The legendary Outer Banks, a narrow chain of sandbars and islands shielding the North Carolina coastline from the full force of the Atlantic Ocean, reach more than 175 miles from Norfolk, Virginia, south to Cape Lookout. In 1900 few lived there other than fishermen and their families, and those with the Life-Saving Service. No bridges as yet crossed from the mainland. One got to the Outer Banks by boat and about the only signs of civilization at Kitty Hawk were four Life-Saving Stations, one every six miles, and the Weather Bureau Station. There were no real roads. The one conspicuous structure on the skyline was a rambling summer hotel at Nags Head.
Wilbur reached Norfolk by train on September 7, 1900, roughly twenty-four hours after leaving Dayton, and checked in overnight at a hotel. The temperature in Norfolk the next day hit 100 degrees, and dressed in his customary dark suit, high collar, and necktie, he nearly collapsed.
He needed still to find the long spruce strips necessary for his “machine” and so set off to several lumberyards only to be told they had none. Settling for white pine, he gathered up everything and boarded a 4:30 train to Elizabeth City, sixty miles to the south, where the Pasquotank River flows to meet Albemarle Sound.
When, at Elizabeth City, he inquired about the best way to get over to Kitty Hawk, he received nothing but blank stares. No one he talked to seemed to know anything about the place or have the least idea how to get there.
It was another four days before he found a boatman on the waterfront, one Israel Perry, who said he had been born and raised at Kitty Hawk and agreed to take Wilbur across. Perry also had a friend to help him. Wilbur’s heavy trunk and the pine strips would go over on the weekly freight boat.
To get to Perry’s schooner required going by a small skiff much the worse for wear and leaking badly. When Wilbur asked if it was safe, Perry, to assure him, said, “Oh, it’s safer than the big boat.”
With constant bailing the whole three miles, they managed to reach the schooner, which was indeed in sadder shape. “The sails were rotten,” wrote Wilbur, “the ropes badly worn and the rudder-post half rotted off, and the cabin so dirty and vermin-infested that I kept out of it from first to last.”
The weather had been fine all day, but by the time they started out of the wide Pasquotank River and down the sound, it was nearly dark and the water much rougher than the light wind had led them to expect, as Israel Perry pointed out several times, clearly “a little uneasy.” The voyage ahead was forty miles.
The wind shifted and grew increasingly stronger. The waves, now running quite high, “struck the boat from below with a heavy shock and threw it back about as fast as it went forward,” Wilbur would write. He had had no experience with sailing, let alone rough water, but plainly the flat-bottom craft was woefully unsuited for such conditions.
In the strain of rolling and pitching, the boat sprang a leak, and with water crashing over the bow required still more bailing.
At 11 o’clock the wind had increased to a gale and the boat was gradually being driven nearer and nearer the north shore, but as an attempt to turn round would probably have resulted in an upset, there seemed nothing else to do but attempt to round the North River Light and take refuge behind the point.
The situation suddenly became more dramatic still.
In a severe gust the foresail was blown loose from the boom and fluttered to leeward with a terrible roar. . . . By the time we had reached a position even with the end of the point, it became doubtful whether we would be able to round the light. . . . The suspense was ended by another roaring of the canvas as the mainsail also tore loose from the boom, and shook fiercely in the gale.
By now their only chance was to take in the mainsail, let the boat swing stern to the wind, and, under the jib only, make a straight run over the sandbar. This, as Wilbur wrote, was a highly dangerous maneuver in such a sea, but somehow Perry managed without capsizing.
He would not land on sandbars for a thousand dollars, Perry told Wilbur. So they lay at anchor in the North River the remainder of the night. Having no stomach for any food Perry might have below, Wilbur dipped into a jar of jelly Katharine had packed in his bag and stretched out on deck.
Setting the boat in order as best they could took half the next day. It was afternoon before they got under way again and not until nine that night were they anchored at Kitty Hawk, where again Wilbur slept on deck.
He finally went ashore the next morning, September 13, two days after leaving Elizabeth City.