January 12, 2025
0830 Crew prepares to untie and move a few docks up to take on fuel and water.
0900 Pisces ties up at fuel dock and takes on water with the help of fellow boaters by linking 3 long hoses together.
0945 Pisces departs fuel dock and motors toward inlet.
0950 Starboard engine suddenly stalls. Crew decides to return to the dock they just left to troubleshoot the engine. Capt OhNo suspects a fuel line issue…
1000 Capt OhNo struggles to dock Pisces under one engine with the current ripping the boat away from the dock. He discovers the importance of docking against rather than with the current.
1010 Pisces safely ties up at fuel dock. Grumpy dockmaster approaches and says “What’s this all about?”
1020 Capt OhNo discovers the fuel valve had been fiddled with by the boat surveyor the day before and had been left in the off position. Once Capt OhNo fixes this, Pisces fires right up!
1030 Pisces departs, again, for Cape Lookout.
1035 Dolphins swim with Pisces!
1045 Pisces enters the ocean for the first time under the command of this crew. Small (2"‘) long period swell running with a light breeze out of the North. Temps are in the 40’s under a cloudless sky. Pisces motor sails to the entrance of Cape Lookout.
1230 Capt OhNo calls the crew to the cockpit as Pisces approaches the entrance marker to Cape Lookout Bight. Capt OhNo expresses that he is feeling scared and uneasy about the plan to go in and anchor for a myriad of reasons: a late start because of the engine which puts them behind schedule for what was just supposed to be a short day trip any way, impending bad weather, frequent shoaling, an outgoing low tide and ultimately he just “has a bad feeling”. Swabs and Popcorn wholeheartedly support Capt OhNo’s conservative course of action which is to immediately turn the boat around and head back to the anchorage in Beaufort. Pisces turns around.
1300 Crew hoists full sails and sails at 7+knots back to Beaufort!
1400 Copious amount of dolphins follow Pisces back into Taylors Creek Anchorage.
1415 Pisces anchors in Taylors Creek.
1430 Popcorn and Capt OhNo set out in Little Baby Pisces (the dinghy) in search of adventure. They zip up Taylors Creek with the hopes of reaching Harkers Island and the Waterfoul Museum (thought this is a big ask).
1500 Popcorn and OhNo reach the end of Taylors Creek and with an engine that is “acting funny” they decide not to venture across the sound to Harkers Island. Instead, they land LBP on a sandy little beach and explore a nature preserve boardwalk area on the far side of Carrot Island.
1530 Popcorn and OhNo return from exploring and board the dinghy but…the engine will not start. Capt OhNo tries various tactics to get the engine going (priming with fuel, messing with the choke and throttle, fiddling with the kill switch) all to no avail. Popcorn suggests tiliting the engine slightly on its mount so it is more angled towards the dinghy and boom, the engine fires right up.
1715 While the crew discusses plans for dinner, Capt OhNo says that he has just recieved an interesting looking email. He reads aloud a message from Captain Steve on board a nearby sailing vessel named Angelfish and we discover Steve and Karen are also at the Beaufort Docks and they are also sailing as a result of losing their son Andre at the age of 28 (the same age as our Jacob!). Andre was born a Pisces (just like Jacob) and died by suicide (just like Jacob). At this point, the whole boat is crying as OhNo reads the end of the message, “If you want to talk, we are here”. Capt OhNo immediately tries to call their cell listed but gets voicemail so the whole crew piles into LBP as night falls and motors over to the Beaufort docks where they find Angelfish docked at the verrrrrry end, directly behind where Pisces had been tied up for two nights! Capt OhNo knocks on the hull (which equates to knocking on someone’s front door on land). Steve and Karen warmly welcome the Pisces crew on board even thought they were just about to sit down to a gourmet dinner but they assured the Pisces crew that “this [us talking together] was more important”. The crews of the two boats sat and talked for several hours in the saloon of angelfish, talking about their shared experiences in loss and grief and sailing. They make plans to meet again in the morning for coffee. An absolutely magical and healing evening for the Pisces crew.
We boarded Pisces The Catamaran on December 24, 2024 and pointed her south in a part shakedown, part healing and grieving trip. Notes are pulled from our handwritten, on board log book. Crew are:
Captain Clay (captain and owner of Sail & Surf Adventures, married to Ally); call sign Captain OhNo
First Mate Ally (head chef & lead investigator of all maritime mysteries, married to Clay); call sign Popcorn
Second Mate Carly (Ally’s mom, Clay’s mother-in-law, one-woman cleaning crew of Pisces); call sign Lieutenant Swabs
Dahlia (the cutest ship cat); call sign DD
*there is a very important and traumatic and magical process of getting Pisces that we are working on sharing here. We figured if we waited to start updating until we figured out those words though, we might never start updating at all. Know that there was a before and an after and this trip is part of our grieving process for our brother/son/friend Jacob.*