Friday of this week I took our skiff out for the first real fishing trip of the season. As the story behind the link details, we had a great time.
Perhaps the biggest difference from the last time we were out on the White Oak River in February was the water temperature. In February the water temperature was in the high forties. Friday we got consistent reading in the sixties on the water.
Today those sixty degree water temperatures made a huge difference. While my friend in New Jersey and our grown kids in Northern Virginia were all suffering from ninety plus temperatures (33 C), we were struggling to reach the eighties.
It was still a beautiful day, and in fact it was much nicer here on the NC coast that it was inland. The water that almost surrounds us moderates our climate for much of the year.
You can actually say the same thing for Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland. The trouble is that their water is like a glass of ice water. We lived on the Bay of Fundy for a few years. When the fog came in, it reminded me of opening a refrigerator door. I am pretty sure that the only creatures who love the temperature of the Bay of Fundy are Labrador Retrievers and fish.
We ran our farm just north of Fredericton, New Brunswick for over ten years and never took a vacation. When we sold the cattle and finally decided to go on a vacation to PEI, I was looking forward to the beach. I can still remember that my legs felt sandblasted on our first beach walks. While the kids could take the water along PEI's northern coast where the beaches are so beautiful, I could not do it. We get similar winds once in a while here on the coast, but swimming in the summer on the north coast of PEi would be like swimming here in April.
While I absolutely love PEI and its rolling green fields which go down to the shore, it is just not a good place to go swimming. The next year we managed to take the kids back to North Carolina and visit a warm Carolina beach. I can still remember the trip down to that beach, my wife, who was born in North Carolina just like me, told me as we were walking across an almost ready to melt parking lot in Tarboro, NC that she was officially warm for the first time since we had gotten married fifteen years earlier.
That beach trip redkindled a love of the Carolina coast. We eventually moved back to the states as I worked for Apple Computer for nearly twenty years. Two years after leaving Apple, we moved to Carteret County just six miles from the beaches of Emerald Isle. I am officially in heaven.
While we had the coldest winter and first snow in six years here on the coast, we still never put on a heavy coast. Our snow was right at one half inch and did not even stick to the driveways.
There is a lot I miss about Canada, but I really do not miss the cold waters. There was once when we were living in Halifax that I did feel like were were trapped in a glass of ice water. The pack ice got driven down from Newfoundland and filled Halifax harbor. We thought spring would never come.
I am to the point that I enjoy a good eight degree day. I love it cooling off to sixty at night, but I am ready for heat during the day.
If you are Canadian and are down our way, stop by our office in Cape Carteret, and I will tell you the best places to eat and personally welcome you to the Crystal Coast.
And if you have had enough of cold weather, I think we can find you a spot in the sun.
