2016 Boat Trip: Part 4

Previously on…

After rerouting to Ocracoke island to escape a storm, we began a second attempt at crossing the Pamlico Sound to reach the town of Oriental.

Here there be dragons

This go ‘round,  the Pamlico Sound was much less scary. The water was glassy. If we had actually been sailing, I don’t know if we would have gotten very far, there was so little wind. 

The afternoon droned on as boring as it had been when we left Manteo. Bright sun, calm water, no land in sight. Just the grumble of the diesel motor and the water lapping against the hull. 

It was evening when we entered the channel of Oriental, North Carolina . The sun was beyond the horizon, its warm glow slowly fading away into the distant sky. We ambled into the tiny harbor and tied off at one of the Public Docks. The town allowed up to 48 hours of free docking before you had to move and start paying at one of the privately owned docks attached to a hotel. 

The next morning, we went exploring.

 Oriental is tiny, adorable, and very, very quirky. It’s known for having more sailboats than people. The majority of residents are older, mostly retired folks. The next largest demographic are fishermen, rarely seen because their vessels take off at dawn and return late.

 Most of the dogs are walked off-leash. One lady actually drives her golf cart around while her golden retriever walks next to her. 

The main street in front of the harbor as we would soon learn, is nearly impassable each time it rains. There is a retaining pond on the other side of the street that floods and becomes one with the harbor. This is why the coffee shop that is located directly in this path, The Bean, is on very, very tall stilts. 

We climbed the stairs to the shop and were transported into an episode of Gilmore Girls. The tables were full of what I could only guess were regulars, because everyone sitting at different tables seemed to know their neighbor. The manager knew everyone by name who walked in (except us) and there were dogs lounging about (this time on leash.) The long, single room that made up the shop consisted of a variety of furniture including comfy couches and tables decoupaged with all sorts of magazine cut-outs and photos. Naturally, the walls were covered with boat themed artwork, photos, and knickknacks. 

We ordered bagels with egg, cheese, and bacon (This is when we still ate meat) and coffee. The coffee was in serve-yourself carafes, and the flavor/blends available are changed regularly. I have had coffee all over the US, Europe, and South America, and I maintain that the drip-brew at The Bean is the best I’ve ever had. Maybe it's the hint of salt flavor in the municipal water, or maybe it’s the attached memory of sitting on the wrap-around porch of The Bean and watching the fishing boats leave the harbor as rosy fingered dawn stretched out to greet us. Regardless, I recommend you try it sometime.

After moaning over how good the bagels and coffee were, we continued on our exploration. 

We walked into a big warehouse looking shop across the street called the Provision Company. Their offerings are clearly born out of the necessities and desires of a sailing community; It’s a grocery store, souvenir shop, bookstore, hardware store, and boat thrift shop all rolled into one big metal building. 

We chatted with the owner for a bit, and he informed us that they had bikes for visitors to use for free. They just had to be returned before the store closed.

We went out front and picked out a couple of the steel framed beach cruisers and pedaled away. 

Just around the corner, we passed a restaurant with a big enclosed porch called “M&M’s”. (I’ve been to Oriental dozens of times now, and I still don’t know what the M’s stand for.)  Just past the restaurant, we came across a sign that said “Welcome Sailors.” We stopped and looked closely. We couldn’t tell if what we were seeing was a private home or maybe a bed-and-breakfast. The house was really neat. A rectangular, two story brick building, it had a tin-roof awning over the front walk that made it look like a storefront. It had a tall, matching brick garage next to it with a peaked roof. On the front above the sliding doors was a sign that read “Light Plant, 1917.” We weren’t certain what a Light Plant was besides a historic landmark. 

Pretty much every shop and boutique you found in Oriental was an old residential home that had been renovated and transformed into a storefront. Ferns hung on nearly every porch, and one house after the other was painted in some pastel or neon hue. 

We looped around to the little public beach. (Calling it a beach is a little generous. It’s a patch of play-sand that had been trucked-in, perpetually covered in pine needles.) On the corner of the entrance to the beach was a large, oval stone painted like an Easter Egg. A little plaque declared that it was a Dragon’s Egg, and that Oriental is a protected wildlife nesting area for the “Draco Guardianas Carolinus”.

So, a little bit on the name of the town. I bet you were wondering, “what potentially politically incorrect thing may have prompted such a name?” So, the story is, when Oriental was being established in the late 1800s, someone decided it would be a great idea to name the town after a shipwreck from a couple decades before. The SS Oriental was a Union steamship that wrecked off the coast of North Carolina in 1862. (I have no idea how the ship got its name.)

Many years later, a resident thought the town needed something to liven up their New Years Eve celebrations, and he thought why not a dancing dragon, like you might see in Chinese New Year parades. 

So the name may not exactly be controversial, but their many dragon mascots might have started with cultural appropriation. (Or appreciation? Who am I to say.) Regardless, you will find “Dragon Eggs” all over town, as well as the resident dragon herself, The Duck Pond Dragon. Remember the retaining pond that floods the main road? In the middle floats a glittering dragon that keeps watch over the harbor. (She went missing for some time after Hurricane Florence, but she eventually resumed her post after her little adventure. If you are ever in town, you can climb the steps of The Bean and see her from the porch.)

Oriental sits right at the mouth of the Neuse River, so the fresh water mixing with the sea water becomes a curious concoction, especially with all of the detritus being carried from up river. The water felt great, but it was murky. I had to keep reminding myself whatever was touching me under the water was probably sticks and leaves and not in fact a Swamp Thing.

Later that evening, we biked across town and saw that someone was standing outside the odd “Welcome Sailors” house. It was a older man, tanned, wiry, with a decent head of grey hair. He was engaging in an animated conversation with a visitor. We slowed our borrowed bikes and approached them with a wave.

”Hey there! Sorry to interrupt. We saw this sign earlier and were just wondering what this place was?”

”It just means sailors are welcome! We love our sailors around. I’m a sailor myself, in fact.”

”Oh that’s cool. Do you live here?”

“Oh yeah, I bought this place a couple of years back, I’ve been renovating it bit by bit. My name is Don Henderson. I keep my boat over at the Village Marina. What kind of boat did ya’ll come in on?”

”A 1976, 38 foot Hughes. Not a lot of people are familiar with it since Hughes Boat Builders aren’t around anymore. It’s the same model as Fatty Goodlander’s Wildcard.”

”Oh I know a Hughes,” said Don’s visitor. “some friends and I were sailing down to the Bahamas one year. We took off at the same time, and that boat was like an arrow in the water. He beat us there by a full day.” 

Kadin and I shared a brief look of hope that our boat would one day be as quick as an arrow, instead of the lumbering hulk that it was now.

The visitor shook our hands and bid farewell to Don. 

Don took a good look at us. “Would you kids like a hot shower?”

“Umm, we don’t want to impose. But, that would be amazing.” 

“No imposition at all. Go get your things and come back here in about 30 minutes and it will be all yours. I’ll have towels for you.”

We returned the bikes to the Provision Company just before it closed, and went back to the boat to get our toiletries and a change of clothes. We also got our own towels, just in case. (I like to have an extra one for my hair anyway.)

”It’s a little weird just going into a strangers house to use their shower.” I said to Kadin.

”Yeah, I don’t know. He’s really friendly, and he said he’s sailed a lot. This is probably just how he pays it forward. Maybe it’s how he makes friends.”

”Or he lures young sailors into his house to murder them and then he steals their boat from the dock and sells it.”

”Well he’s going to be really disappointed when he sees our boat. He probably should have looked at it before deciding to murder us.” 

“Oh well. If I get to shower first, it will have been worth it.”

The inside of the house was just as neat as the exterior. The first floor was an open plan, the living room flowing into a dining area which went into the kitchen, with an enclosed back porch beyond that. Colorful wanescotting framed the lower half of the brick wall. There was a piano against one wall, and mid century furniture that was definitely not from Ikea. 

The stairwell was directly in front of the doorway. He led us upstairs to the bathroom. I showered first while Kadin had a glass of wine and chatted with Don, in part to make sure he seemed trustworthy before leaving me alone with him. 

The hot shower was glorious. I don’t know if my hair had ever felt so clean. 

After I was done, I sat at the dining room table with Don while Kadin took his turn. He poured me a small glass of wine and told me a little bit about himself. Earlier in his life, he was a lawyer, and either after that, previous to it, or coinciding (I never did get a clear timeline of his life) he was also a professional photographer.

His boat, S/V Minerva, was a 46 foot Amel, and he had circumnavigated the world with it. He talked about his kids and showed me photos of his daughter visiting him on one of his stops on his circumnavigation.

He was also a talented artist; his pieces were framed and hung throughout his home. 

Kadin finished up his shower and we sat together and continued to get to know our host. 

It turns out that the house and the garage attached to it had been many things in their lifetime. The “Light Plant” sign was due to it literally being the first power plant in town. The property had also served at one point as the jailhouse, fire station, and town hall. The many characters the buildings had played seemed to fit in with Don himself. He was a character, who had also been many things throughout his life.

We exchanged information and said goodbye, for now.

When we returned to our boat, we saw that we had neighbors at the little Public Dock. A couple of young guys had pulled up in their own sailboat. We said hello and invited them in for wine and beer. We took shelter in the stuffy interior of our boat as the sky opened up and rained down in a deluge. 

When it was over, we stepped out into the cockpit to see that the main road was completely under water. It was probably ill advised, but we went wading through the knee deep water, which sparkled under the street lights. 

One of the guys got the emergency water pump off of their boat and started pumping the water out of the street…into the street. We were laughing uncontrollably. (The drinks probably made it funnier than it would have been otherwise...)

I can’t remember their names, or where they were headed. But I remember that moment, laughing in the flooded street in the middle of the night with two strangers who - for just a couple of hours - felt like old friends.

Those moments are why I love traveling. I think I've now had enough of those moments that I can say I love people.  Whether it’s a roadtrip across the US, flying to another country, or visiting a tiny town 3 hours from home, those exchanges of kindness and kinship with complete strangers stick with you for a long time (maybe forever) and it reminds you that no matter what you hear on the news, see on social media, or how many people cut you off in traffic, most people are actually decent. Most people default to kindness. Most people see other people and wish the best for them. 

We spent 3 weeks motoring a near-derelict sailboat from the northernmost point of the Cheasapeake Bay to New Bern, North Carolina, and we encountered nothing but kind and helpful strangers. Before we ever left Onancock, another young couple had us over to their house for steamed crabs that they had just caught. 2 different people gave us rides to grocery stores. A family towed us and our dinghy when the engine failed.  A couple in Manteo gave us their old paper charts of the area because we didn’t have any back-ups for our electronics. A guy on a huge motor yacht in Ocracoke had us over for top-shelf drinks. These two guys gave us laughter and companionship in a rainstorm.

And Don Henderson offered us a hot shower.

While our boat ultimately ended up in a Marina in New Bern, we eventually came back to Oriental, renting space at a private dock on a creek. We saw Don frequently on our visits. 

Once, in the wintertime, our car broke down in Oriental. We were going to have to wait several days for the part to arrive at the nearest auto-parts store, and we were going to need a place to stay in the meantime (And a ride to get the part.) 

We called Don. He was sailing south for the winter. Instead of saying “Sorry, you gotta check into a hotel!” (Which would have been totally reasonable) he instead told us where his house and car keys were. He told us to make ourselves at home, and hey, his car needed ran while he was gone anyway, so use it as much as we needed.

His kindness to us was immeasurable.  

We eventually moved our boat again, bringing it inland where we could actually start working on it in earnest. Which means we quit visiting Oriental as much. We called Don from time to time, but the calls became less frequent. 

And this brings us to the present. 

While researching for this piece to make sure I had some of my facts straight, I decided to give Don a call. 

The number was disconnected. 

I pulled up Google, and hit enter on a search I was afraid to get the answer to. 

In front of me was Don’s obituary.

 Sitting in my favorite bookstore, surrounded by a half a dozen other writers on a Wednesday morning, I quietly cried, reading about a life well lived.

 In the years that our boat was in Oriental, we never got as much work done as we had intended. It was really an excuse. An excuse to come back to this quiet little snow globe over and over again, to make friends, to eat bagels, and watch the fishing boats come and go from the harbor. Maybe it would have been better to have finished this project years ago and have actually been sailing all this time. But then, we never would have seen the sidewalks and houses lit up with candles for the holidays, or sat in the guest bed at Don’s house (with Don in the middle) drinking wine and watching the slideshow of photos from his own circumnavigation.* 

All of that time was time well spent, and we only ended up there thanks to an old sailboat with no sails. 

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