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or three years, Dale Davenport and John Fairfield have tried to sail their two open boats to Ocracoke. The little island at the bottom of the Outer banks has been sort of a Holy Grail. This year, with their friends Doug Stark and Jay Eberly, they did reach the island. And if the third time was the charm, it did come with an asterisk: they had a little help from the NC ferry service.

The Caledonia yawls, ‘Sara’ and ‘Rebecca Ann’.

On Wednesday, the friends from Roanoke and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia glided their 19 foot Caledonia yawls — the Sara and the Rebecca Ann — in to Oriental’s Town Dock for a stopover.

John Fairfield, Doug Stark, Dale Davenport, Jay Eberly in the ‘Rebecca Ann’ before departure Thursday.

John Fairfield owns the Sara, and Dale Davenport owns the Rebecca Ann. The lapstraked yawls – with the classic lines that show up in illustrations in children’s books — are named for their wives.

The Caledonia yawls have Viking roots, the men say, inspired by Norwegian maelstroms. Dale says they were popularized in the late 1800’s on the Shetland Islands of far northern Scotland. At one point he says, there was a scarcity of appropriate wood with which to build them, and so they became kit boats, with the wood and instructions supplied.

These two boats are made of mahogany ply and glue. A boat builder in Vermont made the Sara in her entirety and made the hull of the Rebecca Ann. Dale finished the rest of his boat, adding details such as the leather fittings around the mast holes and making the sails himself.

One end of the ‘Rebecca Ann’

Sara is 19 feet long and 5 feet wide. Rebecca Ann is 19’6” and has a 6-foot beam. John Fairfield, Sara’s owner, says that extra foot makes a difference. It’s like comparing, he says, “an F150 and a 2-seater sports car.” (And heading out of the harbor on Thursday, the more narrow boat overtook the Rebecca Ann, which had a head start.)

The wider ‘Rebecca Ann’, with Doug Stark at the oars, as he and owner ‘Rebecca Ann’s owner, Dale Davenport were about to shove off from the Town Dock at Oriental Thursday.

For five years, the Dale and John and their friends have put the open boats — and themselves — to the test, venturing out on week-long trips. The first year had been Cumberland Island off of Georgia. Another year, they sailed from Hilton Head to Charleston. Then, Ocracoke became the destination. About which more in a moment.

The boats are very much open, with no part covered. They could sleep aboard in the open air, but rarely do. Doug Stark says they’ve sometimes slept on the concrete next to the boats at a dock. Or camp out. The other night, at one camp site, John strung a hammock and he and his dog Bonnie shared it. (It was 45 degrees he says, and a second dog might’ve brought even more warmth.)

Sometimes they take a break from the elements altogether and get a hotel room, as they did at the Oriental Marina Inn on Wednesday night. (but Doug notes, they brought their cooking gear inside and made pancakes and bacon in the room.)

The (very) open boat, ‘Rebecca Ann’.

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We caught up with them Thursday morning, as the crews were preparing for what looked to be a rainy trip up the Neuse to New Bern. They were especially particular about strapping down their gear. It was borne of experience: the first year they tried to reach Ocracoke, the ‘Rebecca Ann’ got rolled in the waters about a mile off of Cape Lookout Lighthouse. All their gear went over, and a radio and tiller never came back up.

The people watching on the beach Doug says, seemed to be in two camps. Those who thought the Coast Guard should be called to rescue them, and those who had heard the crew say earlier they were on an adventure and so, “‘let them be.’” The last camp won out. Their friends in Sara eventually dragged them to shore and they “crawled up the beach.” They had a new tiller made in Harker’s Island, but it didn’t quite work, and the trip to Ocracoke that year was scuttled.

The crew of ‘Sara’ secures its gear. Bonnie supervises.

Last weekend, they set out on another – their third — quest to reach Ocracoke.

They trailered their boats to Cedar Island, where they camped Saturday night. The plan was to sail to Portsmouth Island, which is just across the Ocracoke Inlet from Ocracoke. But on Sunday, gale winds were blowing, a little too much for their open boats and crew.

So they took the ferry to Ocracoke on Sunday and stayed just a bit to savor the place they’d been trying to reach for three years. The next day, Doug says, they got the last ferry from Ocracoke to Swanquarter, with the wind coming right out of the west. They trailered the boats to Belhaven, put them in the water there and set out Tuesday with north winds blowing hard, four foot waves. They got to Little Bear Creek east of Vandemere Tuesday night and then came down the ICW Wednesday to Oriental. They were taking a jaunt up to New Bern on Thursday and thinking about how they would get back to their cars.

The ‘Rebecca Ann’ departs.

They drew a small crowd — this being Oriental — for their departure Thursday. A man from an adjacent boat called out that they had “the smallest carbon footprint”. (Doug Stark responded that that the man was only saying that because he hadn’t seen their cooking.)

Bonnie flies over the ocean. Or at least a foot or two of Oriental harbor water to get in to John Fairfield’s boat, ‘Sara’. The dog has been known to lean in to the rower on every stroke.

The ‘Rebecca Ann’ left first, then the ‘Sara’ took off — twice — because Bonnie had leapt to shore at the last minute and had to be retrieved.

Rowing out. The ‘Sara’ and ‘Rebecca Ann’ in Oriental Harbor as the four friends set out, in the rain, for New Bern. They hoisted sails outside the breakwater.

Posted Friday May 16, 2008 by Melinda Penkava

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