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any people who buy pilot house sailboats do so because they want to sail to colder climates. Larry Collins wanted one because he lives in such a place, Newfoundland. In early July, he stopped in at Oriental on board his newly acquired Fisher 37 — with pilot house. Oriental was the first stop on the boat’s journey to its new home. It was both a new boat and a new experience for him.

Fisher 37 “Sea Cue” in its first stop along the way to Newfoundland, staying at the Oriental Marina & Inn docks.

While he grew up and lived in a place defined by the sea, Larry Collins says his past experience was mainly daysailing. For almost twenty years he sailed an Alberg 30 during the short (May-October) sailing season there. He sold the boat three years ago.

This year, he found himself wanting a boat once again. Part of his reasoning, he said, is that he’d spent a career in the oil fields and seen people who worked all their lives succumb to cancer or heart conditions. He decided he needed to get a boat. And that is what led him to NC.

Larry Collins in the cockpit of “Sea Cue” in Oriental’s harbor, July 7.

He found SeaCue near Beaufort. In the late spring and early summer he spent “six weeks working like a dog” on the boat before pointing her north. The first twenty miles to Oriental he says, were “Hair-raising. It was like landing on the moon.”

One thing that was particularly disconcerting had to do with the moon — or the lack of lunar pull on the tide here at the southern end of the Pamlico Sound. Larry said he was used to the more drastic rises and falls of the tide in Newfoundland. Here, he said, “nothing changes. This was odd.” (Strong winds weren’t blowing during his visit, so our wind tide wasn’t evident.)

Inside the pilothouse.

The rain, he said, is different, too. There’d been a downpour the night before. “I like it. It’s warm, not cold.”

One feature of Sea Cue that Larry especially likes, is the control inside the pilot house that controls a worm gear on the shaft, which changes the pitch of the propeller. Larry says with the pitch tweaked the boat can go up to 8 knots under power.

While there was an absence of tides and cold Newfoundland rain, he noted that there seemed to be a lot more navigational markers to contend with. (Our interview interrupted his way point preparation.)

Asked what prompted him to get this boat, Larry said that he’d worked in the oil fields and seen friends and other workers succumb to cancer or heart conditions. That was one reason to do things he’d thought about doing. Like getting another boat.

Their plans were to take the ICW to Norfolk, then sail outside. NY was one waypoint along the way. “I definitely want to get a picture in front of the Statue of Liberty,” he said. After that, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia and then the south coast of Newfoundland and Conception Bay. They hoped to cover the distance in 6 weeks. A deadline loomed, his nephew Jonathon, was to start college in Nova Scotia on a music scholarship in August.

No worries about the tide here in Oriental – unlike Larry’s home in Newfoundland.

The name the boat came with – Sea Cue – will stay. “It seemed a cute name and the boat’s gonna keep it,” he said. “It’s my cue to go to sea.”.

Posted Wednesday August 6, 2008 by Melinda Penkava

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