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The causeway linking mainland North Carolina to the Outer Banks is as straight as you'd expect a causeway to be. It makes for easy driving, allowing you to prepare for the next 150 kilometres of road. And since those next 150 kilometres do nothing but follow a sandbar, the preparations might include rolling down your window, sliding some sunglasses onto your face and fishing around for a Bob Marley CD.

But when it comes down to it, the only requisite task is that you thank yourself for having fought your way out of a Thursday-evening rush hour, headed south and watched the climate change right in front of your windshield. Any remnant autumnal anxiety will dissipate at the first beach you stop at when the warm sand squeezes through your toes and the sea's fine spray leaves the taste of salt on your upper lip.

Fourteen-hour overnight drives from Canada for the sake of a long weekend are not for everyone. Which is why almost everyone I knew was far away and at work that Friday morning as my friend Bruce and I pulled onto the Outer Banks and headed south toward Cape Hatteras. But the prospect of windsurfing at Hatteras makes it easy to spend many hours with a foot on the gas pedal just for the chance at a few good hours with the same foot crammed into a footstrap.

The Outer Banks are a curving line of sandbars, at times no more than a few hundred metres wide, running for 200 kilometres from the south end of Chesapeake Bay out and around much of the coast of North Carolina. Though they sometimes seem to be more part of the ocean than a landmass, they also both define and shelter the waters of Pamilco Sound, which separates the Outer Banks from the mainland 50 kilometres to the west.

Geographically freakish perhaps, but divinely designed for windsurfers of any ability. While the waters on the seaward side of the dunes are whipped into a frenzy by the full force of the Atlantic, the same winds skip over the dunes and skim across Pamilco Sound, a shallow, warm, protected yet still windy windsurfing Garden of Ego.

Beach culture has a firm grip on the Outer Banks. Though big-box retail is making inroads at its northern end, most of Hatteras Island is low-key and sandblasted. Expect to hear Jimmy Buffet singing about margaritas as you wander through the grocery store shopping for a salt shaker and limes. Outside of areas protected by National Seashore designation, a half-dozen strip towns come and go, but there is little commercial development besides surf shops and seafood restaurants ("Get your crabs at Dirty Dick's," suggests one roadside billboard). The beach houses, above all, speak to leisurely impermanence. They're perched on posts a few metres off the ground in case uninvited guests with names like Isabel come calling across the dunes.

Speaking of Hurricane Isabel, she did not blow the Outer Banks off the map. Some buildings were damaged, and some flooding occurred, but any building out here that wasn't up to withstanding a hurricane was knocked down a long time ago, and a flooded sandbar is not a long-term problem. Carolyn McCormick, managing director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, says the Outer Banks are up and running again, all except for Hatteras Village, at the southern end of Hatteras Island. "We lost a few piers, and the dunes were battered and beaten, but the road is clear, electricity and water are on line, restaurants are open, the homes on the sound mostly escaped damage and we're ready to go."

And don't worry about a few damaged homes running up the prices of accommodation. The Outer Banks is a renter's market. In fact, the often upscale beach houses are a big part of what makes Hatteras Island an ideal destination. It's a happy case of seasonal alignment that at the same time Canadian windsurfers would normally be packing up their gear for the winter the most reliable winds of the year hit Hatteras and persaude summer vacationers there to pack up their coolers and head inland. The recently vacated beachside houses can be rented for as little as $100 a week a person simply by dropping into one of the local real-estate agencies.

For Canadians who groggily drive onto the cape, the second stop after finding somewhere to stay is the legendary Canadian Hole. It should be a point of national pride that the premier windsurfing spot on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States is named in honour of the pale northerners who follow the geese south to fly across Pamilco Sound every fall.

The Canadian Hole is just south of the town of Avon and north of Buxton. This is important to note because there isn't much else marking the nondescript beach. This most cherished windsurfing launch is adorned with a few benches (with drink holders), washrooms, a shower and a pay phone. If you still need to verify the location, just check the parking lot. Eight of the first 10 cars I checked had licence plates from Ontario or Quebec. Most of the idle tech talk surrounding rigging and conditions was being conducted in French.

It is no wonder that so many Canadians flock to this happy combination of ocean currents and sedimentation. For every determined soul who learned how to sail upwind on a gusty, cold, choppy, rocky Canadian lake, heaven awaits at Cape Hatteras. Being essentially part of the ocean, the winds are reliable, steady and strong. Yet the cape acts like an immense wave boom, leaving Pamilco Sound relatively smooth under most wind directions. The Carolina sun keeps the water warm well into the fall, and the soft, sandy bottom stays, in many places, chest-deep from the surface for kilometres offshore. Windsurfing here is not the tormenting sport it can be up north, just the exhilarating one. Rig up on the beach, step out into the thigh deep water, scream across the sound for a few kilometres and, if you blow your jib, just set up another pseudo water-start and start all over.

As with all weather-dependent activities, you run the risk that Mother Nature will turn her back on you. Around Hatteras, the doldrums are also known as the perfect time to walk across the road and let the ocean work you over as you learn how not to surf. The many shops that rent surfboards can direct you to a wave break that will be the least humbling.

But getting skunked by the wind is a risk that all windsurfers must take. And even if you only get out for a few hours at Hatteras, that risk will seem insignificant as you chase a pelican across the sound toward the sunset. Ian Merringer is a contributing editor to explore and Ski Canada magazines.

If you go

GETTING THERE

From Washington, D.C., take I-95 south to Richmond, Va., I-64 southeast to Norfolk, and Highways 17 and 158 southeast to Nags Head on the Outer Banks, where Highway 12 continues down the length of Cape Hatteras. For detailed driving directions, a map of the area and weather forecasts, visit http://www.outer-banks.com.

ACCOMMODATIONS

For links to beach house rentals and campgrounds on the Outer Banks, visit http://www.outerbanks.org.

RENTALS AND LESSONS

Windsurfing Hatteras: Avon; (252) 995-5000; or visit the Web site at http://www.windsurfinghatteras.com.

Hatteras Island Sail Shop: Waves; (252) 987-2292; or visit the Web site at http://www.HISS-waves.com.

Fox Watersports: Buxton; (252) 995-4102; http://www.foxwatersports.com.

INFORMATION

Outer Banks Visitors Bureau: (800) 446-6262; http://www.outerbanks.org.