Kaimusailing

My plan was to leave the municipal dock and anchor nearby for the overnight, then get underway Saturday morning and decide whether to go outside to Masonboro Inlet or stay in the Inracoastal.
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I took a walk and found a pizza place, Pizza Bums, and stopped in, had a lunch of Sloppy Joe and a couple of IPA’s. I planned to return in the evening and get a pizza before shoving off.
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Back at Trillium I took a nap and when I awoke found fishing boats loaded with weekend anglers stopping in at the municipal docks to load up or discharge passengers and gear. These were small outboard powered boats, some had rental insignia on the side. There was a strong breeze blowing from the north.
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I decided then and there to run with that breeze and instead of anchoring out later, I would put in some mileage this late afternoon. When I got Trillium out of her slip and hoisted the 150 she began surging ahead, leaving a wake. This meant we were approaching 6 knots hull speed.
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The breeze continued, steady 10 with long gusts up to maybe 15. This northerly air flow was caused by tropical depression Julie stalled just off the coast. Going outside meant getting closer to the source of these winds and instead of 10-15, we’d be getting 15-25. The seas would be rough out there, but in the ICW, Bogue Sound, it was flat and the only waves were our wake as we tore along.
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The wind angle was such that we would have a north breeze steady and I could set the main and 150 at wing and wing, or as one passing fishing boat said, “wing on wing”. This is when the mainsail is slightly alee and the wind pours out of it into the genoa which is set out to the opposite side. This works OK until the NE gust would come along and I had to jibe the mainsail and broad reach on a starboard tack. The boat was constantly at hull speed and the buoys and daymarks flew by.
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I knew the channel would narrow as we got away from Morehead City, and it would require astute steering to keep in the channel and maintain our sailing angles. When the NE gust would die out and the steady north would take over, I had to bear off and jibe the mainsail again to set up the wing and wing. This was not a lot of work, but we couldn’t stray too far out of the channel.
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Then I noticed a strange large boat far ahead. It was moving across the channel, turning, moving the other way across the channel, and as I got closer, it looked like a shrimper, trawling right in the channel. We really didn’t have much choice on where we could go, it would be in the channel, left, right, or center, and also we had to tend the sails and plan our twisty path, and there was a big shrimp trawler right in the way. He was not keeping to one course or anther, he was hauling a trawl net. We had to recognize that too, we had a keel and the net was underwater, who knows where, all being dragged back and forth by the shrimper. It was a dance or a duel back and forth, we would line up one side of the channel, he would turn and block that off. We would jibe and keep our sailing trim for the other side of the channel, he would turn again and block that off. As we got closer I could see we were going faster than he was and I jibed and set up the wing and wing again and sailed past on the left side of the channel. The crew on board were commercial fishermen with the obligatory cigarette and unaware of anything else but their trawl net.
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After a while I could see another sail behind us, also dealing with the trawler. It was a catamaran and gaining on us, but of course, why shouldn’t a catamaran gain on a little keel boat. It took a long while for them to catch up. It was a Gemini 105 catamaran with only the roller furling genoa being flown. But they were under power too, cheaters. They came along side and said they were headed to Florida, me too I said. “Say, you’re going fast, 6 knots”, “That’s all she’ll do”, I said. They pulled past us and we continued down Bogue Sound as the late afternoon sun began to light everything up with an orange tinged glow.
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I remembered my original plan to anchor out for the night, so when sun set, I pulled over at a likely spot and threw over the anchor. The photo is of the catamaran that passed us.