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The Spring 2013 issue of American Road® magazine sails forth, built aboard a pirate theme. With the first excursion charted, it sets off to explore the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the life of history's darkest buccaneer. "The Blackbeard Route" is the newest entry in the American Road® Original Series, and the first to incorporate ferry lines in its itinerary. From the waters off Beaufort—where the wreck of Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, was discovered in 1996—to the shores of Ocracoke Island, it traces the last days of the pirate king. Plunging forward, "Pirate Ports of Call" provides the latest ensemble offering—a treasure trove of twenty-eight pirate-related sites from Nova Scotia's Maritime Museum of the Atlantic to Florida's Dry Tortugas National Park. "In the Footsteps of Lafitte" follows at the heel, stalking seafaring smuggler Jean Lafitte around the Gulf Coast. Shiver me timbers! Even the encores have anchors: the magazine's crew visits the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum, pirate rides along Route 66, and other yo-ho-ho highlights that prove the nation's fascination with pirates is alive and well.