Pizza Run
Report by Chip Cunningham (Solje W1321, but herein crew on Shades W3854)

The sign said "NO DINGHYS" (top pic left) but it would take more than that to keep us away from another pizza.  Al steered Shades alongside the municipal dock and we tied up.  We were the smallest boat in sight by a factor of five, at least.  We were the only boat under sail.


We had just come in from a cruise that left the Beaufort (NC) public launch and headed out the east end of Taylor Creek. We ran across Back Sound and through the Barden Inlet to moor at Cape Lookout.  From there we beat west in the Atlantic outside Shackleford Banks, reached up through Beaufort Inlet and back into the west end of Taylor Creek - downtown Beaufort - to dockside at Queen Anne's Revenge.  That was the whole point.

Two nights before, while Al was steeping himself in "local knowledge" at the little-known Back Street Pub in preparation for our anticipated cruise, Joe Blackmore and I, being more hungry for food than knowledge, wandered around town and discovered Queen Anne's Revenge.  Our Uncle Al, once sufficiently edified, crossed the quiet main street and joined us for a fine dinner that included a memorable home-made pizza. 


We all had just driven down from Chapel Hill to the Heffernan's beach house on Emerald Isle.  Hurricane Sandy had passed offshore.  We were on a good luck roll. The plan had been to do some cruising during the week of October 29 to November 2, 2012, between the Halloween on the Townsend Regatta at the Lake Townsend Yacht Club north of Greensboro and the Old Brown Dog Regatta at the Catawba Yacht Club on Lake Wylie, SW of Charlotte.  But, though she stayed offshore, Sandy was nibbling around the edges. 

We waited her out Monday in Chapel Hill. Tuesday we drove down to the ocean.  Wednesday things had calmed some.  We found the public launch.  Al and I sailed Shades out to the east in an abbreviated fleet of one. Back Sound is shallow. See this http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/11545.shtml  The tide was halfway out from a three-and-a-half foot high.  If your skipper will not allow you to sound with the centerboard, as mine emphatically would not, you have to pay attention to the channels.  The wind was west.  I'll let Al tell you how strong it was: (15 knots, gusting to 25?).  An odd thing about this area is that the banks, run east-west.  So, the beautiful view from Heffernan's porch out over the Atlantic is south-to Panama, actually.  I never got used to that.

There was enough wind that the prospect of a long wet beat home turned this cruise into more of a scouting mission.  We got the feel of the scale of the chart.  Late afternoon, abeam of Harkers Island, a significant crime novel series setting for Al, we turned around and threaded back through the channels. (Al's note: Margaret Maron, one of my true favourites - check out the Harkers Island reference here)


Thursday we got an earlier start.  The wind was about the same. We caught the tide at its peak. The Beaufort public launch is excellent.  As we passed Harkers Island again, we were checked out by a pod of maybe six dolphins.  Jim Heffernan says that he clicks his ring on the mast and they come right up to the boat.  These stayed about 12' away.



We were heading for a tall structure that turned out to be the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.  When Al and I were first considering the idea of this cruise he asked me where I wanted to sail.  That sent me to Google Earth.  I don't know about you, but the image of Cape Lookout and the vortexes of sand around it made me ache with longing.


We passed extensive nets strung over stakes.  We sailed into the grassy marshes at the east end of Shackleford Bank.  Al thinks he made a mistake turning us into a short arm near the end of the bank, but I'm pretty sure that's not what we did. I think we sailed through the channels in the marsh at the tip of the bank.  We ran aground a couple of times. 


Each time I scanned the grass for signs of a path made by anything large enough to get my leg in its mouth and jumped out of the boat.  It was easy to pull her through the faint channels.  That's one more great thing about a Wayfarer: if it shows water on the chart, a Wayfarer can probably get through it.


I'm fairly new at this, so sailing past this lighthouse painted with those black and white diamonds was deeply satisfying. The taste of the spray.  It's all true. We tied Shades up to the pier of an abandoned dock on Catfish Point.  We walked along the beach. It didn't seem to have been visited since the hurricane.  The sand was scoured away so that it was almost solid seashells!

We sailed north out of the bay close by the buoy at the tip of Lookout Bight where we saw some people - the first other people we had seen- surf casting. And then the action certainly picked up.  We were beating north-westward against a west wind. When we were on a port tack, converging with the shore, the waves seemed like waves I have sailed in on Saginaw Bay. 


But when we went onto a starboard tack, headed out into the ocean, things seemed to change completely.  The waves that had seemed to define the surface of the water on port were now seen to be riding on a much larger surface of big swells.  It was really beautiful.  Shades was so at home. I kept pointing out breakers along the beach to Al. In all fairness to myself, they were thought worthy of being marked on the chart, too.  Al wasn't concerned.  I guess he doesn't plan to lose a boat in them.  Again in all fairness to myself, I have.  A breaker on Lake Huron pushed me right through the bottom of a beautiful 18' cedar strip canoe that weighed only 38 pounds.  Damn.

It took a while to make it to Beaufort Inlet.  We didn't see any horses on the banks. Maybe that's a good thing. Horses being arguably my favorite terrestrial thing, the combination might have been overwhelming. 


The wind was channeling north through the inlet so we dropped the main while we worked on making sense of all the buoys and what the other boats were doing.  Once we located the channel connecting to the west end of Taylor Creek, we could have put the main back up and flown into town but, as navigator, I asked for things to remain slower rather than faster. By the time we got to Taylor Creek we were in the most traffic we had been all day, three boats underway.  We stood a lookout for what we remembered of the downtown, and then there it was: Queen Anne's Revenge off the port bow.  We sailed right up to her back door.


Interestingly, just up the coast from Beaufort, in Rehoboth Beach, in my 16th year, I learned almost all I know about pizza.  I had a job right on the boardwalk making pizzas by hand.  Five, or maybe seven - it was fluid - other guys and I shared a house on the main boulevard for the summer.  That was another really good luck roll.  Not being all that much of a Wayfarer sailor yet, the best of what I can pass on to you in this article is:  really really light cheese and heavy on the sauce.  If that doesn't do it no amount of other stuff will help.