You may have noticed a warm spell prior to January 8. Several NSA boats went sailing in the nice weather on the first weekend of the year. (I missed it; I was in Florida!) The Scudders aboard Heresay demonstrated flexibility to an extreme. Sharon wrote, “We have a confession to make. We actually rescheduled Christmas this year so that we could sail to Ocracoke. “We were feeling stressed by all the holiday hoopla, shopping, and expectations, and we seriously needed some boat time. We invited all of our family to `Christmas Day' on Saturday the 20th (simply because we are so considerate of the difficulty each family member has trying to share their time and see all of the relatives on the 25th). We did a full Christmas morning extravaganza, the kids opened gifts, and we had a big Christmas dinner. On Monday the 22nd, I happily ripped down all the Christmas decorations, because, well, Christmas was over.  We packed up the car and drove to Oriental. “We had a fabulous early morning sail into Ocracoke under beautiful conditions, including a kind 15 knot wind and sunny skies. Yes, it was a little chilly, but thats why we had gloves and lots of hot chocolate. We saw no other boats except the ferries all the way there and back. “Ocracroke was wonderful and deserted, with gorgeous 5:30 sunset views and long, quiet, sleep-filled nights. The docks were totally empty, and we thought we may have to organize a search party to hunt down the park service employees to give them our money. (They did finally show up for a few hours on the 26th). Howard's Pub and Restaurant really is open 365 days a year, and there is absolutely NO wait for the table of your choice if you go on the 25th for a long, lazy dinner. We rode our bikes all over the island, and played on the deserted beaches. “Ocracoke is not the mecca for day-after-Christmas shopping, in case anyone wondered, though.  The shop signs indicated they would be open, but most shop owners trickled in around lunchtime, and there were no traffic jams in sight. We did purchase one sea-turtle purse for two-year-old Abigail, and a few small goodies for the boys.  We reluctantly came back to the real world on Saturday the 27th, as always, thinking about the next time out.”