As many of you have heard, Camp Albemarle was hit with hurricane Ophelia. We made out very well overall. There was no major damage to any of the buildings. Unfortunately our pier did not make it through. The water was very high, and after several hours of waves beating the pier (and, if it survived that long, it was 100% under water), it fell apart. Unforately, there are no companies that will write insurance policies to piers now, so whatever the cost to rebuild a peir will have to be covered by individual donations. A fund was set up a few years ago, and does have a little money in it, but probably not enough to even rebuilt what we had. If you would like to be part of the rebulding (either with a donation, or actual hands on building), let me know. It will probably be spring before we are able to get the funds, materials and workers here, but my goal is to have a pier (of some kind) before next summer. But I thought some of you may enjoy seeng some pictures of the storm. So here we go...

This is a picture of the pier the day before the storm took it away. The water was already very high. The posts you see beyond the pier (where the old, old pier used to go) are used to store sailboats overnight in the summer. The water will sometimes get up to the cross members (that you can not really see in this picture), but has only been this deep about 2 or 3 times in the past 2.5 years. You also notice that the bottem of the pier is already wet from the waves.

Here is, I believe, the last picture every taken of this pier. It was taken from the bathroom window at my house as the winds were really picking up.

This is Bogue Sound. The brown "thing" is actually a set of steps from someone elses pier floating by the house. To give you an idea of the wave height, I counted 8 steps on that stairway. Those are some big waves. As this floated by the pier was still standing and I thought it was going to hit either the boatrack or the pier, but floated right between the two.

Again, a picture of the sound. You can see that the winds were realy making it look much more like the ocean then a sound. Indian Beach, Pine Knoll Shores and Emereld Isle are usually visable from this point (but totally unseen with the wind, waves and rain).

This is just a great storm picture. If you watched any of the "live reports" during the storm, this is the type of setting they set up in the background. Can't you see a weather reporter with this in the background? "Wow, the conditions are really going downhill here, back to you in the studio." One note, it was getting toward sunset when some of these pictures were taken, so they are digitally lightened, real pictures, just lightened so you can see them.

This is our neighbor's pier. The winds were much too strong to get out at this time, so this was taken from the safety of our house. His pier did make it through the storm, but did have some damage to it. To give you an idea of the flooding, this summer you could walk under the pier, stand up straight and not hit your head, and only have the 2-3 inches of water around your feet.

One more picture of the sound. The grass you see in the water is on the edge of the grass behind my house. Usually you can walk beyond the grass, and at low tide can walk out quite far beyond the grass. Very rarely does the grass even get wet from a high tide. I have never seen the water this high, nor the waves this big!

And here was the next morning. I had heard the night before that our pier was probably gone, but it was hard for me to accept. But this was the sight the next morning.

And here is a shot from in front of the office. One of the trees by the pumphouse was uprooted, and lots and lots of sticks and smaller branches down.

Another shot of what remains of the pier.

But the big tree was fine! There was one little branch hanging, but overall, did great. You can see the waterline (above the golf cart tracks, where all the sea weed has washed up). The pier was at the same level as the sea wall, and the water was well over that height.

This is a shot of the area behind the lodge. The white thing sticking up is actually a shower head. If you remember, the first section of dock had a shoower on it! We had left a hose attached, it had wrapped around some debris and pulled that section back into shore. It will take a lot of strength to carry that back to the pier, but it maybe possible to salvage that first section.

This is a shot from the boathouse looking toward Vesper Dell, it clearly shows how high the water got. It was right up to the flag pole behind the boat house (about 2 feet below the boathouse). But didn't get into any cabins or anything else.

This picture was taken in my back yard, showing how much of the grass was covered by water. You can also see our neighbor's pier in teh background. It is salvagable, but is going to need a lot of work. From what I have heard, most of the piers along this side of Bogue Sound are either gone, or at least severely damaged.

And one last picture looking down from the lodge, where the pier used to sit and showing how high the water got. Luckily, there was no serious damage to any other buildings at camp. A little water blew in the lodge, but everything else looks good. Power was restored after about 24 hours, and we are now raking and picking up everything. If you come down in the next few weeks, we are working to get everything cleaned up, but it will take a little time (there is a lot of ground here, and lots of stuff to rake up all over the place). God is good! There could have been a lot more damage then what we had. But it was a very impressive storm, and we were lucky to have as little damage as we did.