Rendering assistance

  IN THE BOAT ROOM of the Portsmouth Island Life-Saving Station with a volunteer from the Cape Lookout National Seashore after outfitting their new beach cart are helpers BM1 Rob Shay, Coast Guard Station Hatteras Inlet; Linda Molloy, Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station (CLSS) staff; BM3 Joe Habel, Station Hatteras Inlet; James Charlet, CLSS staff; and Mike Daughtery, currently president, Chicamacomico Historical Association and former drill team member.

Life-saving stations meet

  Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station personnel were happy to venture over to Portsmouth Island recently to outfit the new reproduction beach cart their station just received. The 1894 Portsmouth Island Life-Saving Station completed restoration in 2008 and has since been undergoing the development of displays, exhibits, and in this case, of period-accurate equipment. Friends of Portsmouth Island hold a reunion every two years and it is open to the public (see www.friendsofportsmouthisland.org).

  The Friends, in conjunction with the National Park Service, Cape Lookout National Seashore, plan to have the Chicamacomico Drill Team do the full Beach Apparatus Drill (aka Breeches Buoy Re-enactment) from time to time during events. Currently, U.S. Coast Guard teams from Motor Life Boat Stations Hatteras Inlet and Oregon Inlet perform this full drill at Chicamacomico every Thursday at 2 p.m. during June, July and August. It is the only place anywhere that the full drill is regularly performed. The Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station Historic Site & Museum is located in the village of Rodanthe on Hatteras Island which is actually two islands north of Portsmouth Island, but in their day, it was common for neighboring stations, or even ones in the same area, to assist one another. so the tradition continues, just stretched a bit.

  Chicamacomico Life-Saving station Historic Site is one of the many sites on the Historic Albemarle tour as well as the Outer Banks National Scenic Byway, part of America’s Scenic Byways Program. For more information about this particularly interesting site and its exciting activities and offerings, visit www.chicamacomico.net, email clss@embarqmail.com or call 252-987-1552.  (From Chicamacomico Life-saving Station)