Baird Creek, charted as Beard Creek,liess on the north shore of the upper Neuse River north of Wilkinson Point. As Cat. Ben points out, it is marked by a single marker #1. All of us who have done any gunk-holing will enjoy this delightful tale of keel versus bottom, which will also explain why this particular creek is NOT in our North Carolina Anchorage Directory. Thanks for sharing, Capt. Ben.

Cruising News:
The long keel, forever hallowed be its name.
I may not lay claim to being the dumbest boater, but I strive for the top-five.
In North Carolina, we have three types of bottoms, pecan-sandy, chocolate-pudding mud, and occasionally rocky-road-oyster shoal. Hungry yet? We love to gunk hole. It’s almost not an adventure if I cannot jump out of the boat and pull it along with the rope or kedge the anchor. Where’s the fun in being sensible? Markers in our waters are usually inaccurate because last month’s hurricane made a shoal where the channel used to be. Soft groundings come with the territory.
What has saved us in our limitless search for shallow waters and low-cost barnacle scrapings has been our beloved full keel. That and our craft tops out at about eight knots. With a wind. In shallow waters I have the deep sagacity to reduce speed to around 3 knots, so as not to bump anything too hard. One day, I hope to be a smarter captain, but our current mode of gunk-holing has provided hours of adventure, angst, and amusement to my first mate, and I for one refuse to deprive her of the joys of seeing mud churn off our stern. She’s become quite the expert at spotting it.
On our last adventure, we decided to explore the deep reaches of the Northern Neuse River on Baird Creek just after Thanksgiving. It is marked by a single green “1” daymark and a smattering of private PVC pipes with colored tape jammed in the ground. If you were a golfer, you would call this one hazard-filled course. For a boater it generally tracks around 5 feet deep if you are mostly lucky and very careful. Ours is a single-screw trawler with the aforementioned full keel. Believe me, this captain needs it. Drawing a hair over 42 inches of water, I make it a point to scout out sailboat masts in any unfamiliar harbor, because it’s a good bet that that captain will need a full five feet to knock around in there. Seeing a few masts, we gingerly entered Baird Creek in the afternoon, threw out anchor and proceeded to lounge a bit. I had some minor wiring repairs to do with the generator, so went about that a little after some engine cooling.\
Around dusk we fired up the generator, only to realize the repairs made did not fix the root problem, which was the transmission of current from the output leads to the rest of our craft. Including the Two-cycle AC (It’s November and a little chilly. After some mutual frowning and head-scratching, my first mate advises me that with the low temperature forecast, we might do better comfort-wise back at our slip, about 10 miles up the Neuse. So after some long deep breaths, inhale/exhale style – to draw in air for the work ahead of course, I agreed with my mate and decided to get about hoisting the anchor.
Now, this is where the real adventure begins – Anchor, up, no worries. Despite scrubbing and rinsing we still brought a good amount of chocolate pudding aboard as we pulled chain in the dark. In addition, what I failed to notice upon coming into little Baird Creek, was that the wind had shifted to the North, blowing water up the Pamilco Sound and draining the Neuse a bit – lowering the water with one of the Neuse’s famous – or infamous – wind-tides. Our depth finder gets psychotic under 4 feet and we start showing about 700 feet of water whenever this happens – so 700 feet showing usually means we’re near a touch-point, and we were seeing this. We get going about a hundred yards and feel the slow, gentle shudder of bottom. OK- no good. Adrenaline and dismay. We back off a little, free ourselves, and try in a different direction. OK, not so bad, but not for long. We find bottom again. Gentle shudder. Chocolate pudding again. It’s pitch black out except for the small lights of the relatively few homes on Baird Creek. So we back off again and track slowly and surely very close to some of the homes with modest piers. This seems to work. Eventually, gingerly, and nervously we were able to exit Baird Creek with our running gear and some portion of our wits intact. But I can assure the reader any future trip there – in or out – will be in daylight and with a south wind keeping the water high in the Neuse. For Baird Creek – boater beware!
Thanks once again to King Neptune for providence and our long keel for its patience – it’s saved us from ourselves many a time.
Capt. Ben
M/V Sand Castle
Neuse River

Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To the Location of Beard Creek

Sign just opposite the free dock in Oriental

The heart warming story below comes to the Salty Southeast Cruisers’ Net from our dear friend, and fellow nautical writer, Captain Wally Moran, and from his LiveBloggin the ICW (http://bloggingtheicw.blogspot.com/). Anyone who has ever visited Oriental will quickly discern the truth of what Captain Wally has to say!
Wally seems to be lingering in North Carolina waters a bit longer than most, before heading south to warmer climes. We’ll keep following his travels here at the Crusiers’ Net as he heads his sailcraft towards the Sunshine State.

A drinking town with a sailing problem…
That’s how Oriental bills itself…well, actually it calls itself the sailing capital of North Carolina, but the t-shirts and coffee mugs all tell a different story.
It’s a friendly town – people wander to the dock to chat after getting their coffee at the Bean, which is across from the free dock (free is good!â„¢).
The town is also the most dog-friendly place I’ve ever been. You’ll frequently see dogs roaming the street, and if one of them decides to lie down in front of the Bean (happens often actually), drivers slow down and move around the pup. It’s really quite a hoot to see – anywhere else it would be honk the horn and get upset time, but not in Oriental.
There is a West Marine, but no other box stores in Oriental. That’s because the locals voted it that way – talk about a great sense of values. West Marine good – Wal Mart bad!
This is a town that, on New Year’s Day when everyone else in America is watching football, is having their New Year’s Regatta. The last time I was here for it, 26 boats were competing. I was heading out that day and darn near became the 27th boat!
The wind today turned strongly into the southwest, and since I hadn’t yet gotten groceries, I chose to remain one more day at the free dock (free is good! â„¢), rather than bash down the canal at the end of Adams Creek on the way to Beaufort. Winds go light tomorrow, so morning will be an excellent time to head out.
Like I said, a great sense of values.
Wally Moran
LiveBloggin the ICW
http://bloggingtheicw.blogspot.com/

We love Oriental and always make a point of stopping there. However, the lack of pump out facilities is a concern. Oriental Marina has none. The public free dock has none. The marina to the west has two portables but they are often out of service. There are way too many boats in Oriental that should be pumping out and obviously do not. The worst part is that no one we talked to about this problem cared. One marina owner said `I don’t have to have a pump out, so why would I want one?’
Ginny Caldwell

River dunes, sailcraft marina and deaton’s marina all have pump outs. Possibly more marinas close by.
Cliff Kisby

Cruising News:
Let me remind Ms. Caldwell and other cruisers passing though Oriental that most of our marinas and other waterfront facilities here are still very much in recovery mode from hurricane Irene, the worst storm we’ve seen here in recorded history. There are adequate pumpouts if you know where to find them but but some of the regular places are still out of service. Everything should be online and operating when the snowbird migration heads north in the spring.
Captain Andy Denmark
Lower Broad Creek
Oriental, NC

Click Here To View the Cruisers’ Net’s North Carolina Marina Directory Listing For Oriental Marina

Click Here To Open A Chart View Window, Zoomed To the Location of Oriental Marina