By CONNIE LEINBACH By CONNIE LEINBACH The early morning ferry boat to Cedar Island was freed late this afternoon after spending all day stuck in sand in the ditch just in Ocracoke since shortly after it left the dock. “I’ve never seen one stuck there before,” said Wilson Garrish, an Ocracoke native who braved the […]
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Ocracoke and mainland Hyde residents who attended a hearing last night on the N.C. Department of Transportation’s plan to toll the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry were overwhelmingly against putting a toll on their only free access to their homes. “A toll on the Ocracoke-Hatteras ferry would devastate our local economy,” said Chip Stevens, owner of Blackbeard’s Lodge, […]
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Peter Vankevich has been a birding ambassador this winter for more than 100 visitors wanting to see the two rare snowy owls now calling Ocracoke their winter hunting grounds. There may even be a third one, Vankevich says on a recent morning while driving his red Jeep on the South point beach where the owls […]
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By CONNIE LEINBACH Hyde County commissioner John Fletcher thinks the N.C. Department of Transportation should look into installing slot machines on the long-haul ferries to help with the revenue crunch. He proposed this idea Feb. 3 at the monthly meeting of the Hyde County Board of Commissioners. Fletcher is the Ocracoke representative. “The money that […]
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The North Carolina Department of Transportation has scheduled a hearing on tolling the Ocracoke-Hatteras ferry for Wednesday, Feb. 5, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Ocracoke School gym, 120 School Road. It is one of four hearings the DOT will hold about this issue. This go-round, it’s all about filling the state’s coffers for […]
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The specter of tolls on the Hatteras-Ocracoke route is again rearing its head. In December, the N.C. Board of Transportation adopted a resolution in response to a law passed in the General Assembly last year that authorizes the state DOT to “prescribe and collect tolls on the ferry routes.” The resolution requires the DOT to […]
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The weather and the food may be responsible for the 2013 Oyster Roast by the Ocracoke Working Watermen Association being the best ever in its eight-year history. “It’s probably one of the better ones,” said Bill Evans as he dumped pile after pile of steaming oysters on make-shift plywood tables where patrons dug in. “The […]
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Every time it rains on Ocracoke, islanders and visitors must run a gauntlet of large puddles on the village streets that often last for days before evaporating. This has been going on for many years and Wednesday night, the Ocracoke Civic and Business Association agreed to be the group to try to move forward to […]
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Kelley Shinn finds Ocracoke the perfect place to write her memoir about losing her legs—and almost her life–when she was 16. Shinn, 40, an adjunct professor of writing at the University of Akron, is living on the island with her two children on a writer-in-residence fellowship to chronicle her life. She also is conducting a […]
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The Ocracoke ABC store is once again struggling with seasonal cash flow and will certainly welcome shoppers purchasing spirits for the holiday season. Information revealed at a public meeting on Nov. 18 shows that sales began to slow down in September, and the Hyde County ABC Board is still trying to resolve some of the […]
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