Coastal Orienteering Weekend, 2025
Expert orienteers (i.e., those who have successfully completed a brown, green, red, or blue course) are welcome to join us for our annual coastal orienteering weekend.
This year we will hold three events, all on Bear Island, part of Hammocks Beach State Park in Swansboro, NC. On Saturday, October 25, we will offer classic brown and green courses. Then, those who are able to camp on the island Saturday night will be treated to a rare night-O event on the island that includes short and long expert-level, as well as an advanced-level (aka ‘orange’) course. Finally, on Sunday morning, we will offer a short and long goat race. Before registering, please read below for important details.
Register here before Thursday, 23 Oct at 5:00 PM
Schedule
Saturday, October 25
- 5:58 AM Low tide
- 9:30, 10:30, 11:30, 12:30 Park ferry leaves from Hammocks Beach visitor center.
- ~10:30 – 1:00 PM. Start window for classic courses
- 12:22 PM High tide
- 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 Park ferry leaves Bear Island
- 3:00 PM Courses close. Control pickup begins.
- 3:00 PM Group campsite available
- 7:06 PM Low tide
- 7:39 PM Astronomical twilight ends. Moon is waxing crescent. Night courses open.
- 9:00 PM End of night start window
Sunday, 26 October
- 12:23 AM High tide
- 6:39 AM Low tide
- 7:23 AM Sunrise. Night courses close.
- 9:30 Park ferry leaves from Hammocks Beach visitor center.
- 10:15 AM Mandatory briefing for the goat race
- 10:30 AM Goat race start
- 12:00 PM Checkout time for group campsite
- 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 Park ferry leaves Bear Island
- 1:08 PM High tide
- 2:00 PM Control pickup begins
- 5:00 Last ferry leaves Bear Island. Everyone off the island.
Getting to the Island
Most competitors will likely take the park ferry to the island. Cost for a round trip ticket is $10 for adults; $5 for children (younger than 13) and seniors (62 and older). Per the park’s webpage, ferry tickets are sold on the day of departure on a first-come, first-served basis. No online or advance reservations are available. The meet director will arrive early to the park on Saturday and bulk purchase up to 30 tickets on th 9:30 ferry for those who have pre-paid with their registration. Note that this is for Saturday only. Those who register late, and those who take the ferry out to the island on Sunday will need to stand in line at the visitor center and purchase their own ticket. Note that carts and wagons are not allowed on the ferry unless they are collapsible, and that pets are not allowed on the ferry.
A second option for getting to the island is to paddle from the visitor center to the island. The typical landing point for this paddle is east side of the island, near the individual camps. However, it is possible to beach a kayak immediately east of the ferry landing. Note in the venue map below that the typical landing site for paddling in is approximately 1.5km from the start/finish areas for all events.
Camping and Lodging
We have reserved the group camping site on Bear Island. This site claims to accommodate up to 35 people; but to minimize overcrowding, we are limiting the number of group campers to 20. If you would like to camp on the island and are not one of the first 20 to sign up for the group campsite, there are also individual camp sites that can be reserved here. Note that water, restrooms, showers, and electricity are available nearby.
If you are traveling to this event and do not want to camp on the island, there are hotels and rentals available in Swansboro. Releatively inexpensive logding is available in Jacksonville, not too far away. There is also a state park campground on the mainland, quite close to the visitor center. Note that if you do not camp on the island, you cannot participate in the night-O on Saturday night.
General conditions
With the exception of the park infrastructure on the south side of the island, conditions are generally primitive and exposed to the elements. There is some cell network connectivity (I get one bar on Verizon), and there are electrical outlets near the concession area. Plan on running on sand, and interacting with thorny smilax and prickly pear cacti. The insects on Bear Island can be truly ghastly. If mosquitoes are out and you do not have protection, it is not an exaggeration to say that they will force you off of your course and into Onslow Bay. I got mauled by sand fleas on a scouting mission, and it was not pretty. Participants are strongly advised to bring a strong long-lasting insect repellent on the chance that bugs are out.
We will not be able to hold this event if the park suspends ferry service because of inclement weather (typically high winds). If weather looks like it will affect the event, we will contact registrants via email with further information.
Events
Because of its intricate contour and vegetation detail, the map will be printed at a scale of 1:7500 for all events. Some of the longer courses will be printed on multiple pages. Contour interval is 2.5m, with meridians spaced at 300m. Please bring your own map cases. The area will not have been exhaustively field-checked; however, vegetation and contours will be depicted quite accurately. Contour lines near the south (ocean) coast may be untrustworthy because of beach erosion. Note also that the depicted water line can be off by many meters, depending on the tide level.
All courses will use SPORTident equipment and will be available for viewing on LiveLox. LiveLox codes will be provided in the pre-race email, and will be available from the event director.
Saturday’s courses should feel somewhere between a middle and a classic. The brown course is (tentatively) 3.6 km, and the green course is (tentatively) 5.8 km. There will not be pre-assigned start times; however the event director will try to exert some control over the start intervals between runners on the same course. Thus, you should be prepared to wait at the start.
There will be three courses offered on Saturday night. Two will be set at a difficulty level that would be appropriate for an expert daytime race; a third course will have approximately orange-level daytime difficulty. We have not yet decided whether the night controls will be reflective. Moreover, it is possible (though unlikely) that we will not be able to use white-colored headlamps, especially near the beach. All of this will make the expert-level courses extremely challenging. Course distances are (tentatively) 2.3km, 3.0km and 5.1km for the orange, short, and long courses, respectively. Start times will be individually assigned, starting at 7:39 with a start interval that will depend on the number of registrants. Obviously, you will need to bring a headlamp and spare batteries.
Sunday’s race will be a ‘goat’ race, no more than 10 km, with a shorter ‘pygmy’ goat option that is no more than 5 km. A ‘goat’ race is a long and sometimes grueling orienteering course with several unusual rules that make the event especially fun:
- Mass start. A goat race is a mass-start event. Both the regular and pygmy goat will start together at 10:30 AM. Note that if you are not camping on the island, you will need to catch the 9:30 ferry from the visitor center in order to participate. If you arrive late, the meet director will be out on the course and unable to register you; however, he may be able to leave a few maps behind if you want to explore on your own or join part of the race.
- Following. Following other competitors is explicitly permitted.
- Skipped controls. Each competitor is allowed to skip at least one control. Rules about which controls can be skipped will be given at the briefing session before the race. Note that skipping a control will make your course somewhat shorter than the advertised distance for the entire course.
- Forked controls. There may be one or more sets of forked controls on both the long and the short versions of this race. A forked control is one in which a competitor can choose which of two routes to take. As an example, let’s say that you get to control #6 and there is a fork going to two different #7 controls. On your map, lines to both #7’s would be shown, and the controls would be labeled ‘7A’ and ‘7B’. You would be able to decide which #7 you wanted to do — you should not go to both.
On Sunday, we absolutely must have all equipment picked up and ready to go by 5:00, when the last ferry heads back. (The 5:00 ferry will actually be the last park ferry of the year to leave the island.) Therefore, control pickup will start promptly at 2:00. Depending on how many volunteers offer to pick up control and how many runners are still on the course, we will try to make an effort to pick up controls at the end of your course closer to 3:00 than to 2:00.
Questions?
An email with last-minute details will be sent to registrants a few days before the events. If you need additional information, especially if it will enable you to decide how/whether to register, feel free to email the event director (Dave) at dw.orienteer@gmail.com
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