’s vessels.
Both the side caster dredge Merritt and the hopper dredge Murden are working in the slough and also at the north end of Ocracoke in the South Ferry channel, but at different times.
This channel, which used to be near the old “short route,” benefits commercial and recreational fishing boats and the Coast Guard on their way out into the ocean, Dare County Project Manager Brent Johnson said.
The Murden is working in South Ferry Channel and the Merritt is working in Big Foot until Wednesday, said Jan Peterson, dredge manager. That night, the Murden will come back to Ocracoke and dredging will be a 24/7 event with the Merritt in the slough during the day and the Murden working there overnight.
Dredging is done to both widen and deepen these channels, said Todd Horton, chief of waterways management.
“The Merritt is better at widening the channel and the Murden is better for deepening channels,” noted Peterson. “We’re hitting it with everything we got.”
On Friday, the ACE received emergency approval to dredge outside the federally authorized area. (See notice at end.)
As seen on the graphic above, the straight line of hash marks is the current federal channel, and it is blocked by a huge amount of sand, shown in shades of red. In that red area, the water depth is about three feet and ferries need at least 10 feet of water.
But a new line of hash marks, labeled on the graphic as an alternate channel, is shown going around this red area.
That is the area where the ACE has received approval to dredge, Horton said, and that area has eight feet of water. The emergency order is seeking to dredge to 10 feet with possibly two feet more.
As for width, the minimum width for ferries to be able to pass safely is 100 feet, Horton said. Right now, the channel is only 85 feet wide, he said, and they will try to get it to 150 feet.
Big Foot is a federal channel, but a deeper, natural channel to the west, called Nine Foot, would possibly better serve Ocracoke.
But that channel would have to receive federal designation, which takes an Act of Congress.
The Merritt last dredged Big Foot in October, thanks in part to a cash gift from Carteret County.
This year, the ACE has more than $1 million to dredge Big Foot thanks to a higher budget for the ACE, which was mentioned in the December Ocracoke Waterways Commission meeting, and an additional half million thanks to U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy.
A Waterways Commission meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 20, virtually on Facebook on the Hyde County Public Information page.
