Scenes from Oriental

Oriental, NC
N35 01.492 W 076 41.741

We are at the public dock (upper right). At night, the nearby shrimp boats left their lights on all night (lower left). That makes a pretty picture but it is a conspicuous waste of energy. The Bean (lower right) is the name of the local coffee shop that is right across the street from the public dock. It seems to be the social epicenter of Oriental. This morning I was going to go there for a cup of coffee but it was so crowded at 0730 that there was standing room only.

Oriental is a unique place. It seems that many, if not most, of the people who live here are sailors and former cruisers. Annapolis may justifiably claim to be the sailing capitol of the east but Oriental deserves the claim to be the cruisers capitol. The local residents make daily pilgrimages to the water front to see what boats are there and to swap stories with the skipper and crew.

I overheard a young mother with two small kids chatting at The Bean yesterday. Someone asked how her new house was. She said, "Fine but right now all our time and energy is going in to fixing up our boat." Wow. I'm impressed.

Could we think about living here? I'm afraid that we couldn't afford it. Oriental has benefited from a real estate boom and the housing prices are sky high. Even a little house the size of a garage is likely to cost $500,000.

Compare the two harbor cam views above. The top one shows right now. You can see Tarwathie at the dock and you can see the back side of The Bean Coffee shop. The bottom picture shows the identical scene during Hurricane Isabel in 2003. That is a great illustration of a storm surge. The public dock where we are today was submerged 6 feet or more during the surge.