9.25- Skywatch Friday - River of Light

A shrimp trawler rides a river within a river... a river of light in the cloud shadows
on the Neuse River... into Oriental Harbor under skies darkened by extratropical storm 94L

Click on picture or here for full size

Today's SWF picture was taken about 1:00 p.m. local time, Thursday Sept. 25, from the Lou-Mac Park fishing pier on the Neuse River, facing southwesterly.

Extratropical storm 94L is quieting down after bringing heavy winds and a bit of rain to eastern North Carolina overnight. Rainfall in Oriental was measured at one half inch, but some gusty winds in the 40 mph range tore through town last night.

The prevailing northeast winds brought in by this storm over the past three days caused an unusually high wind tide along the coast, no exception for Oriental...
See my posts from earlier today and yesterday for views of the risen waters: scroll down or click here

The waters rose a bit more last night, but have been dropping steadily this morning.

The center of the storm is about to go ashore near the North Carolina-South Carolina border, and should quickly dissipate, though we may be in store for more rain over the next few days.

As the remnants of the storm move up the coast, the wind will veer, and the high waters will be blown back out into Pamlico Sound.

Read more about "L94" on WeatherUnderground at Jeff Masters' Wunder Blog.

See radar images of L94 from NOAA.

I look forward to seeing the other Skywatch pictures from around the world on the other SWF sites listed at:


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9.19- Rigging the trawl nets (Skywatch Friday is PRIOR POST BELOW)

Workers stow and rig trawl nets on shrimp boat docked at Point Pride Seafood
(click here or on picture for full size)

I am frequently dumbfounded by the apparent complexity of rigging on the commercial trawlers that inhabit the two Raccoon Creek fish-houses.

The outriggers reaching to the sky, the assorted superstructures, attachments and the miles of cables and rigging remind me of the multiple masts, spars and rigging I've seen on various models of old square-rigged ships (and as described in Patrick O'Brian's Aubry-Maturin books.)

The guy up top was stacking the various nets on which he is standing, and passing lines to the guy down on the deck.

I took this picture from the Bauer dinghy while sailing up Raccoon Creek.

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9.14- Parade of Shrimp Boats

Four commercial trawlers (shrimp-boats) leaving Oriental Harbor as weekend shrimping curfew ends.

I was out sailing on the Neuse River in the Bauer dinghy today when these four shrimp-boats left Oriental harbor and headed down the Neuse River for a new week of shrimping.

There is a shrimping curfew from Friday midnight to Sunday noon, so on Sunday afternoon most of the commercial shrimp boats leave their weekend berths at Garland Fulcher Seafood Co. and Point Pride Seafood Co. to go out shrimping.

I was sailing near Oriental Marker #1 when these four trawlers started coming out. In order of departure (and in order of the slides above), they were:

• "Goldie Marie" - 73 foot, 93 tons, owned by Chris Fulcher
  
• "Capt. Cecil" - 75 foot, 130 tons, owned by Sherrill Styron
  
• "Emily Brooks" - 73 foot, 108 tons, owned Sherrill Styron
  
• "Amanda Ashley" - 73 foot, 92 tons, owned by Forest H. Williams, Sr., Grantsboro NC

Mr. Chris Fulcher owns "Point Pride Seafood," while Mr. Sherrill Styron owns "Garland Fulcher Seafood," which can be a bit confusing at first.

The late Garland Fulcher was the local fishing baron and Chris Fulcher's father. Sherrill Styron was Mayor of Oriental for 24 years, and is now a Town Commissioner. I don't know anything about Mr. Forest Williams of nearby Grantsboro.

"Point Pride Seafood" is on the Eastern side of Raccoon Creek (where you see the trawlers in the banner/title photo at the top of this page), while "Garland Fulcher Seafood" is on the Western side (not visible, but to the left in the banner/title photo at top of page).

"Point Pride Seafood" sits on a property with a very long and interesting history in Oriental... the point of land it is on, at the confluence of Raccoon Creek and the Neuse River, was known as "Chadwick Point" in the late 19th century, and was home to two lumber mills at the time the town was chartered in 1899... one of the mills was owned by Robert Midyette, who in 1873 purchased the 350 acres of land on which the town was founded.

(For some reason, local lore credits Robert Midyette's nephew, "Uncle Lou" Midyette -- half of the namesake of "Lou-Mac Park" -- as the "founder" of Oriental, but my research indicates that Robert Midyette was the actual owner of the land and the real mover and shaker behind the town's creation)

"Raccoon Creek" was also known as the "log pond" when the Chadwick Point lumber mills were operating because "rafts" of logs which had been cut down farther up the local creeks were floated down to Raccoon Creek where they floated while awaiting milling at the Chadwick Point mills.

The Chadwick Point land was eventually purchased by the "Oriental Bulkhead and Improvement Company" in a fascinating (and ultimately disastrous for the OBIC) land development scheme, about which I'm sure I will explain more in a future posting.

Anyway, enough about Oriental history... today it looked like "Goldie Marie" was going shrimping on Garbacon Shoal, just across the Neuse River from Oriental (in the last picture, you can see Goldie Marie in the distance, turning off to starboard), while the others proceeded farther down the Neuse and possibly into Pamlico Sound.

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9.12- Casting net from Town Dock (SkywatchFriday is next OLDER POST, below)

Casting a net for bait fish at Town Dock in Raccoon Creek, Oriental, NC.

This gentleman and his wife arrived at Town Dock in their inflatable dinghy this afternoon... while the wife went to The Bean for some coffee drinks, the husband took out his cast net and began casting for bait.

The couple live aboard their boat at Pecan Grove Marina, right across Smith Creek from Oriental (straight ahead as the camera points.) "Yeah, this dinghy is our car, and the boat is our house," the wife explained to me.

Both I and the wife pointed out to the husband that there were thousands of Menhaden swimming around in a tight ball near the Hodges Street bulkhead, 30 feet from Town Dock, but the husband wanted Pinfish, and was not interested in Menhaden... "They fall apart too easy," he said.

For those of you who have never used a cast net, this guy makes it look easy, but it just ain't so at first... I have been trying to learn, but I can't get it to spread out properly except maybe every fourth or fifth throw. See Capt. Robby trying to teach me at the end of the slide show on my Labor Day posting.

It seems just about every person has his or her own particular method of casting a net... just search "how to cast net" on YouTube, and you will come up with a dozen or more "how to" videos (see one example below), each involving different steps and techniques, and each one of which claims to be the easiest and most effective. The same is true of every fisher I have talked to in person... Typical instructions go along the lines of:

"You just (coil the line in your throwing hand / coil in your non-throwing hand / let the line lay on the ground), then grab the net about (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 3 feet, 4 feet down, waist-high, just above the waist, just below the waist), then grab the (front, rear, left, right) of the hanging lead-line (with your right pinky / left forefinger and thumb / in your teeth) then you grab (1/2, 1/3, 3/4, 5/8) of the remaining net in your (left / right/ throwing / non-throwing) hand, then (put this part on your left shoulder / put that part over your right leg / flip this part over your left wrist), do the hokey-pokey, blink three times, wiggle your right earlobe, and throw!"

Follow these easy instructions (!!!!) and you too can throw a perfect cast net:

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9.11- Fulcher Seafood docks from OYC

(click on picture for full size image)

Three commercial trawlers docked at Fulcher Seafood Co. docks in Raccoon Creek, as seen from the deck of the Oriental Yacht Club.

"Betty H.," "Capt. Ryan" and "Capt. Jeff" were docked at Fulcher Seafood Co. this afternoon when I dropped by the "Oriental Yacht Club."

I'll have more to say about the OYC in the future... I need to get some more info so I don't end up telling some lies about it. It is in some pretty old buildings, though, and it has this funky covered deck sticking out into Raccoon Creek right next to the Fulcher Seafood fish-house and docks, also on Raccoon Creek.

This is my fist B&W entry in either of my two blogs. I learned photography as a lad and young man with analog cameras... by the time I was in Junior High School I was doing almost exclusively B&W photos and my own processing and printing, much of it for the yearbooks and newspapers.

I kind of gave up photography at some point in college, no longer having access to good darkroom facilities and having failed to maintain / replace my aging and abused cameras and equipment. As I re-entered the hobby in the digital age, I adopted to color photography, which was quite expensive back in the analog days.

Now I have been seeing a lot of great B&W work on "City Daily Photo" blogs, and decided to give digital B&W a try for a while... not exclusively, mind you, but now that I have figured out how to switch the cameras to B&W mode, I expect to being doing a bit more... Now I just have to figure out how to switch my brain and eyes to B&W mode; I hope it's something like riding a bicycle.

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