Four hundred miles from home, signs of hope
Scott McLeod photo
Glass half full, that’s me. Lots of good folks out there doing good things. We had a couple of gentle reminders of this on Monday.
I’m hunkered down on a drizzly day in the cabin of our boat, which is docked at Duck Creek Marina in Bridgeton, North Carolina. That’s just across the Neuse River from New Bern for those familiar with the Carolina coast.
That puts us at about 390 miles from our home in Waynesville. It’s a cool 57 degrees, but we’ve opted not to use our portable heater and instead are wearing warm clothes, keeping the cabin hatch open to enjoy the morning. A mug of hot coffee on this morning is more than satisfying, and my laptop literally sits on my lap, its warmth a welcome heat source.
This boat has been in my wife’s family since her father purchased it in 1986, nearly 40 years. It’s a 1979 Bayfield, a 32-foot cutter rigged sailboat built in Canada, its beam is wide and its full keel sturdy, a design built to handle the storms of the Great Lakes made famous in songs and legend.
Tranquilo, the boat, goes nowhere fast. The 15 horsepower Yanmar diesel maxes out at around 6 knots, and on a 20-mile per hour wind she’ll make at most 7 knots. A seasoned sailor we spoke with yesterday — one who has lived aboard his boat for the last nine years and sailed the entire Caribbean and the east coast of Central America — joked “if you’re in a hurry, get a plane ticket, don’t take a sailboat.”
But it’s a haven for us mountain folk. We make our way around the Pamlico Sound, to Ocracoke and Cape Lookout, inland to Oriental and Beaufort. New Bern, its riverfront and quaint downtown are actually somewhat similar to Waynesville’s downtown in size and look. We feast on seafood and local craft beers, wandering through shops and what is almost always a lively town. One of my favorite towns in the state.
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As we drove toward the marina on this trip — Monday, Dec. 9 — the sign caught my eye: “Pray for WNC,” red and blue letters against a white background, obviously homemade, stuck in the median of U.S. 17, the famous coastal highway. I was thinking the rest of the state was forgetting about our woes, about the heartbreak and years of rebuilding ahead for us in the mountains. The sign was a gentle reminder that people care, that fellow North Carolinians care.
As we boarded Tranquilo and prepared her for us staying aboard for just a night, another boat owner walking the dock stopped to chat. Conversations bounced around from the boat, different anchor types, what color is best for painting a boat’s hull, etc. Then we got to the personal questions, where you from, all that.
As we told him “Waynesville, in the mountains,” his first words were hurricane-related. “You guys all right, did your town see much damage, that was a terrible storm.”
And so we reiterated what all of us in the mountains know, that yes, we took a big hit, that storm-related work and recovery will be a part of our lives for years to come, that the road to recovery is still fraught with challenges.
But I also felt a welling hope that was nearly overwhelming. Here we are nearly 400 miles from the mountains, from the damage we still see every day, and yet people are concerned. That sailor will be on his boat headed toward Miami and the Keys in a few days, but his comments and that small sign planted in the median were signs for me, signs that we have not been forgotten. As we celebrate family and all our blessings this holiday season, I’m coming away from our trip to the coast filled with a bit more hope about what the future holds for the mountains.
(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
