Photographs of coastal Carolina.
Engelhard, NC
An old fishing boat in Engelhard Harbor, decks awash, dock lines still secured. It’s the fate of most wooden fishing boats to sink at sea or in the harbor. The cost of breaking them up and hauling them away usually falls to the municipality, a pauper’s burial.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Engelhard, NC
The Captain Mike will never go to sea again. Her planks are sprung, seams are open, and rust stains her white hull. Some old boats have value in their scrap metal. Old wooden boats are just an expense.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Engelhard, NC
A bent and twisted crab pot discarded on the dock at Engelhard. The raised wood grain of the dock shows the same hard wear. It’s a marginal life, fishing for a living.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Oriental, NC
Nets hung to dry in the rigging of the Master Joseph of Rayboro, North Carolina.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Swan Quarter, NC
Old purse seiners rafted to the commercial wharf at Swan Quarter, North Carolina. Their hulls are bleached by the early morning light like the bones of old soldiers left on the field.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Swan Quarter, NC
Fishing vessels lay rafted alongside the wharf at Swan Quarter, North Carolina. Like a moth-balled fleet, they are slowly weathering away.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Swan Quarter, NC
Commercial fishing boats in North Carolina often have threatening names, names like Addiction, Predator, and Night Stalker. Fishing is a dangerous business. Perhaps such aggressive names are intended to intimidate what they most fear.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Swan Quarter
A purse seiner in Swan Quarter, North Carolina, dressed like a rainbow in rust and flaking paint. She has no name that I know of, just another anonymous old boat weathering away at the wharf, but brightly colored.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Swan Quarter
The commercial fishing boat Predator shifts berth, maneuvering in the narrow channel of Swan Quarter, North Carolina. On one side the channel is constrained by the wooded shore, on the other by boats rafted alongside the commercial wharves. The Predator has only a single-engine. Moving her in the confined space is like driving a logging truck on the ice.
To purchase this print, visit the Waterfront Gallery.
Waterfront Gallery slideshow.
Fog is a cloud that’s descended to earth.
Fog both simplifies and confounds. Sound travels circuitously in the fog, snaking sinuously, unreliably, and distance is abrogated. The world becomes a more simple canvas without distance.
Fog unmakes the familiar. Our world is mostly visual. We depend so much upon our sight that we are literally lost without it, adrift in the fog.
Sidney Creek is a familiar place, a short paddle from the shore of Chocowinity Bay where I live. I’ve often paddled the meandering pathways through the saw grass and sunken forest of cypress trees. I anticipate what I’m likely to see until I don’t, until the fog descends from the sky and distance is abrogated.
The world becomes more intimate in the fog, if undefined. For a sailor on the sea or a climber on a mountain, that lack of definition is dangerous but on Sidney Creek, it’s magical.
