![]() The helicopter said, ‘We're not coming.' So my daughter's biggest concern was that the cake that she baked fell because of the shaking. “Next morning, the winds were supposed to be 35 miles an hour and they were 54 miles an hour. “We had a helicopter coming out the next day because a hurricane was supposed to be there Friday,” Neals said. Things were going well - until 2014, when Hurricane Arthur came right at Frying Pan Tower with Richard and his family inside. Over the next two years, Richard turned it into a really remote but fully stocked bed and breakfast. ![]() The structure was old and rusty, but structurally sound. A Hustler magazine and an old Coors - and it was not a Coors light. "Like an old briefcase opened up, with a cigar sitting in an ashtray next to it. “Things in different rooms were still there and had been there for 20 years," he said. The first time he walked in, it was like opening up a time capsule. He’s a software developer by day, and he’d never been to the Frying Pan Tower before he bought the place, sight unseen, for $88,000 back in 2010. I kind of went back to that and said, ‘What on earth is that?’ I don't know if that was lucky or unlucky but I was the only guy that bid on it." "So, I literally - in the middle of the recession, '08/'09 -was looking around on different web sites just trying to figure out, what was out there? And the next thing was this strange looking box on stilts that was in the middle of the water. "Well if you're old enough to know what the actual comic book is you know in the back of it they used to have advertisements, 'Buy a jeep from the government for $5!,' and silly things that the government would give away," Neal said. Richard Neal - the man who owns this whole thing - talked as a wind turbine buzzed in the background. ![]() Even from this height, you can’t see land. Once I got up there, I went up the metal steps to the helipad, and then even higher up to the very top of the light tower: 133 feet above the water. Today, if you want to go up in the tower and you don’t have a helicopter to drop you off, you have to get hoisted up 80 feet from the boat below by sitting down on a tiny little seat attached to a rope. The coast guard built Frying Pan Tower in the 1960s to warn ships about the shallow water nearby, but the coast guard stopped using it 15 years ago. ![]() It looks like a pizza box that sits on top of four skinny metal legs with something that resembles an airport control tower on one corner - that’s where the actual light is. To get to this destination, you have to charter a boat, and then ride for an hour-and-a-half out into the Atlantic Ocean.įrying Pan Tower is an old Coast Guard light tower that sits 32 miles off the coast, southeast of Wilmington. Neal couldn’t head out there this week because of work, but wishes he could be there like he has for other powerful storms.Īs part of a collaboration between Our State magazine and WFAE to highlight stories from across North Carolina, Our State’s Jeremy Markovich took a trip to Frying Pan Tower this summer for a first-hand look at a facility that’s weathered storm after storm. It’s called Frying Pan Tower, and he owns it. ![]() This week we’ve heard public officials urge caution and mandatory evacuations as Hurricane Florence approaches the Carolinas.īut Richard Neal of Charlotte would rather be out to sea in his home away from home – an old Coast Guard light station 32 miles off the coast. ![]()
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