Hey all,
Wanted to give a dive report from last weekend. We dove out of Morehead City with a new operation called Tortuga Charters. So, this applies to all you from Virginia and eastern North Carolina divers!
First off, a review of the new charter. Tortuga Charters is running off a small six-pack, I think it's a 31 foot Egg Harbor boat. Even for being such a small boat, it was pretty stable at sea. Of course, the conditions were pretty nice to begin with
There's no compressor, not really any berthing, but has the usual dive boat amenities like a cooler and microwave. There are no benches for your tanks, but the crew was great in helping us gear up. EVEN for us jackasses that brought our doubles. Spearfishers will LOVE the boat as in the transom it has an integrated cooler(and not the one you put your soda in) so there's plenty of room for grouper and the likes.....Since it's small, don't plan on bringing a lot of gear. Never having been on it before, we brought all of our stuff as we would for our tech charters with JT Barker. ALL of our stuff, as if we were living off the boat. We should've planned better and only brought the things we actually needed, and left all our luggage back at the Casa de Tortuga. More on that in a second...
The crew was simply awesome. Definitely, without doubt, straight from my heart, the friendliest and most fun crew I've dove with. I could even see being dive buddies and friends with them. They didn't act like scuba police, they helped you out, asked for our run-times for safeties sake. They helped us load up on the boat(not every boat up here does) but they didn't "get in your business" if you know what I mean. The one shining thing I saw about the crew and captain is that they worked together very well and were friendly. Some of the boats I've been on, there's a LOT of tension between the captain and crew, and once in a blue moon between the crew themselves. The captain himself was ultra-cool and very humble. The operation went smooth, even though there were a few hickups since they're new and just gotta get the rythm down. Small things, like efficiency in pulling up the line and leaving the dive flag up for a few minutes while heading back to port, which I guess you're not suppose to do.
The Captain also owns a large mobile home just down the road from the docks. Think of two mobile homes welded together. It's open for customers to stay in, and was pretty comfortable. There's a couple bedrooms along with a bunkroom with 2 bunk-beds, a living room with 2 couches, cable TV, wireless internet and big ole' computer desk, huge freezer and another refrigerator along with a good sized kitchen. Outside on the porch there's grill. We kinda had a nice dinner on saturday night. The captain and mates came over and Frederick grilled up an AWESOME tasty fish and we sat around for a bit talking and going over some cool video that our buddy Andy(maybe known as Drewski on here) had taken. It was a plus to have a big comfy place to stay for the weekend that's literally just down the road from the boat. I guess the best way to sum up my whole experience with their charter is it's a very "personal" experience.
The dives themselves were awesome. I've only dove out of N.C. a few times, most of my wreck diving has been off Va Beach. The first day we hit the Papoose followed by the Spar. The current on the Papoose was noticeable, but it wasn't bad at all. Viz was kind of low for N.C. standards at around 30ft, but anything over 25ft is a bonus for us guys use to the Labrador Current. I penetrated the Papoose and saw some HUGE groupers inside. These things were gigantic, but take that with a grain of salt since I'm not too into fishies or spearhunting. One of the mates, Frederick, is a spearfisher extraordanaire, and his eyes lit up like a fat kid with cake when I told him what I saw...........
The same was with the Spar, minus the current. On the second day we ended up getting lucky and cut across the shoals to dive the Atlas followed by the Carib Sea. I'm kind of used to rubble piles in terms of ship wrecks, so just diving the wrecks off of N.C. was like a playground since the wrecks are fairly intact, including these two. Both wrecks have tons of stuff to search through and look at, and again, some fun penetration opportunities for those interested. The second day was just as good as the first in terms of diving.....2-3ft seas, sunny, hardly any current(none, actually, on the second day!). The viz again was low for N.C. standards from what I'm told, but I loved it.
Charters website:
tortugacharters.net The Vessel Tortuga
Link to a sample of the video that Andy shot. First diver is me, the ones that come up behind me are my friends Bobby(RAD Diver) and Trina:
The Bow of the Spar on Vimeo
Wanted to give a dive report from last weekend. We dove out of Morehead City with a new operation called Tortuga Charters. So, this applies to all you from Virginia and eastern North Carolina divers!
First off, a review of the new charter. Tortuga Charters is running off a small six-pack, I think it's a 31 foot Egg Harbor boat. Even for being such a small boat, it was pretty stable at sea. Of course, the conditions were pretty nice to begin with
There's no compressor, not really any berthing, but has the usual dive boat amenities like a cooler and microwave. There are no benches for your tanks, but the crew was great in helping us gear up. EVEN for us jackasses that brought our doubles. Spearfishers will LOVE the boat as in the transom it has an integrated cooler(and not the one you put your soda in) so there's plenty of room for grouper and the likes.....Since it's small, don't plan on bringing a lot of gear. Never having been on it before, we brought all of our stuff as we would for our tech charters with JT Barker. ALL of our stuff, as if we were living off the boat. We should've planned better and only brought the things we actually needed, and left all our luggage back at the Casa de Tortuga. More on that in a second...The crew was simply awesome. Definitely, without doubt, straight from my heart, the friendliest and most fun crew I've dove with. I could even see being dive buddies and friends with them. They didn't act like scuba police, they helped you out, asked for our run-times for safeties sake. They helped us load up on the boat(not every boat up here does) but they didn't "get in your business" if you know what I mean. The one shining thing I saw about the crew and captain is that they worked together very well and were friendly. Some of the boats I've been on, there's a LOT of tension between the captain and crew, and once in a blue moon between the crew themselves. The captain himself was ultra-cool and very humble. The operation went smooth, even though there were a few hickups since they're new and just gotta get the rythm down. Small things, like efficiency in pulling up the line and leaving the dive flag up for a few minutes while heading back to port, which I guess you're not suppose to do.
The Captain also owns a large mobile home just down the road from the docks. Think of two mobile homes welded together. It's open for customers to stay in, and was pretty comfortable. There's a couple bedrooms along with a bunkroom with 2 bunk-beds, a living room with 2 couches, cable TV, wireless internet and big ole' computer desk, huge freezer and another refrigerator along with a good sized kitchen. Outside on the porch there's grill. We kinda had a nice dinner on saturday night. The captain and mates came over and Frederick grilled up an AWESOME tasty fish and we sat around for a bit talking and going over some cool video that our buddy Andy(maybe known as Drewski on here) had taken. It was a plus to have a big comfy place to stay for the weekend that's literally just down the road from the boat. I guess the best way to sum up my whole experience with their charter is it's a very "personal" experience.
The dives themselves were awesome. I've only dove out of N.C. a few times, most of my wreck diving has been off Va Beach. The first day we hit the Papoose followed by the Spar. The current on the Papoose was noticeable, but it wasn't bad at all. Viz was kind of low for N.C. standards at around 30ft, but anything over 25ft is a bonus for us guys use to the Labrador Current. I penetrated the Papoose and saw some HUGE groupers inside. These things were gigantic, but take that with a grain of salt since I'm not too into fishies or spearhunting. One of the mates, Frederick, is a spearfisher extraordanaire, and his eyes lit up like a fat kid with cake when I told him what I saw...........
The same was with the Spar, minus the current. On the second day we ended up getting lucky and cut across the shoals to dive the Atlas followed by the Carib Sea. I'm kind of used to rubble piles in terms of ship wrecks, so just diving the wrecks off of N.C. was like a playground since the wrecks are fairly intact, including these two. Both wrecks have tons of stuff to search through and look at, and again, some fun penetration opportunities for those interested. The second day was just as good as the first in terms of diving.....2-3ft seas, sunny, hardly any current(none, actually, on the second day!). The viz again was low for N.C. standards from what I'm told, but I loved it.
Charters website:
tortugacharters.net The Vessel Tortuga
Link to a sample of the video that Andy shot. First diver is me, the ones that come up behind me are my friends Bobby(RAD Diver) and Trina:
The Bow of the Spar on Vimeo
