N.C. State University researchers have canceled their trip to Ocracoke this weekend (Jan. 30 to 31) because of the forecast for winter weather.
NC State University professor Dr. K.C. Busch and her team are seeking further dialogue with the Ocracoke community about NC Highway 12 and access issues and will reschedule her visit to sometime this spring.
They were here in September to discuss their findings from the study they did on north end access issues.
The National Weather Service out of Morehead City warns that the Outer Banks will see some impacts from this second weekend storm, though more details will be available toward the end of the week.
Ocracoke Alive winter activities begin. To see the full schedule, click here.
Aerial view of South Point at sunset. Photo by Matt Janson
Monday, Jan. 26 Ocracoke Alive: Spanish/English Coffee hour, 8:15 to 9:15 am. Ocracoke Library. Then every Monday through March 23
Tuesday, Jan. 27 Ocracoke School basketball at home vs. Columbia: Varsity girls at 4 pm; varsity boys at 5:30 pm.
Ocracoke Alive: Mediterranean Cooking with Helios: 6 pm. To RSVP, click here.
Wednesday, Jan. 28 Ocracoke Alive: Marlin Spike Seamanship: a few useful knots plus a Turk’s head bracelet with Captain Rob Temple. 1 to 3 pm. Deepwater Theater.
Ocracoke School basketball: Middle School girls and boys at Mattamuskeet.
Thursday, Jan. 29 Ocracoke Alive: 9:30 to 10:30am. Ukulele/Guitar with Lou Castro. Deepwater Theater.
Ocracoke School basketball: Varsity girls and boys travel to Beargrass. The girls game begins at 4:30; boys will play around 5:45. (Moved up from Friday due to possible bad weather.)
Ocracoke Alive Art with Kitty Mitchell: Learning to See Abstractly + proportional skills. 6 to 8 pm. Deepwater Theater.
Friday, Jan. 30 Researchers and professors K.C. Busch and Laura Moore will be guests on “What’s Happening on Ocracoke” to discuss the dialogue with the Ocracoke community about NC Highway 12 and access issues.11:30 am. 90.1 FM on the island and wovv.org
UNC-Chapel Hill researchers interview islanders on how different land management scenarios might affect the landscape of the island. 1 to 3 pm. To join, click here. Postponed to a date TBD.
Ocracoke Alive: A visit with homing pigeons with Steve and Jeanne Brook. 11 am to noon, Ocracoke Library outside.
Ocracoke Alive: Latino Dance class with Arturo. 6 to 7:15 pm. Ocracoke Community Center.
Saturday, Jan. 31 UNC-Chapel Hill researchers interview islanders on how different land management scenarios might affect the landscape of the island. 10 am to noon. To join, click here. Postponed to a date TBD.
Ocracoke Alive: Melt and pour soap workshop with Mary Ruef. 1 to 3 pm. Deepwater Theater. Postponed to a date TBD.
Ocracoke Alive: Cooking/baking: Swedish saffron almond buns with Matt Janson. 3 to 5 pm. Ocracoke United Methodist Church rec hall. Postponed to a date TBD.
Sunday, Feb. 1 Church services: Ocracoke United Methodist Church, 11 am
Ocracoke Life Saving Church, 11 am
Stella Maris Chapel: Sunday Mass time at 4:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Go to Masstimes.org and type in the zip code 27960 but refresh your browser for it to work properly.
Ocracoke Alive: Games/Puzzles for adults and young adults, 3 to 5 pm. Ocracoke Library. Postponed to a date TBD.
Bobby Garrish and Lydia Freda Spencer reminisce about their childhood days on Ocracoke.
Editor’s note: This story was first published in the October print issue of the Observer.
Text and photos by Connie Leinbach
After about 30 years, Ocracoke cousins Lydia Freda Spencer and Bobby Garrish returned to the house in which they spent many youthful days.
Lydia, 92, (pronounced “Lida”) and Bobby, 87, were both born in their first cousin Alton Ballance’s house across from the old post office, which is now Captain’s Cargo.
Among the oldest island residents, Lydia, nee Williams, was born in 1933 and Bobby in 1939.
“We were born in the same room and the same bed,” Bobby said.
That was back when maternity care was done by island midwives.
Back in the early fall, the two reminisced on Alton’s porch, along with Lydia’s daughter, Elaine Spencer, and Alton’s brother, Kenny, about their days as youngsters on Ocracoke.
This was their grandmother Brittina Williams’s house; and her daughters, Vera (Alton’s mother), Nina Claude (Lydia’s mother) and Maude Thomas (Bobby’s mother) moved into Brittina’s house.
Alton Ballance displays the antique syrup bottle he found in one of his walls.
Along with Alton’s father, Lawrence and other island men who had gone up north to work in shipyards and on dredges, Lydia’s father, Milon Daniel Williams, went to Philadelphia to work.
Alton said that from the northeast, they would drive back to Ocracoke, spend a day or two at home, then drive back.
Bobby’s father, Uriah, was an island mullet fisherman.
“They was hardly ever home,” Lydia, in her island brogue, said about the menfolk. “So, my momma and his momma, we all lived here in Ma Brittie’s house.”
The four women and their six children lived in six rooms, including three bedrooms.
Bobby said four kids slept on the bed and two on the floor.
“The bathroom was outside,” Bobby said, and by that he meant the outhouse.
An old wooden cistern built by Uncle Maurice Ballance collected rainwater for drinking, “and we had a pump that pumped it into the house,” said Alton.
Ma Brittie.
The house was a village hub.
“Everybody gathered on this porch when we were growing up,” added Kenny.
“This was Times Square,” Alton said.
The mail boat would arrive in the afternoon on the dock, he said, “and everyone would gather here and wait for the mail to call over.”
“She was the ‘Ruler of the Ridge,’” Alton said about his grandmother. “She loved sitting here on the porch. None of the buildings across the street now were there. “You could sit on this porch and it was all open beach.”
Although Irvin Garrish Highway is only a few yards from the house tucked behind some shrubbery, when Lydia and Bobby were kids, the road was a sandy path.
There were very few cars and there was no harbor then. Only a “gut,” as it was called, and a beach.
The ocean wasn’t as far away from the center of town as it is now.
There were very few outside lights and it was very dark at night.
“Sometimes you might run into a horse when you were out walking,” said Lydia with a laugh.
The house right beside Alton, now owned by Tom and Carol Pahl, was built by Leonard Bryant for Bobby’s parents, Uriah and Maude Thomas Garrish.
While building it, the children (with the adults) slept in there, and because there were yet no doors or windows, Bryant would place a piece of plywood in the doorway.
“He’d board us all up inside there at night and then let us out in the morning,” Lydia said with a smile.
Alton showed his cousins some artifacts he found inside the walls of his house while he was renovating it after Hurricane Dorian flooded it in September 2019.
One small, greenish bottle was embossed with “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.”
“This was a potion they gave babies 100 years ago to calm them when they were teething or crying,” Alton said.
The baby shoe Alton found inside his wall.
It was called a “baby killer” because it contained morphine, which was unregulated. Giving more of the syrup to babies who didn’t settle was sometimes fatal.
Alton also found a single baby shoe and a piece of a letter from his grandfather to Brittina, in about 1919, asking about the kids.
“In May of 2020 I was working on these walls and found them,” he said.
Alton’s mother, Vera, had issues, he said, “with all these kids running around stealing her perfume and jewelry.
“At one time, she was going with a Navy guy,” Lydia said. “He gave her a pack of chewing gum and she had it on her bureau. And between me and Maude Ellen and Chloe, we got into it and chewed it all. She didn’t like that one bit.”
“She was glad to see them go next door,” Alton said about the kids.
Alton and Kenny Ballance talk about growing up on Ocracoke.
The dunes at South Point shift a little every time I return—sometimes a gentle reshaping, other times a dramatic redrawing of the horizon.
A ridge I once climbed at sunrise might be flattened by winter storms; a bowl of sand where I sat and watched the pelicans glide may be buried under a new crest by summer. Out here, nothing stays where you left it.
The wind and tide take what they want and give back something entirely different, without explanation and without sentiment. It’s a quiet reminder that this 14-mile stretch of Ocracoke has never belonged to anyone for long.
The island remakes itself as it pleases—just as it has with the businesses, the homes, the people, and the memories I once thought would stay put. To love this place is to accept that it won’t stop changing, even when you wish it would. Most everything that thrives here has wings or fins, is coming or going.
Everything has changed here since Hurricane Dorian (Sept. 6, 2019) and its seven-foot wall of water. Then came COVID-19, the work-from-home mandates, and a wave of newcomers who could suddenly live anywhere.
Nearly every house now stands on stilts. Nearly every business has changed hands. Nearly every record has been broken—home prices, occupancy rates, even the familiar boundaries of the season itself. What used to feel like a May-to-August rhythm now spills back into April and forward into September. Even the usually empty Variety Store parking lot is gridlocked with Mad Max-esque tourists, engines revving and tempers flaring as everyone jostles for a patch of asphalt further and further into the fall and winter when NRPOs like me come here to hibernate away from the cacophony of the world.
Arek with a drum.
The paint on our newly purchased home had barely dried before Dorian’s walls of water came surging through our neighborhood. In a daze, shuffling around like a storm-struck zombie, I went searching for my garbage-can holder and found it sitting in front of Arek and Pam’s house. For a brief, ridiculous moment I accused him in my head—imagining he’d swiped it in some hurricane-opportunist frenzy—before remembering that seven feet of rushing water can ferry a hundred pounds of lumber a hundred yards without asking anyone’s permission.
I connected with Arek Djigounian and his wife Pam the moment I met them. We were all in that post-storm, what-the-heck-just-happened, what-do-you-need mode—NRPOs wandering Cabana Drive together, comparing notes on losses and miracles.
Arek knew every line of every episode of Seinfeld, and when he looked at the devastation and deadpanned, “The seas were angry that day, my friend,” it was the only thing in the world that made sense. We snapped together instantly—like Lego blocks separated at birth. I loved him immediately: those monstrous Armenian shoulders shaped by years on Navy aircraft carriers, those oceans he’d seen that I’d only dreamed about. In the wreckage of Dorian, surrounded by this ocean we became the hurricane’s adopted sons.
When you get to be our age, new friends don’t come around that often, and we both quietly understood how rare and precious our time together was. For me, it was a five-hour commute to the ferry; for him, 90 minutes. We’d steal whatever moments we could—meeting out on South Point for drum when they were running, bluefish when they weren’t, and Spiny Dogfish on cold MLK weekends when the water punished every cast.
The ritual always ended the same way: a stop at 1718, where Arek refused, every single time, to let me pay for the tart cherry ciders I loved. As much as Arek cared for me, he cared for this place—these places—even more.
He knew who Raul was at the Variety Store. He knew to call Woody and who Woody even was when the roof leaked or a window needed replacing. He knew everyone and everything here in a way only true islanders or old souls ever do. We both loved this place that way and I loved him more because of it.
I hugged him on March 31st in front of the Ocracoke Oyster Company. He had extended his hand after lunch with our wives for a shake, but I wrapped my arm around those enormous shoulders instead—pulling him in and telling him I loved him. Then he and Pam headed to the 1 p.m. ferry back to Elizabeth City.
South Point.
The next day—April Fool’s Day—the phone rang to say he had just kept going, all the way off this earth. His larger-than-life heart had stopped. And I sat there with a second flood of water–pouring out of me this time–soaking my shirt and the keys of this keyboard still. The last text to him from my denial laden fingers asking, “ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?”
He used to say “No bueno” whenever things went south—when they ran out of his favorite beer, when the blues were biting off our rigs, when the weather turned on us without warning.
“No bueno,” he’d mutter, half annoyed, half amused. Now, the island and all of its changes feel no bueno to me. I barely recognize my own street, lined now with eight campers and travel trailers that weren’t there before Dorian.
I also barely recognize the tourists, who arrive in waves and leave my house—and so many others—thrashed and trashed after Airbnb work-from-home-weekends that blur into one long season. The people whose names I knew at the businesses I loved to frequent signed papers, got checks, and either retired or moved away entirely.
Eduardo is leaving next. The coffee shop is for sale. And if I sit still long enough, tapping these words out, I can almost hear Arek’s “no bueno” drifting down from somewhere above, carried on the same wind that reshapes these dunes.
Arek with a wahoo.
It was all easier to bear—the good changes and the bad—when I was sitting across from him at 1718 with a Tart Cherry Cider he would inevitably insist on paying for. Or when we were planted in our beach chairs, watching our mullet-loaded lines disappear into the surf, waiting for something to tug us back into the moment.
I’d grumble about whatever was bothering me, and he’d fire back with a simple, steady “No bueno,” and just like that we’d move on—two middle-aged men staring into the healing waters of the Atlantic. We were going to retire here in a few years. Be on this island full-time. Be here when the drum returned in fall and spring. Watch the July fireworks together, big shoulder to smaller shoulder.
But everything changes here. The dunes grow and shrink. Channels in the Pamlico shift left and right, deepening and shoaling with every storm. The island gives freely—memories, fish, clams, and a lifetime supply of sand ground into the carpet of my truck.
But it also takes. It exacts a toll from anyone who stays long enough to love it. Sometimes the price is too high. Others have lost far more than I have and still carry on—generations of pirates, pilots, and resilient souls who know this place better than I ever will.
Even still. I miss my friend.
Ocracoke property owner and Ocracoke Observer contributor, Michael Lydick and his family, live mostly in Winston-Salem.
Update from the NC Forecast Office Jan. 21: We are still tracking the potential for a significant winter storm to unfold across Eastern NC this weekend. The biggest changes this morning are increased confidence in ice and freezing rain impacts, and lower probabilities of snow impacts for most, except those along and north of US 264. The coast remains the biggest area of uncertainty regarding winter weather impacts due to lower confidence in sub-freezing temperatures.
Eastern North Carolina has been placed under a winter storm watch for this weekend, the National Weather Service’s NC Weather Forecast Office announced Tuesday morning.
It is too early to determine what type and amount of precipitation will fall. The storm could bring snow, ice, freezing rain or some combination of the three.
The Forecast Office will issue updates on timing and expected accumulation as additional data becomes available from forecasting models.
Dolphin Uriah Johnson leaps to block a Hobgood player on Jan. 16. Basketball action at home continues on Friday, Jan. 23, in the Ocracoke School gym. Photo: C. Leinbach/Ocracoke Observer
Ocracoke Alive winter activities begin. To see the full schedule, click here.
Monday, Jan. 19. Martin Luther King Day holiday: Ocracoke Alive: Spanish/English Coffee hour, 8:15 to 9:15 am. Ocracoke Library. Then every Monday through March 23.
Tuesday, Jan. 20: Ocracoke Alive: Cooking/baking with David Tweedie: German almond horns, 6 pm. RSVP requested.
Ocracoke Civic & Business Association board meeting, 6 pm. Community Center. See agenda below.
Wednesday, Jan. 21: Ocracoke Alive: Yoga in Spanish with Sarah Shellow, 8:30 to 9:30 am. Deepwater Theater.
NC ferry Division job fair Hatteras.10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hatteras Inlet Ferry Terminal.
Ocracoke Waterways Commission meets, 6:30 pm. Community Center.
Ocracoke Alive: Creative Writing ~ Poetry with Sarah Shellow (Session 1), 1 to 2:15pm. Deepwater Theater.
Ocracoke Alive: Art: Learning to See Abstractly with Kitty Mitchell, 6 to 8 pm. Deepwater Theater.
Ocracoke Planning Advisory Board meets at 5:30 pm. Community Center. See agenda below.
Friday, Jan. 23: Ocracoke School basketball at home vs. Mattamuskeet: Girls middle school at 2:30 pm; MS Boys will play around 3:30. Then Varsity girls will play around 4:30 and varsity boys will play around 6. Canceled due to threat of inclement weather.
Saturday, Jan. 24: Ocracoke Alive: Hand building Pottery Angels with Marty Freeman (Session 1) (Max 10) 1 to 3 pm. Deepwater Theater.
Community Potluck; Ocracoke Life Saving Church. 5 pm. Story time follows the meal.
Ocracoke Alive: Ocracoke Philosophical Salon ~ Do we have free will? ~ Hosted by Philip Howard, 7 to 9 pm. 30 Lawton Lane.
Sunday, Jan. 25: Church services: Ocracoke United Methodist Church, 11 am
Ocracoke Life Saving Church, 11 am
Stella Maris Chapel: Sunday Mass time at 4:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Go to Masstimes.org and type in the zip code 27960 but refresh your browser for it to work properly.
Ocracoke School Sunday Supper fundraiser for the 2026 senior class: Mexican food noon to 2 p.m. See flyer below. Sunday, Feb. 1, will be fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans.
Ocracoke Alive: Games/Puzzles for Families & All Ages, 3 to 5 pm. Ocracoke Library.
The Henry Pigott house on Portsmouth Island. Photo by Sara Hassatt
By Peter Vankevich
The Portsmouth Island Christmas Bird Count took place this year after having been canceled in 2023 and 2024 due to access issues from Ocracoke.
It didn’t look good again in December as Captain Donald Austin, due to a late notice work-related conflict, was unable to ferry the observers over from Ocracoke in his skiff on the scheduled Dec. 30 date. He could, however, take folks over on Thursday, New Year’s Day. That could work because the Ocracoke count, which runs in tandem, would take place on Dec. 31.
This is a reason why the count is RSVP. After some rapid texting and phone calls to those who had signed up, the date was changed.
Then on Wednesday, Captain Austin said the high wind forecast was not conducive to crossing the inlet the next day. Friday would be better.
More furious texting and phone calls. There would be enough observers; 15 of them would be able to available on Jan. 2 and the count was on. But not one of them for some health issues, was the count’s compiler, Peter Vankevich.
Heading to Portsmouth Island. Photo: P. Vankevich/Ocracoke Observer
It was worth the wait.
Approaching the island, two observers jumped off the boat and waded to the beach popular with shell collectors. This area has experienced a lot of erosion over the past year.
The others debarked at the Haulover Dock. Two teams covered the village and a third headed to the berms and a once bare salt flat that is now covered with smooth cordgrass and other plants that tolerate high salt concentrations.
The village, battered by hurricanes over the many years, is maintained by the National Park Service’s Cape Lookout National Seashore. Only 20 structures remain: family homes, a Methodist church, schoolhouse, post office and the life-saving station.
Greater Yellowlegs. Photo by Jeff Beane
Founded in 1753 as a lightering hub. Villagers used their smaller boats to transport goods across the Pamlico Sound to the mainland from the large ships arriving from Europe and the Caribbean.
Its peak was around 1860 with one source citing a population of 865 residents.
The Civil War caused a mass exodus and it never recovered. By 1956, only 17 residents remained and continued to diminish. Elma Dixon and Marion Babb left in 1971 after the death of Henry Pigott. They were the final residents.
There is an appeal for visiting the island in the winter when the skies can be stark and the sounds are of the wind and not vehicles and other sounds one hears in urban settings.
“Birding on Portsmouth Island is a unique experience,” commented Hal Broadfoot of Fayetteville, who has participated in every one of these counts, which began in 1988.
“It is isolated and quiet. It offers the chance to bird while walking through a coastal ghost town. Sometimes you’ll see a Peregrine Falcon or an Orange-crowned Warbler, but you’ll always have a good day.”
Birding in Portsmouth Village. Photo by Dan Pope
“I liked how Captain Donald Austin slowed the skiff to let us watch and photograph a pod of dolphins in the inlet,” said Denny Dobbin, who has houses on Ocracoke and Chapel Hill and has participated in the count for a dozen years. “We used to be able to walk from the Village to the beach but there was way too much water this year. It covered the trail through the flats between them, so we couldn’t cross on foot. It was deep enough that even a 4-wheeler would get stuck.”
For Sara Hassatt, who also has homes on Ocracoke and on the mainland, this was her second year participating in this count and her husband Tom’s first.
“We were thrilled to be able to go to Portsmouth this year,” she said. “I enjoyed being with more experienced birders and learning to identifying new species. I added 17 birds to my life list.”
The village, with its open mowed areas, standing trees and bushes makes it a nice wintering grounds for the birds of prey that feed on smaller birds and there were plenty present: Northern Harrier (15), Sharp-shinned Hawk (3), Cooper’s Hawk (3), Bald Eagle (3) and the most unusual were three Red-tailed Hawks, common on the mainland, but not on barrier islands. There were no Peregrine Falcons, but they have been seen on 20 of these counts over the years. Hanging around all day were Turkey Vultures (6).
The ubiquitous Yellow-rumped Warbler on count day. Photo by Jeff Beane
By far, the most common wintering land bird is the Yellow-rumped Warbler and this year 1,150 were tallied. These birds shift their summer diet of primarily insects to berries in the winter, enabling them to thrive on barrier islands like Portsmouth and Ocracoke which have plentiful bayberry, wax myrtle, juniper and poison ivy.
Portsmouth Island is well-known as a North Carolina wintering ground for American Oystercatchers and 11 individuals were recorded.
Christmas Bird Counts, begun in 1900 by ornithologist Frank Chapman of the National Audubon Society, are considered to be the longest-running citizen science project. They include species and the number of individuals observed which help show trends in bird populations, migrations trends and environmental impacts. The first year had 25 counts and they have grown to 2,600 and 80,000 volunteers.
White Ibis. Photo by Sara Hassatt
In North Carolina, there are 53 counts. The Portsmouth count complements the Ocracoke count, offering comparative insights into how birds use these adjacent but ecologically distinct islands.
Ocracoke Alive continues the community cultural activities it began last winter this year with Flavia Burton’s presentation of her adventures in South Africa from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday (Jan. 18) in the Ocracoke School.
Running through March 28, activities during the day and evening at various locations will include art, music, dance, creative writing, wellness and cooking classes as well as films, concerts and presentations.
A special emphasis this year will be the offering of more activities to draw in the Latino community, said Ocracoke Alive Executive Director David Tweedie.
“When we asked the community what they were interested in, they wanted multicultural offerings,” he said.
To that end, he said, the activities this year include Latin dancing, along with a couple of community dances, some cooking classes, coffee conversation hours, creative writing in Spanish and yoga in Spanish.
The online schedule will be translated into Spanish.
Among the new additions this year are Games/Puzzles for Families & All Ages in the Ocracoke Community Library; Ocracoke Philosophical Salon with Philip Howard; A visit with homing pigeons; Seamanship and knots; Hand building Pottery Angels; Improv Theater for Adults; soapmaking; A performance of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” by the Mended Wing Theater Company; a jazz concert; a seminar on “Envisioning the Future of Ocracoke”; and the North Carolina premier of Ben Knight’s new documentary “The Best Day Ever.”
The schedule is subject to change and some classes with limited capacity require registration.
For the detailed list of all activities and to sign up, visit the calendar here: www.ocracokealive.org.
On the early morning Swan Quarter ferry. Photo: C. Leinbach/Ocracoke Observer
By Connie Leinbach
As of Jan. 1, the N.C. Ferry Division has stopped allowing free passes on the toll ferries for residents going to medical appointments.
Tim Hass, Ferry Division spokesman, confirmed this move in an email, noting that while the medical appointments and education exemptions had been allowed in the past, “We did not have authority to exempt them.”
But recent work with their legal team on this led to this change to ensure compliance.
“Over time, several toll exemptions had been allowed administratively, including for medical appointments and education related travel,” he said. “Upon review, NCDOT determined that these particular exemptions were not supported by statutory authority or formal policy approval, even though they had been extended in practice for many years.”
He said that the policy changes align ferry toll exemptions with those that are either:
Explicitly authorized in NC General Statutes, such as Evacuation and Emergency Events – G.S. 136-82(b2), or Court Ordered Appearances – G.S. 7A.312(a).
Formally approved as part of the DOT’s operational authority and oversight to operate the state’s ferry system, as well as toll actions that require and receive approval from the Board of Transportation (BOT).
As part of this alignment, passes to see doctors lacked that authority and were discontinued to ensure consistency, transparency and compliance going forward, Hass said.
Under the DOT’s statutory authority to operate the ferry system, vehicles operated by Ferry Division employees traveling to and from their assigned workstations as part of ferry operations are not charged tolls.
“This is considered an operational function necessary to maintain ferry service, not a discretionary toll exemption,” he said.
An example of BOT-approved exemption is for children age three and under on the passenger only Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry.
Medical passes were granted for vehicles and passengers for physician visits using both vehicle ferries and the passenger-only Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry.
“The only waiver on the toll ferries is for jury duty,” Bob Chestnut, chair of the Ocracoke Civic & Business Association, said in an interview. He also said tht he and the Ocracoke Access Alliance are looking into how this waiver, as well as waivers for school buses and seniors, could be legislatively sanctioned.
In 2025, 297 spaces were granted and in 2024, 258 spaces were granted, Hass said.
Service for most of North Carolina’s seven ferry routes is free, but fares are charged for service on the popular Cedar Island-Ocracoke and Swan Quarter-Ocracoke routes as well as the Southport-Fort Fisher route and the Ocracoke Express (Hatteras-Ocracoke) passenger ferry route.
North Carolina’s 100 county boards of elections on Monday, Jan. 12, began sending absentee-by-mail ballots to registered voters who requested a ballot for the 2026 primary election.
This marks the start of voting for North Carolina’s March 3 primary election.
Voters who have already requested absentee-by-mail ballots should receive them in the coming days.
In North Carolina, any eligible voter can request, receive, and vote an absentee ballot by mail. Find more information at Vote By Mail.
The absentee ballot request deadline is Tuesday, Feb. 17.
Election officials urge voters who wish to vote by mail to request their ballot as early as possible to ensure there is time to receive it and then send it back to their county board of elections so that it is received no later than 7:30 p.m. on Election Day – March 3.
State law previously provided for a grace period if your ballot was postmarked on or before Election Day and received up to three days after the election. That is no longer the case. The ballot must be at the county board office, not in the mail, by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
In the primary election, voters will select nominees for a political party to move on to the Nov. 3 general election.
In primaries, voters affiliated with a political party will be given a ballot of candidates for their party.
Unaffiliated voters may choose the ballot of any one party that has a primary (Democratic or Republican) or a nonpartisan ballot, if available in their jurisdiction.
The Green Party and Libertarian Party do not have NC primaries in 2026. More information: Upcoming Election.
