Shipwreck Diving NC

Everyone fascinated with the sea will enjoy reading this documentary on local shipwreck diving. The book features stories and pictures about ships that have sunk offshore this area since the early 1800s.

Local authors Fred R. David and Vern J. Bender created this 66 page paperback book.

$14.95 Buy it at http://Islands-Art.com

People from age 4 to 104 will love this book, for twelve good reasons:

* It provides short stories of the last voyage of ships that sank offshore of Sunset Beach, Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach, Oak Island, and Baldhead Island
* It provides actual pictures of ships that sank here, such as the Sherman, the Hebe, the Raritan, the Governor, and the City of Houston
* It provides GPS #’s of many shipwrecks off southeast North Carolina
* It provides color pictures and short descriptions of exotic marine life that inhabit local shipwrecks
* It reveals where local Shark Tooth Beds are located and describes the extinct megalodon that once roamed here * It discusses the local Cypress Tree Forest on the ocean floor
* It provides numerous embedded YouTube video hotlinks to bring to life local shipwrecks and marine life
* It describes how, when, and where to catch spiny and slipper lobster here
* It gives important information for diving local shipwrecks, including depth, visibility, currents, type of artifacts, and marine life
* It describes local shipwreck history, from pirate ships to Civil War blockade runners, to World War II U-boat victims, to the recent Valour sinking * It tells the story of Frying Pan Tower and Frying Pan Lightships
* Help us preserve the history of this area by making this book available to others.

$14.95 Buy it at http://Islands-Art.com

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Winds Resort T-Shirts

100% cotton T-Shirts from The Winds Resort Beach Club on Ocean Isle Beach. One of many Great Holiday Gifts at Islands-Art.com – a new e-commerce website featuring books, photography and other works by artists and writers of the islands of Coastal Carolina.

Features the “Postcard Print” showing the oceanfront pool as the sun rises!

Available in white only – 100% cotton – Just $17.99

Click here to buy your Winds T shirts at the Islands-Art.com website!

Islands Art features Giclée Prints by nationally renowned local nature photographer and artist, Ken Buckner, the books of Miller Pope (founder of The Winds Resort and Sea Trail Golf Resort), mystery novelist Tom Rieber and renowned local Romance Novelists Jacqueline DeGroot and Peggy Grich.

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The History of Ocean Isle Beach

Local authors Fred R David and Vern J. Bender created this book with the hope that all residents and visitors to Ocean Isle Beach will enjoy reading about people, places, and happenings in this area over the past thousand years.

It was written to preserve and bring to life the history, character, and charm of Ocean Isle Beach. Their desire is for people of all ages to enjoy the rich history of this area, from the lives of Cape Fear Indians to the explorations of Verrazano.

This book illustrates and describes the exploits of Ocean Isle Beach pirates, the rise of large plantations, our Revolutionary War fighters, the salt mills, the dueling matches, the Civil War wrecks, the Prohibition years of Ocean Isle Beach liquor smuggling, the 1920’s Ocean Isle Beach dance hall, the World War II shipwrecks here, the hard work of Mr. Odell Williamson (founder of Ocean Isle Beach), and the town’s public servant individuals today.

This book is not intended to be comprehensive in its coverage of the history of this area, but rather to provide a glimpse into the trials, tribulations, successes, and failures of people who worked and lived here years ago.

In many respects, everyone who lives or visits Ocean Isle Beach owes what we have today to our forebearers who fought the good fight for us here – from Colonists who fought the British, to Confederate soldiers defending blockade runners at Tubbs Inlet, to Coast Guardsmen stationed on Ocean Isle Beach during World War II.

The authors have tried diligently in this book to record the exact day and year of historical events in this area. Indeed this whole book is laid out chronologically beginning with the American Indians who lived at Ocean Isle Beach thousands of years before Europeans arrived, and ending with names and pictures of current Ocean Isle Beach public servant individuals.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia states: “the first permanent photograph was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.” Therefore, pre-1826 pictures in this book are mostly depictions of what places and things and people may have looked like. Among the more than 200 pictures total in this book, the post-1826 pictures in contrast are mostly actual and authentic.

A 130 page, hardbound, full color, 8.5 x 11 inch pictorial and narrative history of the Ocean Isle Beach area. It is professionally edited by an Internationally-acclaimed publisher.
$29.95 Buy it at: http://Islands-Art.com

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Shipwrecked at Sunset by Jacqueline DeGroot

Want a great romance read for your days at the beach? Check out Shipwrecked at Sunset by renowned local Romance Novelist Jacqueline DeGroot. One of many Great Holiday Gifts at Islands-Art.com – a new e-commerce website featuring books, photography and other works by artists and writers of the islands of Coastal Carolina.

Shipwrecked is a story of love so strong it survives time and treachery. It is a story of forensic discovery rich with southern history.

A Confederate soldier’s body is discovered buried under the remains of a Civil War ship under the beach at Sunset Beach, NC. The wreck, uncovered in the aftermath of a hurricane on the North Carolina coast, holds secrets that will change lives.

A reluctant pathologist, Dr. Ben Kenyon, is sent to identify the body and tie up the loose ends for the state. One of those loose ends turns out to be Shelby Laine, an inspector for the Division of Coastal Area Management.

She is a willful woman, passionate in more ways than one in her dedication to preserving the history and coastal environment of the South. Ben and Shelby work together to unravel the poignant story of a plantation owner’s son and the slave woman he loved. They also find a deep attraction to each other. The history of a beautiful southern plantation is changed forever by their discovery of passion, desire, and love.

$14.95

Click here to buy Shipwrecked at Sunset at the Islands-Art.com website!

Islands Art features Giclée Prints by nationally renowned local nature photographer and artist, Ken Buckner, the books of Miller Pope (founder of The Winds), mystery novelist Tom Rieber and renowned local Romance Novelists Jacqueline DeGroot and Peggy Grich.

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Here’s an excerpt:

Her next stop was the pier at Sunset Beach where she was to meet with Mayor Cherri Cheek, Town Manager Linda Fluegel, and the pier’s owner, Marc Kaplan. The hurricane had effectively ruined the emergency ramp to the beach, torn out the decking around the gazebo and washed away yards of asphalt from the parking lot. In some places the parking lot had pot holes so deep and so wide that you could lose a car in them.

Cement structures beyond the dune lines were not necessarily a concern under C.A.M.A., the Coastal Area Management Act. In this case however, dunes had been compromised and it was necessary to bring in a backhoe to build them up again. This required permits, permits that were her job to recommend or deny. This one would be a no-brainer, but there were certain protocols that had to be followed and far be it from her to stand in the way of the red tape mongers. She would fill out forms, fax forms, and sign forms. She’d do her part to push everything forward from here. Still, it would probably be a few weeks before the damage could be reversed unless different channels, more direct channels, were utilized.

After seeing the breech and measuring the nearby swash, she phoned her boss and requested an immediate response. If the breech was not taken care of before the next storm surge, the town would have considerably more damage to contend with including unnecessary flooding, which in turn would cause unnecessary pollution. And since the local oyster and mussel beds hadn’t been free of runoff bacteria from the last hurricanes, more flooding certainly wouldn’t help things. At the rate the bacteria was building, without the added destruction caused by hurricanes, the local fishermen wouldn’t be able to harvest these beds for at least another decade.

Satisfied that she had done everything she could, she walked over to where a large group of people stood looking down into what appeared to be a huge pit. Linda, having finished some paperwork of her own, followed her. “That’s the Vesta. It was buried under the parking lot. In the sixties, it was visible at low tide through the slats at the end of the pier. That’s how built up our beach has become over the years, it’s way back here now, hundreds of feet from the existing pier.”

“What was it?”

“A blockade runner with an unusual history.”

A blockade runner, huh? Interesting, Shelby thought. That man at the museum said the gun I found was probably from a blockade runner. Although the gun she had found in the sand had been dug up three beaches north of Sunset Beach, it was still quite a coincidence to her way of thinking. “What’s going to happen to it?”

“It’ll be recovered when they dig all this up. The Senior Conservator has decided that they want it,” Linda said as she indicated the parking lot that reminded Shelby of craters on the moon. Where the asphalt wasn’t completely missing, it was cracked or layered on top of itself. It was as if underground volcanoes had erupted here and there but left no lava or steam.

“The force of mother nature is amazing! I sure have seen some unbelievable sights this week.” Shelby murmured.

“I’ll bet you have,” Linda commented. “We were lucky this time, this is all we lost. Thought for a while that the water tower might buy it. The guys in the fire station said it was groaning the whole night of the hurricane. Like to drove them crazy! But, the ‘amazing wonder’ made it through another one. Trees and flooding were our biggest problems this time. Water, water, everywhere. Miss Glynnis managed to hit just right on the lunar cycle, the surge was incredible. But we were still very lucky.”

“How’d the evacuating go?”

“Oh, once they announced a category four was on its way, we had no problem getting people off the island and off the mainland. Glynnis was all alone and in the dark when she arrived. Guess she didn’t appreciate the hospitality, so she left us with this big mess!”

“It’s not too bad. At least you’ll get to see the ship raised.”

“Get us those permits we need and I’ll save you a front row seat.”

“They’re in the works. I’ll bet they’ll be here before you can find yourself an idle backhoe.”

“You may be right about that. I guess I’d better go see if I can scare one up.”

“When should I come back to see the Vesta?”

“I’ll call you. Not inside of a week, I’m sure. Probably more likely two. These things generally take years to work out, but Cherri told the historians that if they wanted the ship, it was now or never. She told ‘em we weren’t waitin’ for ‘em. If they didn’t get it out of here by the end of the month, it was going to be buried real good this time.”

“She’s a tough one, that Cherri. By the way, good job on the bridge.”

Linda beamed back at her, “It’s the reason my hair is gray. But what a party we’re going to have when it’s completed!”

Two weeks later, Shelby stood beside Linda and Police Chief Kerr as the remains of the Vesta were carefully uncovered and lifted by crane onto the back of a huge government flatbed. The area had been siphoned out; but still, the muck the ship had been mired in for many years sucked against it and held it firmly in place for one last second before releasing it from its watery crypt. With one loud, sucking slurp, it was free. Up, up, and over it went as the tall crane lifted and deposited its dripping and oozing carcass on the back of the super-sized truck. With loud, clanking and crashing sounds, it settled and tilted.

Men jumped from the cab of the truck and began securing it with heavy nautical chains. It was going to the navy shipyard in Wilmington where its fate would be determined. Everyone was hopeful that it would find its way to a museum or be set up as a memorial somewhere in the south.

Shelby watched, fascinated, as the men worked. There was hardly any wood left to speak of; but from the metal skeleton, you could tell that this had once been a very large ship. Her new friend at the Maritime Museum in Southport had provided her with a sketchy history of its past, but nothing had prepared her for the size of it.

Suddenly, a loud scream reverberated in the air behind her, and everybody turned to see what had happened. A woman holding a small boy by the hand was sucking in big breaths of air and letting them out as ear-piercing shrieks.

Chief Kerr and a few of his men, who had been watching the Vesta being loaded, ran over to where the woman and boy were. One officer, Lisa, a young mother herself, gently took her and the boy aside as the others looked into the hole the Vesta had just been taken from. The wide-eyed look of shock on their faces, along with their frantically pointing hands and their hastily-curtailed outbursts of obscenities brought everyone else to their side.

There, in the middle of the muck, flattened and colored with mud, shells and debris, was what appeared to be a man in uniform—no hat, no face, no flesh, but still identifiably a man. He wore a heavy jacket over massive shoulders, now threadbare in many places, a tattered shirt that once could possibly have been white or cream-colored, long trousers with stripes on the sides, and heavy boots where the thick-corded trousers ended. Everything was orangish-red from the clay in the mud except where it was gray from the sand. His light-colored hair was plastered to his scalp and tiny crabs were picking their way through it. His hands, clenched by his side, were missing fingers.

Shelby’s hand went to her throat as she gasped. Fascinated, she could not take her eyes from the sight. All around her, women were sobbing and men were cursing but she didn’t pay them any attention. As gruesome as the scene before her was, she was morbidly drawn to it. Who was he? And how did he get there under the ship?

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Holden Brothers Farm Market

Located on Highway 17, just about a half mile south of the entrance road to Ocean Isle Beach, The Holden Brothers Farm Market is a great place to check out any time of year. But especially in the Fall. Read more

Great Grandma Mittens

Guests of The Winds who have been coming for a while know and love our resident cat “Mittens”. Mittens is now a Great Grandma! Read more

Ocean Isle’s Water Cleanest!

Things are going just swimmingly at most NC beaches. The annual beach water quality report by the National Resources Defense Council Read more

The Winds Wins Award For Cleanliness

On March 8th of this year The Winds was awarded with the coveted Platinum A Award from The Environmental Health Section of the Brunswick County Health Department.

This department is responsible for all manner of health inspections – they inspect our accommodations, restaurant,  kitchens, dining area and of course our TikiBar.

When you reach the Platinum level that means that you have received the Golden A Award for five consecutive years.  The Golden A Award is received when you have a 95% or above for all inspections.

The owners and management of The Winds thanks our food service and housekeeping staff for their diligence. We are so proud of this ward and the people who won it for The Winds!

Hot Southern Breakfast Included!

Our famous Hot Southern Breakfast Buffet is included for all guest including groups.

This is the real thing, not the typical “On the Run” expanded continental breakfast served at most properties.

No one offers a free breakfast spread like The Winds Resort Beach Club! All guests can enjoy this buffet free with their stay.

With everything from eggs, breakfast meats, grits, potatoes, waffles, bagels and English muffins to fruit and hot and cold cereals (This is just a partial list).

We promise that you will not be walking away hungry!

The Winds Highlighted On Clark Howard

The Winds has been selected as a great value by TV and radio personality Clark Howard! Read more

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