Stay the Course

You wouldn’t think something like failure to stay the course or a simple sandbar grounding could entertain a village for more than a century or two, but then you’d have to know a little something about the people of our settlement and the North Carolina coast to understand.

It all started as I was dragging a deck chair onto the grass beside the Dockhouse. We call the patch of brown lawn beside the dockmaster’s office the lounge area because there’s a rotten bench and a few plastic chairs and a flagpole with a frayed halyard. No living creature eats there except the mosquitoes and sand fleas, and only then when some fool tourist stops to take a picture of the sun melting into the mounds of mud flats across the creek on Carrot Island. Mostly it’s just a place to share a cold drink with a few friends and watch the boat traffic work its way up and down Taylors Creek.

Traffic’s been heavy recently, with everyone scrambling to get pieces of eight, a piece of the Queen’s plate, or at the very least, a piece of immortality. From deep-sea divers to head-boat captains, folks in Beaufort and Morehead City have been angling their way over to that sliver of shoal cradling the most famous shipwreck on the Carolina coast.

It’s a waste of time, if you ask me, since nothing’s safe on these barrier islands except endangered wildlife and the regulations that protect them. The way I figure it, any gold hidden in the bowels of the Queen Anne’s Revenge was whisked away long ago by the currents that scour the Outer Banks.

Still, the startling news of the pirate shipwreck had been found was the break I needed to combat this charge that my navigational impotence was a disgrace to the armada of busybodies sailing along the Carolina coast. Henceforth and forevermore, nautical neophytes like myself can run aground as far and as often as we like, and never again feel guilty for our stupidity and carelessness. Now we have a free pass—a gift from the eternal host of all sandbar parties. From now on, my little indiscretions will pale in comparison to the granddaddy of all astounding groundings.

I’m speaking, of course, of that terror of the high seas, Blackbeard himself, who beached it but good off Beaufort Inlet and sank his boat in the process. Poor guy. It couldn’t have happened to a more cunning cutthroat.

My first thought on hearing the news that it was Beaufort Inlet where Blackbeard sank his boat so long ago was to conjure up a vision of the Great One tumbling out of his bunk, his wiry beard soiled with stale saliva.

“What in Grandma Drummond’s dram shot have you run into this time, Hawkins?” he might have asked, his eyes still blistered from a brutal bout with some cheap rum.

“From the slope of the deck and the pitch of the mast, sir, it appears to be an island of some sort that has lost its struggle to stay afloat.”

“Are you saying we have run aground on a shoal?”

“It would appear so, Captain.”

“Were we anticipating any shoals in this channel, sailor?”

“Well, sir, we’re not exactly in the channel.”

“Not in the channel?”

“No sir. The channel is over there between those green and red markers.”

“Well, why in Haiti’s hilltops didn’t you take this vessel down the channel, sailor?”

“Because when we departed New Providence you ordered the crew to hold this heading until you sobered up. Sorry, sir, we didn’t think it would take you this long.”

“Well, never mind all that. My new orders are for you to follow the channel through the pass, paying careful attention to clear this shoal that’s fixed itself to our keel. If word of this grounding gets out I’ll be the laughingstock of every pub from here to Havana.”

“Aye, aye, Captain. Got to protect your dignity and honor and all.”

“Exactly.”

Well, who knows for certain what happened the night Blackbeard ran aground off Beaufort, North Carolina, but it would have been his style to spread the blame around. Any skipper worth a cuss would do the same. It’s a known fact that Blackbeard made a lucrative living relieving Spanish galleons of their cargo as they sailed up the Carolina coast. Blackbeard worked the shoals and shipping lanes the way former UNC basketball coach Dean Smith used to work a TV timeout. He was crafty and cold-blooded and as ruthless a scoundrel as you’d ever want to meet — I’m speaking of Blackbeard, you understand.

So you can understand my delight when I learned that the Great One himself, my mentor and master, was prone to taking sandbar soundings with the keel of his vessel. The sad fact is my reputation as a skilled navigator has suffered considerably from my litany of “Hard Aground” confessions. But at last I have a clever rebuttal to all those nasty comments I receive when I come up short of water.

“Oh yeah? You think I planted her good?” I’ll shout back the next time I’ve uncovered a sunken shoal. “Well I’m not as bad as Blackbeard. I never lost a boat. At least not for more than a day or two, and even if I did, the thing was still floating when I found it again. So back off, Bub.”

I wish I’d have known about the sinking of Queen Anne’s Revenge on my first passage home from the Bahamas. We had enjoyed a pleasant sail north from the Abacos, catching a nice lift when we hit the Gulf Stream. A little after midnight, lured by the glittering lights of the beach homes on Atlantic Beach, I drew close to shore in search of our first set of markers. The captain was asleep, but when he sensed the change in swell direction he came on deck to verify our position.

“What’s your heading?”

“Don’t really have one,” I said. “I’m just running parallel to the coast until we reach the markers off our bow. Then we can fall off and head down the channel.”

He peered into the darkness beyond the bow, and then went below to secure our latest coordinates. I saw him note the longitude on the legal pad and plot our position on the paper chart. Then he rubbed the stubble on his chin and looked out to sea.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Turn ninety degrees and let’s head due south.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re about to run aground. The entrance to the inlet is out there. See?”

Sure enough, befuddled by darkness, fatigue, and a false sense of security, I finally saw the dim glimmer of red and green sea buoys off to my right.

“Why didn’t you stay on the heading I gave you earlier?” he asked.

“I thought we were almost home.”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

Stay the Course

Staying the course and finishing strong is a rare quality in our culture.

Athletes dance and strut—and sometimes lose games by celebrating too early.  It’s a hard thing to keep at a task that seems to have no end, and yet the Apostle Paul called us to run the good race. To finish strong. To serve to the end, making no provision for the future except for the hope we have in Christ. It’s a tough business to continue on in darkness and not be led astray by the sparkle and lure of lights, but that’s the course marked before us. God is the magnetic north on our compass and the Holy Spirit is the needle pointing us to him. Our job is to adjust our course to align with the needle and when we do this, we’ll always find our way home.

Homeport

I thought I was home that night. I thought I knew better than the captain. I thought wrong.

I would have sure looked stupid running aground near Beaufort after such a smooth sail home, but I’d look even dumber if I came up short of the goals God has placed before me. When it comes to sorry sailors, though, at least I’m not the only fool to miss the Beaufort Channel. The top honors, it turns out, belong to Blackbeard.

So the next time I come back from the islands I’ll probably have another go at that sandbar, and if I get stuck, it’ll be comforting to know that I’m wallowing in the wake of an eternal shoalmate.

I just hope I don’t have to wallow too long.

More Information for How to Stay the Course

For more information on the preservation and recovery of Queen Anne’s Revenge visit the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources website at www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/qar/

Hard Aground hint: The passage is never over until the anchor is set. Stay the course.

Passage markers: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but
only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. —1 Corinthians
9:24. For further inspiration read: Hebrews 12:1–3.

Prayer focus: Those tempted to quit on God before he’s brought them into
port.

This pirate devotion first appeared in Hard Aground . . . Again: Inspiration for the Navigationally Challenged and Spiritually Stuck.