Finding your spot on the water is not as simple as it might first appear.
Our journey to a home by the water involved a lot of learning and more than a few surprises. After finding our home on the water, it turned out that the fishing, beaches, boating, and kayaking we sought were just part of what made us fall in love with our new home and the surrounding area.
Even with a history of living close to nature, we were surprised that our home was in the middle of such an amazing natural paradise that brought almost daily surprises into our lives. The egrets, great blue herons, and other birds became regular visitors from the beginning.
After years of nearly daily contact, we are no longer surprised to see a great egret working the marsh grass by our dock. Fifteen years ago when we started looking for a home on the water, we did not really know what we wanted in a waterfront home.
Deciding on moving to the warmth of the coast dictated that where to live on the water would be more complicated than we supposed. In most of the country, you live on a lake or a river. Here we could live on the beach, on the Intracoastal Waterway, in an inlet, on a big coastal river, or in the marshes just off a river. On top of that some marshes are kayak accessible and others can be reached by boat or kayak. Then there are places that can reached only by skiff and others by deep water boats. Some lots can have lifts for boats and in other places lifts are not allowed. There is lots of water on the coast but water is complicated on the coast.
We looked for two years from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Southport, North Carolina. In 2006, we decided on North Carolina's Crystal Coast and eventually the western side of Carteret County. There we found fifteen-minute access to beautiful beaches, good fishing, warm weather for at least ten months of the year, and traffic that only clogs up on the bridge to the beaches a few times for a couple hours on Saturday or Sunday during beach season. We also found a wealth of services, places to eat or entertain ourselves, and friendly people. Of course we got our water in the backyard, friendly both to kayaks and our skiff which rests on a side pole lift.
We ended up in the marshes along Raymond's Gut which flows into the wide (almost two miles across where we are), tidal White Oak River. Our Charleston-style home is eight minutes to ten minutes from Cape Carteret where we have most of the services we need including some restaurants, Walgreen's, a Lowe's grocery store, lots of banks, a Lowe's Home Improvement Store, some local churches, a very good vet, lots of fast food and the excellent White Oak Elementary school. Adjoining Cedar Point adds more services including a Bojangles for a evening or morning biscuit, Cedar Point Tire, a great independent garage that does all our car service and a couple of open-air farmers' markets reminiscent of the ones from our days in Nova Scotia. Clyde Phillips Seafood, one of the last old time seafood markets and its fresh-from-the-sea shrimp and fish is only another five minutes away. There's even a new Walmart on the far side of Swansboro only about fifteen minutes from our little piece of paradise.
When we bought we did not appreciate the importance of the marshes both outside and inside of Raymond's Gut. Marshes help make the area a safe place to weather the storms that sometimes visit the area. We stayed in our home for the Category 3 Hurricane Irene. Power was out only for three hours. We have left the area just once during the county-wide mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Florence. Even then we came home to find only a loose piece of vinyl and a few pieces of soffit to replace. My skiff was still on the lift unharmed as it has always been during storms along the coast. The butter in our fridge had not even melted.
Now in our fourteenth year since the move, I can say that our location turned out to be better than we hoped it to be. Our small subdivision on the White Oak River is three miles or so up river from Swansboro which happens to be on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). It takes about ten minutes by boat to get to the ICW and another ten or so to make it out Bogue Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean. There I have had fishing trips that I only dreamed of before. I have caught bluefish outside Bogue Inlet until my arms ached. In my kayak I have brought home numerous flounder, trout, and red drum after fishing within sight of our home. At times I have caught a fish in the river, cleaned it on our dock, and cooked the fish in our kitchen all within forty minutes and that includes the ten-minute paddle back home.
We have watched as services in the area have improved since our move here. I work at home and my Internet connection has gone from barely acceptable to 472 Mbps down and 22.7 Mbps up, plenty of speed for me and for streaming content. There is now a medical services building in Cedar Point which has eliminated many trips to Morehead City. We have gone from one drug store on Emerald Isle to four within ten minutes of us. The new Publix on Emerald Isle has been a real treat and the expanded library just minutes from our house has become a regular stop. Having Morehead City's shopping, hospital and restaurants just twenty minutes away has also added to our enjoyment of the area. Serious traffic is still mostly non-existent. Any shopping besides Trader Joe's and Costco can be found in Jacksonville (with lots more traffic to go with it) thirty minutes away. We get our Trader Joe's fix by going to Wilmington (serious traffic) every few months.
One of the great things about having a home on the coast is that you get regular visitors. We have never been at a loss for what to do with visitors here. It is an easy trip to the beaches. From young grandchildren to older relatives, we have never had a problem finding a beach spot to wow our visitors or an easy trail to hike. Most visitors get a visit to Beaufort which is only thirty minutes away or if their time is short we enjoy the cute shops on Front Street in nearby Swansboro. Once you throw in a boat ride sometimes with fishing and a meal of fresh seafood, you end up with a perfectly executed visit. Sometimes we get special visitors like Frank 29X, the Great Egret, who has been dropping by for the last several years. This picture of Frank near our home gives you a good perspective of the water in our area.
In our everyday life, we have also greatly enjoyed living here on Raymond's Gut. There is nothing like a view of the water from your desk to keep work from taking over your life. This has been a wonderful place for our grandchildren to visit. I taught our granddaughter to swim like a fish in the neighborhood pool which is in the cul de sac with our home and often empty of swimmers early in the early morning. The quiet roads in the subdivision have been a great place to walk or bike. Longer trails are just a few miles away in the Croatan National Forest access in Cedar Point. My morning routine usually includes a walk around the boardwalk which adjoins our home and surrounds our clubhouse and pool complex. In previous years when I wasn't working so hard, I would often take off in our skiff and go fishing in the marshes near Swansboro. It was not unusual to be back and ready for work as my wife was having her morning coffee. I have also been known to take a mid-day break from work and take my kayak out to catch fish for lunch.
My wife has especially enjoyed the privacy we have at the back of our house where we garden. We grow lettuce, broccoli, onions, beans, cucumbers, peppers, and of course tomatoes. We have a fall and spring crop of some vegetables. Sometimes the flowers take over like this year when her zinnias grew almost as tall as my wife and turned one of our raised beds into a paradise for butterflies. As a writer, this home and my recently added upstairs office have been the best place I have ever had for writing. It is hard to complain but easy to get inspired and focused when you have great views of the water.
It turns out that if you find the right spot, life on the water can be more than a sum of its parts. It is with more than a little reluctance as we head off to our next adventure to be part of our too-distant grandchildren's lives that we offer up our home, pictured here and listed here on Zillow to the next family looking a wonderful place surrounded by where it is easy to learn about living on the water.
I will miss a lot of things including my cozy upstairs spot for reading a book in the winter sunshine but most of all I will miss my morning check of the dock where I have sometimes been greeted by river otters, a great blue heron or even an osprey. If you want more information about living on the Crystal Coast, I have been writing about living in the area since 2006, you will find an index to those posts here. There is additional information on my Crystal Coast site.
