May 18, Day 327 – In Oriental

When we woke this morning the skies were dark and it was a bit windy. Since we have over a week to get to Norfolk to meet our son, we decided on one more day in Oriental. As usual, we took the courtesy van into town. We had lunch at the Village Restaurant where Gerry had one his favorites, chopped steak with onions and gravy. We then checked out anything in town that we had missed on the previous two occasions. Oriental is a pretty small town, so three days is a long time to spend there.

Back at the marina we discovered another looper boat had arrived, Roger and Karen on Karen Anne. They have a Krogen Manatee like Second Star and we had met them at several stops in Florida. There were also two other transient boaters on our dock that we got to know during our stay.

Since it never did rain, Linda decided to wash down the boat. Gerry worked on copying and cleaning up the files on one of our computers (the one Linda uses for blogging). He grilled tenderloin steak for dinner that was extremely good. After dinner we got an invitation to join the gang of Karen Anne on their boat for wine and dessert. Also there were the folks on Grand Adventure and R-Hope. We shared stories and had delicious chocolate cake prepared by Karen. It was a nice evening.

Back at the boat we made plans to leave early in the morning and then went to bed.

A good reason to drink wine !! This was in a cheese and wine store that we browsed through. Double click to enlarge so you can read it.

Oriental touts itself as being the sailing capital of North Carolina

We browsed through a shop called Nautical Wheelers. We talked with the manager for quite awhile. One of her and her husband's dreams is to do the Great Loop.