The Croaker Festival in Oriental, NC
We arrived in Oriental, North Carolina, on July 2. Chris and I were both glad to get off the water as soon as possible because there was an uptick in motorboats out to play for the holiday week, and unfortunately, not all of them were making great decisions.
I had done some research on nearby areas to determine our options for fireworks. Last year, we couldn’t see fireworks from our anchorage, and the kids were hoping we could see a good show this year.
I found a variety of options that provided varying degrees of difficulty in getting there in time:
Southport, NC, 0 nm - Fireworks on Thursday, July 4th
Southport had a week of events leading up to the holiday!
The 229th NC 4th of July Festival was held June 28-July 4, 2024
New Bern, 134 nm away - Fireworks on Thursday, July 4th
The marina we tried for was filled up through the summer!
Elizabeth City, 228 nm away - Fireworks on Wednesday, July 3rd
We’d have to move pretty quickly to get there in time.
Oriental, NC, 22 nm away - Fireworks on Saturday, July 6th
They had room for us to stay a month at Oriental Harbor Marina.
AND plenty of time to get there for the fireworks!
Once settled in at our slip for the next few weeks in Oriental, the kids and I visited the local coffee shop, The Bean, to cool off and give Chris some quiet space on Fika to handle a few meetings. We also discovered a few dragons (more to come about this in our next blog post), saw LOTS of jellyfish, and found the local feral cat colony that lives by the fishing boats.
Enjoying cold drinks at The Bean while playing another game of chess.
Later, we hung out at the local Tiki Bar and chatted with a fellow Michigander from Petosky, living on their boat in the area with their family. Then we walked over to M&M’s Café, a local restaurant, to get some dinner in a comfortable breeze.
The next day, we got together with our friends from SV Ada, whom we’d been meeting off and on as we sailed around Florida, the Bahamas, and now here in North Carolina. They’ve been docked at a friend's house doing some boat work and were able to meet us in town to catch up with each other.
On Independence Day, there wasn’t much going on in town. Shops were open like normal, and no events were planned. We did see a few fireworks off in the distance from a nearby town, but other than that, the holiday was glossed over in favor of The Croaker Festival two days later.
What is a “croaker,” you ask? I started to pick up on it when I saw a number of fish hats and realized the logo for this year’s theme involved a flaming fish jumping in front of an American flag.
The image is from the Croaker Festival Website, showing the 2024 parade theme.
The Atlantic croaker is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Sciaenidae and is closely related to the black drum, the silver perch, the spot croaker, the red drum, the spotted seatrout, and the weakfish. It is commonly found in sounds and estuaries from Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico.
Wikipedia
On Friday evening, we walked down to the event and had dinner from the food vendors. It was pretty windy, so we didn’t stay late into the evening.
Saturday morning was the parade. Back home in Michigan, our parades have a lot of bands and a smattering of tractors, horses, and decorated floats, in addition to recognizing local soldiers, governing officials, and pageant winners.
The parade in Oriental did begin with a band and had a few familiar entry types, but it also had lots of tiny vehicles driven by nearby Shriner chapters (I think). Lots of candy (and popsicles!) were tossed out to the crowd. Everybody seemed to know everybody, and we heard a lot of “Happy Independence Day!” shouted to each person marching and riding in the parade. Despite the heat, it was a good time, and people enjoyed themselves.
You can find more pictures of the parade at the Town Dock (a website with News & Views from Oriental, NC!)
After the parade, we ducked into our marina’s Boaters’ Lounge to cool off in the air conditioning. Our friends from SV Ada rejoined us and helped us run Barnacle Buster through our A/C pipes to help clear outgrowth and knock out a few other small projects.
Taking a break for festival food with our friends from SV Ada.
Chris and I also tackled the self-service manual pumps for emptying our black tanks. We’ve emptied our tanks plenty of times, usually with an automatic system and staff helping. Thankfully, our college degrees (and sailor know-how) enabled us to sort out the (very straightforward) pump system to pump out our two tanks, wheel the cart over behind a building, and empty the tanks by reverse-pumping them into the sewage drain system designated for our waste.
Chris rolling the manual pump and holding tank onto our dock so that we can empty our black tanks. 💩
It was time for fireworks once the work was done and the sun had set! Oriental closed its bridge next to our marina to launch fireworks from the high vantage point. We could sit on the bow of our boat and have perfect seats for the fireworks. Whenever we thought they had just launched the grand finale, they kept going! It was a fun show to watch.
Sitting on Fika’s bow, waiting for the fireworks to start!
Croaker Festival Fireworks
You can see how close we were to the fireworks and the bridge they were being launched from. We were able to sit right on Fika for great seats to the show!
Despite the heat and the effort it has been taking to keep our A/C units limping along until our replacement arrives, we’ve been enjoying our time in Oriental. The people we’ve met are all very kind and helpful, and we’re already finding our favorite stops that we keep returning to (we like to do work and school at The Bean, a coffee shop just a few blocks away!).
