Cape Lookout NC USA

Town Docks at Beaufort

At 1000 prompt on Wednesday 8 May we were outside the Beaufort Maritime Museum, almost waiting with carnations in our buttonholes and copies of The New York Times tucked under our arms.  We had no idea what Dianne’s friend would look like but we managed to meet up with each other without resorting to too many spy-movie clichés and collected our camera from him, for which we were very grateful both to him and, of course, Dianne.

Views around Taylor’s Creek in the morning sunshine

With camera in hand [Ed: actually firmly attached to his belt!] we had a last try to buy shrimps from Homer Smith’s Seafood, but the boats hadn’t come in, and then returned to BV and set off for Cape Lookout Bight.

Heading out to Cape Lookout Bight

Cape Lookout Bight entrance

Cape Lookout Bight had been highly recommended to us as a beautiful wilderness area and an excellent anchorage for waiting for a weather window for rounding Cape Lookout.  Actually, the weather was perfectly acceptable for heading off straight to the Chesapeake Bay but we wanted to see the bight and also, if it were open, have a look at the lighthouse.

Cape Lookout Light.  The light has been illuminated by various means over the years.  It is now powered by electricity, all of which is generated by an enormous bank of solar panels close to the light itself

The bight is enormous, with low sandy banks all around.  Parts of the bight are quite deep, other areas are extremely shallow.  Cautiously, we followed the winding shallow channel across the sandbanks in the middle of the bight to get to the eastern side, convenient for a dinghy ride ashore to view the lighthouse from close-up.

Cape Lookout Light with the old keepers’ cottage below it.  The spit on which the lighthouse stands is eroding remarkably rapidly, and mostly, surprisingly, from the Cape Lookout Bight side.  In the past, the spit on which the lighthouse stands was connected to the mainland via a narrow isthmus.  Hurricane damage resulted in that isthmus being breached and the local leisure and commercial boating communities found the waterway that was opened up so useful that the Army Corps of Engineers now maintain it as a branch of the ICW rather than letting it silt up and rebuild as land as it naturally would do.  The consequent waterflow is causing the spit on which the lighthouse and the keepers’ cottage etc stand to erode from the bight side.  In the days when the keepers lived at the light, the bank up from the beach was located about where the people are standing in the water in the picture above

Disappointingly, the lighthouse was not yet open for the season but the keepers’ cottage was so we enjoyed a wander through that, where we learned quite a lot about the lives of keepers and their families and a fair amount about lighthouses in general and those of North Carolina in particular.

We took a stroll south along the spit towards Cape Lookout point, but we didn’t have the time to go all the way to the point proper.  However, on our walk we did find out the name of some of the flowers we had seen on Shackleton Bank Island at Beaufort.

Outer Banks view

A beautiful peaceful evening in the bight

Grilling dorado kebabs

And after a good walk ashore we returned to BV, finished off the last of the dorado as kebabs……

…..baked the bread we had started off that morning…..










….and enjoyed a fabulous sunset across the bight.

Cape Lookout, North Carolina, USA