Having decided to live by the ocean, we pretty much limited ourselves (to within 100 miles) of the East or West coast. The added complication was that Kay grew up in Minnesota and wanted at least some snow. I, on the other hand, was from Buffalo and had seen all the snow I ever wanted to see. So we compromised on a place that averaged one snow a year. That pretty much limited us to Eastern North Carolina or some places in the Northwest. However, not wanting rain 300 days a year, we decided on North Carolina. Of course, that meant I had to find a position there, but as fate would have it, East Carolina College (now University) was looking for a Nuclear Physicist, which technically I was, ... sort of. I called, they called, I accepted, and we moved to Greenville North Carolina in August 1965.

So I guess our next thing was to buy a boat. Buy yes, get no! The morning of the day we were to pick up our new sailboat, the adoption agency called and told us they had a wonderful baby girl for us. They were right. Enter Dawn, exit, stage left, boat. (I got even with her later by naming the first boat I built as the "Dawn.)" A year later our son, Chris, the one who later rescues us when I am struck down on our 2006 cruise, joined the troop. With two babies, boating suddenly took a back seat, at least, for Kay. I went in with a friend , Joe Boyette, in buying a 14 foot Boston Whaler, want-a-be, boat and got into fishing in a big way. One thing I learned was that the "Calico Bass" I caught, way back when, in Lake Erie were actually Crappie (and the "Thunder Pumper" a Fresh Water Drum). I learned a lot from Joe, but back to Kay and I with new crew and boating.

As soon as the kids were old enough, I don't know, say 2 and 3, we got back into boating with a 16 foot bow rider, and 55 HP Evinrude outboard (quite a change from my 1.5 HP Neptune of past desire). Every Saturday morning at 5 AM off we went, the kids in the back of the station wagon with little cardboard boxes of cereals.

One of our favorite places to go was Cape Lookout You could catch almost anything there from Albacore to Tautog; we caught both and almost everything in between. Regrettably "S" as in "Shark" comes between "A" and "T", and we caught them too, Dusky, Hammerhead, Bull, Sand and others.

Cape Lookout is a beautiful place with Caribbean clear waters and broad sandy beaches. We loved to swim off the boat there, that is, until one day a hammerhead shark longer than our boat swam by. At that point and for ever after the "we" became "I"!

There are many "Fish Stories", some of which are true, that I could tell at this point, but I will limit myself to the most memorable one. We were fishing for Gray Trout (otherwise known as "Weakfish) just off the Cape. Chris was in the bow, Dawn between the windows at the walkthrough and Kay between the port and starboard seats. I was at the back of the boat. Unbeknown to the rest of the family Chris had hooked a five-foot shark and quietly worked it to the surface. The first we knew about this development was when Chris said "I can get it into the boat." That is when we knew there was a problem, a big problem. Chris, ever ingenious, wedged the butt of his rod into the crack between a bow hatch and the rest of the seat and was using the rod as a lever to boat one angry shark. We were frozen in astonishment, somehow I got to the bow and redeposited Chris safely to his mother. That left Dawn, Chris and Kay safely at the stern, and me and the shark in the small bow compartment. Clearly one of us had to desert the ship. The shark elected to go first, I elected to let him.

We get Back into Sailing

A few years later I was reading the Sunday paper and saw a classified ad for an AquaCat catamaran and trailer for $600. Despite having no experience with sailing (except for my experiment with a one-way sailboat on Lake Erie as a child) and never having read a book on how to sail (in fact, I still haven't) I bought it that day. It was fun, but neither Kay or I found sitting on a tarpaulin very comfortable. Also it was very limited for overnight cruising, something both of us wanted to do.

	We used it for many years and in many places. Chris and Dawn served as rather semi-willing crew and movable ballast. (In Chris' case a little too movable, as it turned out one day). We decided to keep the boat in Oriental because of its access to our favorite places: Beaufort and Cape Lookout. Once we took a friend, Bill Byrd, sailing in a stiff wind. We were well heeled over and Chris was on the leeward side near the bow when a wave washed him overboard. As he sped by us, or us by him, I grabbed his life preserver (aka PFD) and hauled him aboard. He remembers this to this day. The first time we went to the Cape from Oriental, after exiting the Beaufort channel, we had a North wind so we had to tack. Now I do not like tacking, firmly believing in the maxim "Gentlemen never sail to weather", I decided to do it in one tack. Given the wind direction and my questionable skill, that necessitated us going out so far that we lost sight of land. We then tacked back and eventually arrived at Cape Lookout. Looking at it another way we covered about 20 miles to cover around 4 miles. No wonder my crew looked at me with a "puzzled" face, but, one tack it was, and we were there. Other than the rather protracted journey there, the trip was uneventful, as were most. The one exception was later. After arriving and putting down the anchor we learned that a particularly violent storm front with winds gusting to 70 knots was to arrive that night. We could not get back to Oriental in time, so we elected to stay. At that time there was an active Coast Guard station inside the Cape and we reachored the boat as close to it as we could, hoping that if the 5-lb Danforth anchor broke loose we would end up on their front lawn. That evening at dusk three Coast Guard men came down to the end of the dock and stood there looking at us and shaking their heads in apparent disbelief. Not a good sign. I knew that if we broke loose, even if I could keep the prop of our little 4-HP Mercury in the water it would not be able to handle the wind. So with confidence that, if not at the Coast Guard station, we would wash up at one of the surrounding beaches, I went to bed and with some help to sleep. I awoke the next morning to a beautiful and placid morning and a not so placid wife. Kay, in the absence of any other responsible adult, had stayed up all night guarding her children. She reported that we had gone around 360o several times. Any doubt about the report was quickly disabused when we tried to raise the anchor. The motor could not break it loose, I could not break it loose, Kay and I together could not break it loose. So we led the anchor rode back to the starboard cockpit winch. No luck. Next we took the tail of the rope and used the port winch for it. Using both winches we finally broke it loose. That was not the last time we would have that problem at Cape Lookout but it was the last time with the Catalina.

Eventually we had to sell the Catalina as crew mutiny loomed large on the horizon. Of course it was only a few years later that our kids were saying "Why did you sell our sailboat? You should have kept it." It was also about this time that I had a good opportunity to go to Australia for a year. Both kids threatened to run away. So here we stayed. They both now say "Why did you listen to us?" All this leads me to offer three pieces of advice for all boaters with children:

1. Don't listen to them.
2. Don't listen to them.
3. Don't listen to them.

After the Catalina