We made pizza on the grill, it turned out awesome.
We had a nice sail through the Albermarle Sound, and hadn't planned for too many miles. We started planning the next leg, knowing we had to be at least to Beaufort, about 150 miles away, by Sunday to meet up with our friend Aaron for a week of
It was then that the wind really picked up. We were headed from the Albermarle to the Pamlico Sound and the whole area was completely strewn with crab (?) traps. It was like navigating through a maze. I was on the tiller when one of them I'd failed to give a wide enough berth caught the rudder and popped it up. It's designed to pop up when it hits something to avoid damage, but when it isn't fully down there is a tremendous amount of force acting on it, and any attempt to move the tiller has dire results (as you may remember from previous posts, we learned this the hard way last spring at the cost of two perfectly good tiller handles). The answer to a popped rudder is to loose the sails, which kills our speed and usually heads us upwind, allowing us to pull the rudder back down. It is nearly impossible to pull it down while we're travelling with any velocity. Well, everything and everyone behaved as they should and we got the rudder down, but it was a little too much for the day and we decided to just find a quiet hole to anchor in. Elizabeth City hadn't been particularly restful and we needed some down time.
After a couple false starts with anchor, we finally found some good holding in Manns Harbor. We watched a movie and cooked dinner and got some of that relaxation we needed. Our hope was to make it to Hattaras the next day - it was only about 40 miles away - but when we set out the winds were gusting like crazy and there was crazy chop in the Pamlico. That was the first day that I swore undying hatred of that sound, and not the last. After 5 miles we gave it up for a bad job and pulled into a little creek outside of Wanchese, NC. Just at the entrace there was a beautiful dock that stretched out in front of a huge mansion, and it appeared deserted. With a few glances over our shoulders we tied up.
With the memory of our "conversation" the day before fresh in our minds, we decided to go explore the town we were near. We debated the pronunciation of the name - Wanchese. I settled on wan-cheese-ee, while Cody preferred Wanna-cheese. At any rate, we left a note on our boat saying we'd be back in case our presence on the dock was bothersome to the absent tenants, and walked towards town. "Town" turned out to be a very rural, down-on-its-heels fishing town. While many of the passers-by waved and smiled, we also walked by a huge man sitting in a chair in front of a trailer that was rotting into the ground, drinking bad beer. He yelled at us (me), "Hey! You wanna party?" and he continued to yell it until we were out of site. I wondered, "Has anyone ever said yes?" At any rate, my father taught me that as long as you can run away from the bad guys you're all set, and beating this scumbag in a footrace was no question. (Side note: my entire impression of the South, I fear, has been shaped by watching Deliverance, so, well, it's no surprise that I view every good ol' boy who passes by as, well, maybe the less said the better.)
Anyway, we found Wanchese lacking in charm, but found a nice sandwich shop staffed by some really friendly women. They even made a blackbean burger! It was delish. And! we learned the proper pronunciantion of Wanchese - One-Cheese. Go figure. Well, we were convinced we'd seen the best that Wanchese had to offer and walked back to the boat. Once we arrived the wind had died down and we decided to see if we could make some headway. Just as we got out there it started gusting like crazy again and we turned back, no more ready to get soaked and beat up than we'd been in the morning. No one seemed to mind our presence on the dock and we ended up having a very nice evening there.
The next morning the wind had settled down a bit and we had a quick sail down to Hattaras. We tied up to a couple pilings and decided to walk around. We were in search of a good pound of coffee and stumbled upon The Dancing Turtle coffeeshop. We found ourselves unwilling to spend $16/lb for coffee beans, but each ordered a frozen mocha. It was amazing. We walked to the Atlantic side of Hattaras and went for a swim/body surf in the warm ocean. Also amazing, and very much needed.
The next day we set out for the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum after breakfast. We were going to run, but it was hot and we were lazy, so after about 100 yards we turned around and went into the hardware store that had rental cruiser bikes out front. They wanted $15 each per day for them, but we didn't need them the whole day so Cody talked them down to $15 for both for a couple hours. As it woudl turn out, even that was a steep. Every time Cody would coast his chain would fall off. Oh well. We went back to our favorite coffee shop for another frozen mocha, then cruised down to the museum. The museum was pretty rad - it's remarkable and sort of frightening how many big ships have gone down around the Outer Banks.
Once we got back to the boat it was looking like a nice day to make the 15 mile sail to Ocracoke, so we raised the anchor and set out. We had nice downwind sail and made it there in a couple hours. The next morning we went out for breakfast, then went for a little run. I was super lazy so our run turned into more of a walk, and when we got back to the docks we got ice cream and bought kite. The rest of the day was spent chilling on the boat and trying to fly the kite (there wasn't really enough wind). We wanted to go check out a bar that was about a mile from where we docked our dinghy, so after dinner we walked to Howard's Pub. They boasted a beer selection 200-deep. We tried some North Carolina beers, then walked back to the boat. Ocracoke was rad.
The next day we were boun for Morehead City, about 50 miles from Ocracoke. We decided to head down the Core Sound rather than heading out into the ocean because of a prediction of 4-6 foot seas. It was super shallow but Tri-oomph skimmed right over it. There were these big nets stretched across huge distances of the sound, reinforced with fence posts. It was super annoying because we'd find a good heading and then we'd realize that there was a net stretched across and we'd have to go about a mile off course to get around it. As we entered the channel to get up to Morehead City/Beaufort we were greeted by dozens of boats going full-speed in and out the channel. It was insanity. I am really amazed we didn't see any collisions. We would later learn that there had been a fishing competition that day, doubless contributing to the boat traffic.
We found our way to the recommended anchorage and had a pleasant evening on the boat, ready to meet up with Aaron the next morrning!
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