Cruising coastal waters: Sailor shares his love of the sport

Published 8:50 am Sunday, May 18, 2025

1 of 7

Nick Crow, left, and Gareth Ferguson gain speed on this beam reach. Crow controls the jib, Ferguson the main said and tiller, which turns the rudder to steer the Outrage 18. Daryl Law photo

Hardy Peters. Daryl Law photo

Nick Crow of Colington hanks the jib to the forestay on this brand-new monohull, an Outrage 18 during a recent lesson. Daryl Law photo

Instructor Gareth Ferguson and his student Nick Crow watch the sails as they head north on the Currituck Sound. Daryl Law photo

Captain and crew check the sail trim. Daryl Law photo

Nick Crow gets some tiller time while sailing this Outrage 18 on a sailing lesson with instructor Gareth Ferguson recently. Daryl Law photo

Surfer Girl, a Maine Cat 38 catamaran, plys the Currituck Sound while on charter last summer out of Nor' Banks in north Duck. The vessel was built to accommodate 18 passengers, the captain and mate. This drone image was taken by a past customer. Courtesy Sail OBC

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Cruising coastal waters near and far, Hardy Peters shares his love for sailing by making it available to people of all ages in a variety of ways.

Perhaps the biggest manifestation of this idea is represented in Surfer Girl, a 38-foot catamaran that sails the Currituck Sound all summer season operated by Sail OBX.

Peters spent a recent weekend in Virginia getting her ship shape. He looks forward to getting her back home after she wintered “on the hard” in Cape Charles.

Get the latest headlines sent to you

During the season, vacationers can experience the beauty of Currituck Sound with the wind on their faces during sailing charters.

It’s truly a beautiful shallow water vessel that can take up to 18 paying passengers. As for its colorful name, Peters said he had some help with that.

“Surfer Girl, my wife came up with it,” he said smiling. “She’s fast and efficient, a great boat.”

Built in Bremen, Surfer Girl is an all-white Maine Cat 38 and takes 18 charter passengers with two crew members, captain and mate.

Peters runs the tours out of Nor’ Banks adjacent to the Village Table and Tavern restaurant in north Duck. They run daytime and sunset cruises and typically average eight to 10 passengers a charter, he said.

Surfer Girl is considered light weight at only 15,000 pounds and her hulls feature a 12 to 1 ratio, which means at 38 feet, her hulls are only 3.5 feet wide, Peters added.

“We stay pretty much booked all summer – a lot of bachelorette parties,” he said. “We also have a lot of families, sometimes three generations at a time.

“There’s a big cockpit, two tramps and a lot of room to spread out,” Peters added.

They like to seek out locations such as Dew’s Island across the sound. The crew goes all out to make sure passengers have a great time and even supply cups, plates and napkins in when guests forget to bring their own, he said.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sail OBX also offers youth sailing camps on Currituck Sound during the season from the North Marina in Southern Shores.

“We run the camps out of here,” he said. “We’re partnered with the Southern Shores Civic Association.”

In their 13^th year, this year’s camps begin on Monday, June 16. There’s a fee for the camps with half of it going to the pricey, required insurance associated with the venture, Peters said.

“We did it in the beginning for my kids and their friends,” he said. “We enjoy it.”

One of his main instructors, Gareth Ferguson, age 23, was on hand the other day giving a lesson to Nick Crow of Colington on a brand-new Outrage 18 monohull.

“It’s one of our coaching boats,” Peters said. Ferguson and Peters set out to rig the sailboat while Crow soaked it all in and eventually joined in.

“This is a great way to gauge a student’s ability level,” Ferguson said. “He’s pretty new to this so the first place to start is rigging.”

From stem to stern and port to starboard, sailboats have plenty of lines running everywhere. There are sheets, standing rigging and running rigging.

All the ropes on sailboats are lovingly referred to as lines and they control the sails and sail shape along with other important things.

In addition, there is a plethora of nomenclature sailors use to describe parts of sailboats – daggerboard, centerboard, keel, rudder, tiller, mast, main sail, jib, hull, etc.

These terms and all the knots are learned over time, but several basic, more important skills are required from the start. It’s key to understand the points of sail and even more important to master basic capsize recovery drills.

During the week-long camps, Peters said they teach those right at the start and students must be able to swim before enrolling in camp. Prudent small boat sailors always wear life vests too.

While Ferguson and his student were finishing up the rigging, Peters launched a nice Boston Whaler center console powerboat they use as the safety boat.

Ferguson and Crow were itching to get out on the water, and the light air conditions were favorable for a beginning lesson.

Ferguson said his plan was simple, launch, take the tiller and then switch with his student, Crow.

That day, the east winds were forecasted to slowly “clock around to the south,” Ferguson said. Sailors often start out by sailing upwind first. Regardless of the boat’s heading, Ferguson was keeping track of the wind speed and direction.

“Six or seven knots is wildly different from 12 to 14 knots,” he said. Ferguson said he’s been living aboard a Helms 27-foot sailboat in “Little Washington.”

Asked if he’s into boats, he replied with ease. “Yes, very much so!” Ferguson also has his captain’s license.

He and Peters recently returned from Foiling Week in Pensacola, Fla. Foiling employs a boat hull with FCS or Flight Control System that allow the vessel to “fly out and through the water,” he added.

And they have other passions. Peters competes in the Worrell 1000 race from Florida to Virginia Beach as Team OBX along with sailing partner James Eaton, he said. These days, all of the Hobie 16s and such with crews fueled by beer and bravado are gone.

Instead, they’ve been replaced by high performance NACRA F-18 catamarans and well-tuned sailors hellbent on finishing the grueling 1,000 mile ocean sailing race, if not winning it.

Historically, the race features legs that stop on both Ocracoke and Kill Devil Hills. Peters and Easton completed the race in 2024 and 2022. They see themselves as the “next generation” of the team previously headed up by Robert “Peanut” Johnson of Nags Head.

Peters said his two sons, Michael and Robert, along with his wife April, made up his ground crew. They follow the racers up the coast on land offering support such as equipment, supplies, food and more. The crews also push the boats out into the ocean during the beach starts of each race leg early in the morning.

Nacra stands for North American Catamaran Racing Association. During the Olympics, the sailors use Nacra foiling 17s, Peters said.

He also sells boats at East Coast Sailboats company in Point Harbor. According to his website, customers can purchase all sorts of new, small sailing vessels from Hobie 16s to Nacra 18s and more, much more.

On a recent Saturday, he took several customers out for a sail and they all “had a blast.” Peters said he took them back to the business where they bought a brand-new boat in the box.

They assembled on the spot and the customers towed it away on a trailer.

READ ABOUT MORE NEWS HERE.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE COASTLAND TIMES TODAY!