From my porch in Rest Haven, the Pamlico River stretches four miles across to the other side. Less river, more sea-like — at least that’s what first-time guests say when the snaking river they’re expecting to see instead turns out to be a grand body of shining water. Elegant, expansive, welcoming. I’ve known people to swim the whole four miles, dodging jellyfish and whitecaps, before emerging, triumphant, on the opposite shore. The Pamlico isn’t very deep, so at some point, they just stand up and walk out.

I take the ferry, which rumbles by the porch several times a day, trailed by gulls and a frothy churn of water, before heading straight as a row of corn to Aurora on the other side. It’s a quick 30-minute trip from Bayview. Long enough to get out and feel the engine humming under your feet, sniff the air, maybe spot a dolphin. It’s transportation, sure. But riding a ferry does more than get you from point A to point B. It’s a reset, a reminder. What’s the rush? Where else would you rather be?

I grew up watching and riding the Bayview-Aurora ferry, the hours of a summer day marked less by the angle of the sun or my mom calling me in for lunch than by the ferry’s rhythmic passing. Guests arrived and departed on the ferry. Church let out by the 11 a.m. crossing; if not, the preacher had gone on too long. When my boys were little, we’d ride over to Aurora to look for shark teeth at the fossil museum. Once I packed a nighttime picnic — hot chocolate and cookies — which they ate in their pajamas inside the ferry lounge.

The author sitting on her front porch watching as the ferry goes by. photograph by Chris Hannant

No matter the season or swell of the water, the ferry was a reassuring presence. Only the occasional storm, mechanical delay, or errant sailboat could halt its steady course.

Which is why I leapt out of my chair one summer morning when the ferry rumbled by as usual — but instead of heading straight toward Aurora, it veered abruptly east, downriver, toward the open water of Pamlico Sound. I watched through my binoculars until it seemed to dissolve on the horizon. What happened to it? I wondered.

The next day, my curiosity led me to the Bayview ferry dock, where I found my friend David Mason, a senior ferry crewmember who has since retired. He was politely amused at my concern.

“Oh, it’s not broken,” he assured me as they loaded cars onto an imposter ferry, which I noticed was shinier and cleaner than our regular one. “It’s just gone back to the shipyard in Manns Harbor. They have to do that periodically. You ought to go see it sometime. It’s an impressive operation.”

• • •

The shipyard in Manns Harbor is the official home, the hailing port, of all North Carolina ferries: a gated complex on a marshy creek near Croatan Sound in Dare County, it houses offices, workshops, and an enormous hangar-like paint room. Visitors are required to wear closed-toe shoes, hard hats, and eye protection. Out back is an expansive shipyard of wooden platforms, lifts, ladders, and metal tracks, where ferries — like mine — are welcomed home, twice every five years, for routine maintenance.

The North Carolina Ferry Division has 23 boats. They operate seven vehicle routes year-round, one seasonal passenger ferry, and one used only in emergencies. Most are free. Each ferry has a name, most of which are chosen to honor the iconic hamlets, islands, and bodies of water that North Carolinians grow up learning about and often speak of with reverence — Chicamacomico, Croatoan, Hatteras.

When ferries are on the job, their immense size is difficult to appreciate. But every few years, while dry-docked at the North Carolina State Shipyard, these behemoths stretch out while they’re being spruced up. photograph by Chris Hannant

When they arrive in Manns Harbor, the boats are lifted out of the creek, water dripping, and then rolled down rail lines into the shipyard itself, where repairs begin. Every inch is tested and considered, from the thickness of the metal hull to the quality of the life jackets and the accuracy of the signs telling passengers where to find restrooms and emergency exits. It takes months.

In dry-dock, hoisted on giant blocks and stripped of paint and signs, the ferries look huge. Some of these ships are 220 feet long, taller than the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse if you stood them on end. It’s hard to believe their massive hulls are designed to float in as little as four feet of water.

ferry maintenance photograph by Chris Hannant

When repairs are complete, the ferries are rolled into the paint room — an Emerald City of sorts — where they are painted and polished. Each is trimmed in the colors of the North Carolina colleges and universities they represent — gold and maroon for Elon, blue and red for Elizabeth City State, precise shades of blue for Duke and UNC Chapel Hill, among others. On each bow and stern, painted in bold letters, is the ship’s name and its home port: Manns Harbor.

They then travel back down the tracks, slip into the creek, and return to their assigned routes, shiny and humming once more.

• • •

Jed Dixon can see it all sitting in his office. But then, he’s rarely sitting. The 49-year-old Manteo native, a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, is the director of North Carolina’s Ferry Division, a position he seemed destined to fill.

Among his storied ancestors is William Jennette, one of four siblings who, in 1798, sold land used for the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Generations of the Jennette family served as lighthouse keepers and prominent members of the community. Dixon’s great-grandfather Joe Jennette was among the first Oregon Inlet ferry captains, long before the Bonner Bridge was built.

There are only two ways to get to Ocracoke Island: by air and by sea. The most leisurely is by ferry across Pamlico Sound. photograph by Helena Stevens

“My granddad, he always said, living on Hatteras Island, especially in the ’50s, you were either a commercial fisherman, you worked for the ferry division, or you went into the Coast Guard,” Dixon says. “As a young man, those were the three things you did.”

Like me, Dixon grew up watching and riding ferries, but Dixon knew the captains by name. “They would always take us up in the wheelhouse and let us steer a little bit,” he recalls with a laugh. “Things were a lot different back in those days.”

More poignant are his memories of watching skilled ferry crews respond to hurricanes and disasters, like October 1990, when Dixon was in high school and a dredge knocked out a 250-foot span of the Bonner Bridge. Locals called it “the day the ship hit the span.” Like the old days, a temporary ferry route became a lifeline. “When I graduated from high school, I knew I wanted to make a career in the maritime,” Dixon says.

Bill Harrell oversees the sign shop at the North Carolina State Shipyard, making sure the ECU purple, Campbell orange, and Carolina blue on the respective emblems match the colors on the corresponding ferries. photograph by Chris Hannant

After college and a short stint running supplies to oil rigs, Dixon came home and got a job as a captain on the Hatteras ferry, a position he held for eight years. As director of the entire Ferry Division, he has worked with many of the people he admired as a boy. He’s got plenty of chairs in his office when they stop by. Like Dixon, many of them also grew up on the Outer Banks and worked their way through the ranks to positions with huge responsibility. These are people for whom ferries are as much a symbol of home as lighthouses and shifting shoals.

“Without a doubt, we have some of the most difficult routes in the country,” Dixon says. “Our channels are extremely difficult to navigate.” Which means our captains are some of the best in the world. “They’ll tell you that, too,” he says with a laugh.

“We’re in a constant battle with Mother Nature. That’s just part of where we’re from. That’s when we are at our best,” Dixon says. “They have a sense of wanting to help. I think it’s fair to say that it’s a calling.”

• • •

The first ferries in eastern North Carolina weren’t run by the state but by private citizens who seemed to hear that calling. People like Capt. J.B. “Toby” Tillet, who started a ferry service on Hatteras Island in 1924, loading vehicles straight from the beach onto a 30-foot barge that he’d tow across Oregon Inlet with his fishing boat. Frazier Peel operated a ferry between Ocracoke and Hatteras. Nags Head native T.A. Baum ran one from Manns Harbor to Roanoke Island. In 1947, the state bought out Baum, and his route became the first official route of the State Highway Commission. Curious history buffs can still walk around the remnants of that old ferry dock in Manns Harbor, just down the road from the shipyard.

The hallway outside Dixon’s office is lined with memories as well. Historic black-and-white photos of ferry boats, like family snapshots, show how much the division has grown over the years. Even on the older, clunkier vessels, you can see how content the passengers are: men standing next to their old trucks and 1950s sedans; ladies with sun hats; well-dressed people tipping their faces to the salt air.

Long before completion of the Bonner Bridge in 1963, visitors to the Outer Banks crossed Oregon Inlet via ferries that Capt. J.B. “Toby” Tillet began operating in the 1920s. photograph by North Carolina County Photographic Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC Chapel Hill

“People get so much enjoyment out of riding our ferries,” Dixon says. “When they get on the ferry, their vacation starts.”

This year, nearly two million people will travel on our ferries — residents, tourists, work crews, summer campers, students on school buses, maybe even some kids in pajamas. After the ferry leaves the dock, many will get out, lean over the freshly painted railing, and look across the water. Happy to be right there, in that moment, on the way to somewhere, anywhere. But really, what’s the rush?