Water town-east coast USA

[Captain Bill]

The outer banks are really very limited as the area just inside of the barrier islands is very shallow. Oriental is very good for sailing. People who pass through on the ICW really don;t see many of the options. Up and down the river is definitely an option, but an hour down the river is Pamlico sound or the Bay River. It's about 36 miles to Ocrakoke Island which can make a nice weekend trip. New Bern is about 4 hours away by boat, and the same for Cape Lookout bight. Bath and Washington NC are interesting little towns in the Pamlico River. In an hour you can be in the South River which is largely undeveloped and a nice day hop. Beaufort is about 3 hours away. There are lots of places to sail. That being said you have to drive over an hour to see a movie. Once you have tired of the 5 restaurants in town it's which are good but not great, it will be quite a hike to a really good restaurant. The town actually has a lot of activities going on with some kind of festival every month or so. The croaker festival in July is a real old time small town celebration complete with a parade and fireworks. The Front Porch Music festival in October is really great.

Real estate is dirt cheap only if you are comparing it to California or the large metro areas up north. If you are going to buy real estate make sure it's high and dry and/or the house is on stilts at least 11 feet above sea level. Since 2004 there have been 3 hurricanes with storm surges over 9 feet.

Oriental definitely has a change of seasons. Every couple of years you'll get a skim of ice on the creeks. Lows will get into the low 20's fairly often in the dead of winter with snow once or twice a year. An occasional dip into the mid teens is not what I would describe as rare. In the summer it will occasionally top 100 and the humidity is sometimes worse than FL.

I'm currently in Oriental, but I'm from Florida originally, but spent 25 years in NC for work before I retired and kept my boat here. Odd that Melbourne would have been mentioned in FL, because that was the area I grew up in. Oriental is definitely a better sailing location than Melbourne, that is definitely an up and down the river place, though local services and landside stuff is much better than in Oriental.