Scenic shortcut

Richard Gillikin guides the boat around a corner and into the channel. A pair of porpoises breaks the glassy surface of the water to the left, and two more pop up another dozen yards ahead.

The rising sun glistens off the water, dancing as it reflects off the rolling waves the boat's wake creates.

The gulls and terns scream out, calling for friends to search for goodies churned up in the boat's prop wash. A few perch on the back of the boat, as if deciding to sit this particular trip out until the return voyage.

"This is my office," said Gillikin, captain of the Croatoan, a ferry that journeys across the Neuse River from Cherry Branch to Minnesott Beach every 20 minutes.

"We've got the best view of anybody's office as far as that. Neuse River, Pamlico Sound, outside, dolphins, sea gulls, sunsets and sunrises, that kind of stuff - as far as the office view, we got about the best you can get."

The ferry provides a shortcut for residents in Pamlico County to get to Craven County. Cherry Point Marines and base civilian workers living in Pamlico County can use the ferry to get to their jobs rather than driving west to New Bern and then back east to the base.

Though the ferry does get its share of tourists, Gillikin enjoys the idea that he and his crew are providing a valuable service to the commuters.

"With this operation set up the way it is, I think it is a real good service for the state to supply for working people," he said. "It's working people. It's not the tourists.

"Tourists are one thing. They're out trying to spend money. The working people are trying to make money, and that's mainly the people we help. I think they appreciate anything pretty much we do for them, saving them money on gas and getting them to and from their job in a quicker time."

But, it's a service that requires a knowledgeable captain and crew to get the job done safely, he said.

"We're providing a service, but the main objective is to provide that service safely," he said.

Gillikin said technical innovations in the boats themselves make that objective easier to reach.

"With the boats we got, they're pretty state-of-the-art boats," he said.

Older boats with propellers and rudders have been replaced with a blade system invented in Germany that provides power and steering at both ends of the boat.

Gillikin has to simply move a pair of levers to get the boat to turn around in one place or move sideways, rather than the wide turns needed to change course in the older boats. He said the boats also stop and turn faster.

"If you start to make a move and it's not exactly right, you can correct the move instantly because there's no shifting gears," he said. "There's no delay from going to forward to reverse. It takes all the time out of it.

"In boat handling, seconds is everything. You say five or six seconds shouldn't matter, but it makes a lot of difference. ... Seven seconds and we'll be a couple hundred yards ahead, and sometimes that's the difference between an accident and not an accident."

He said getting the ferry across the river is a relatively simple process, but captains always keep one eye out for other boaters on the Neuse.

The other eye is usually on the weather.

Gillikin said the biggest benefit of the new technology in the ferries is the ability of captains to handle the boats in high winds and rough water.

Still, there are times when the weather - especially when strong winds blow water away from the landing docks or a thick fog settles in - prevents the ferries from operating.

"Some people think, ‘This is nothing. You can just run straight across and straight back. What can happen?'" Gillikin said. "Well, things can happen. It can get foggy. You can run aground, tear something up. I don't think anything can happen that's life-threatening, but still, it can happen."

Gillikin is part of a five-person crew, which includes another captain, a chief engineer, a mate and deckhand. They work together on 12-hour shifts for seven straight days. They then get the next seven days off.

"We're like a family," said Harold Thomas, the Croatoan's chief who makes sure the engines are working properly. "One guy might be changing oil or one guy might be loading cars or getting fuel, but it's a team effort."

Gillikin is from a fishing family in Harker's Island, and he said his situation is like many others who work on the ferries.

"I started in the commercial fishing industry, shrimp trawlers and that kind of stuff," he said. "As that sort of wound down, I had to seek other opportunities of employment. I enjoy the water, working outside. It was a good opportunity."

Gillikin has been with the ferry division 20 years, 11 of which have been as a captain. He said ferry workers start as deckhands and can work their way up to become captains or chief engineers.

"We train as we're coming up," he said. "We try to train all our deck crews on the different boats on how to operate them. You don't want to wait to be a captain and then have to learn it. You want to know it before you get there, so most people have trained as they come up."

He said one job on the ferry that is more complicated than it looks is the loading of cars and trucks. He said loading must be done in a way to keep the boat balanced.

"If you've got a real heavy truck on one side, you have to balance it out with some cars on the other," Gillikin said. "You have to be able to look and see it before it gets on here. Once it gets on here, it's too late.

"There's an art to it. It's not just put them on as they come."

Gillikin said the best part of making the nearly three-mile run from Cherry Branch to Minnesott is meeting the working commuters who use the ferry every day.

"We see people here on a daily basis, and through the years, we get to know them, know their names and where they work," he said. "We see them twice a day, five days a week, so we get to know them. Some of them have actually become friends of ours, and we talk to them.

"On holidays, Thanksgiving, they'll pass pies to the crew and cakes and stuff like that. Every so often, we have some disgruntled passengers, but right straight through, most of the passengers appreciate what we do, especially with gas prices the way they are."

One of those is Johnny Blango, who said he remembers when the road leading to the ferry dock was constructed.

"It saves a lot on gas," said Blango, who was hauling hay from Pamlico County to his farm on the south side of the Neuse River. "If we didn't have this, I'd have to drive around through New Bern. It saves a lot of time, too, to go right straight across."

Rose Kovatch used the ferry recently to take children from a Pamlico County daycare on a field trip to the N.C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores.

"It's nice," she said of the ferry. "It's a real treat to have it."

Katherine Stafford, with her husband Joe, was in the area visiting from Chattanooga, Tenn.

"We were just riding around and wanted to see all the sights," she said. "This is one of the sights."

And for Gillikin, the sights of the porpoises, the gulls, the water and the passengers never get old.

"It's sort of in our blood," he said.