Morehead trip questions

[drrich2]

I wish autocorrect would quit turning Morehead into Forehead.

Anyway, Lord willing & providing, hoping to hit Morehead, NC this summer (ideally August) for some sand tiger shark diving. I've cross-referenced the needs of my schedule with usual conditions around that time (thanks to a post by Tortuga James listing typical conditions for various month groupings over the year). And plan to use Olympus Dive Center, which seems to enjoy a strong reputation. My aim is 5 straight days of the 2-tank 'Full Charter trip' plan, diving a pair of big tanks with EAN 30.

Will likely bring wife, mother-in-law & toddler daughter along for 'enrichment' while I'm off from around 6 a.m. to 3-4 p.m. 5 day, leaving a full day with family before flying back. Been researching the place & I have a few questions.

1.) What airport do people mainly use to fly in for Morehead trips? We leave out of Nashville airport (BNA) if that matters.

2.) Seems the Hampton Inn is thought to be a good place. Anybody know different? If it were just me, I'd maybe stay at their dive lodge, but not with family.

3.) They like the kind of 'look at it, but not too active' things to do you might get on a cruise ship excursion. So far, looks like there's a lighthouse somewhere nearby, a North Carolina aquarium, a place called Dragonfly does parasailing, and there's 'Battleship North Carolina' - a tour in Wilmington (assuming our car seat loathing toddler can be subjected to a 2 hour each way drive).

Anything else 'fun' you guys like to send non-divers off to do?

Richard.

 

[hroark2112]

Why not dive with Captain James?

Let me know when you come out, I typically hit Morehead as often as possible in the summer.

 

[Max Speed]

Blackbeard's house. Shipwreck museum with Queen Anne's Revenge stuff, wooden boat building museum, dolphin tours, old forts.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

You can get a Delta connector flight into New Bern, and there is commercial airline service to Wilmington and Greenville, NC but the closest large airport is RDU, and it's 3 hours away.

Fort Macon is worth visiting, as is the NC aquarium, and I'll second the boat building museum.

There is a sand spit at Ft. Macon that offers superb kite flying opportunities, and since you're at the beach there is the obvious beach related activities with additional things like parasailing, and wind surfing. There is ample public beach access and all the hotels on the beach have private access as well.

Realistically, you should be back at the dock by 3pm, and earlier if the wind is marginal and you get stuck on an inshore dive.

Personally I prefer some of the quainter motels along the beach to the later brand name variety. There are also numerous condominiums so you may want to explore timeshare possibilities as well and see if you can rent one for a week.

------

When it's good, NC wreck diving is absolutely epic, with loads of sand tigers, the occasional dolphin, lots of tropical fish on great wrecks with good vertical relief in 80-120 ft of gorgeous cerulean blue 80 degree tropical water, courtesy of the gulf stream.

When it's not so good, it's a long boat ride in vomit inducing 6' short set waves to dive a beat up wreck in 10 ft viz while freezing in your 3 mil shorty in 65 degree water.

Olympus is ok as a dive operator. My main objections to them are that they run something of a cattle boat, and as such stay on the same fairly large wrecks. The running joke is they go to the U-352 and something else on pretty much every trip. And unfortunately, there is not much variety in the "something else". The Spar is the usual suspect and while I like it a lot, it's an artificially reefed Coast Guard buoy tender and has less history than most of the other wrecks in the area. The Indra also sees a great deal of traffic from Olympus, as it's more or less their standard inshore dive when the waves get too large. As an inshore wreck it's labrador current diving and you'll want to plan on 65-70 degree water temps and 20ft visibility on the rough days when it's used as an alternate.

The Captain's lady is a six pack and while smaller, and a bit livelier in any kind of sea, it can get you to the smaller less traveled and less beat up wrecks. The Bedfordshire is a good example. It's a small converted trawler used by the British as an escort vessel. It's not a large wreck and does not have much relief, but it has some very interesting stuff in the wreckage including a pair of depth charges, and it's a wreck that does not get much tourist traffic.

The Diver Down used to be my favorite as it was generally limited to 12 divers and Bobby Cox was very good about taking folks to a variety of different wrecks and was very good at predicting where he visibility would be given the conditions on any given day. Unfortunately he passed away last year and the boat was purchased and has been relocated down south.

----

In many respects, NC dive operators are their own worst enemies and the U-352 is the perfect example. It's a rapidly shrinking wreck what are sometimes multiple hook sets daily have essentially torn off all of the superstructure leaving only the pressure hull with a few formers and residual plates around the saddle tanks. It's in far worse condition that similar U-boat wrecks that are less traveled and only slightly deeper. The operators will blame hurricanes, etc, but the reality is that had they placed a buoy on the wreck 25 years ago it would be in far better condition. Unfortunately dragging a hook for the wreck is standard operating procedure in NC, and once a wreck's plates start to get thinner, hooks start to tear it up quickly.

In NC that's a process that already had a head start as many of the shallower wrecks like the Carribsea and Atlas were wire dragged and/or used as bombing targets during WWII and/or either used as training targets or mistaken for u-boats and extensively depth bombed.

Still, the most epic wreck dive I ever had occurred on the Carribsea, with 150' viz, at least 30 sand tigers, a massive bait ball swirling around the bow of the wreck, schools of tropical fish and a huge numbers of medium sized predators such as barracuda, and various tuna species.

 

[tomfcrist]

Olympus is ok as a dive operator. My main objections to them are that they run something of a cattle boat, and as such stay on the same fairly large wrecks. The running joke is they go to the U-352 and something else on pretty much every trip. And unfortunately, there is not much variety in the "something else". The Spar is the usual suspect and while I like it a lot, it's an artificially reefed Coast Guard buoy tender and has less history than most of the other wrecks in the area. The Indra also sees a great deal of traffic from Olympus, as it's more or less their standard inshore dive when the waves get too large.

Agree and disagree. They do run larger boats, but I have never felt crowded onboard. The 352 is NOT in my opinion over visited by Olympus, as in all my years diving with them I have seen that wreck twice. The Indra on the other hand is heavily visited in bad sea states, but that's because its one of the only (mostly) intact wrecks inshore.

Unfortunately dragging a hook for the wreck is standard operating procedure in NC, and once a wreck's plates start to get thinner, hooks start to tear it up quickly.

Cant say I have ever dragged for a wreck in NC, nor have I seen it done on the boats I dive from very often. The standard is for the Mate / DM ride the hook to the wreck and tie in with very few exceptions. Hurricane damage is phenomenal in the shallows, and as seen in the last few years it can thrash a 60+ year old wreck in no time flat.

 

[Steve_C]

There is a bunch of stuff from the Beaufort waterfront across the bridge from Morehead. There are boats that will run you out to an island. Dolphin watches, etc. The Beaufort waterfront is nicer, to my thinking, than the Morehead. Food, shops, etc. Nice view of island across the channel. The fort at the inlet is quite nice. As you walk to it you think there is nothing there and then are looking down on moats. It is in good shape. Naval fort so dug down to withstand naval bombardment.

How old is the toddler?

 

[drrich2]

Thanks, guys. Our little toddler is 22 months old now, so she should be 2 1/2 years I guess come August.

As for how I picked, kind of like how I picked Jupiter Dive Center for our Jupiter trip. I'm a conservative 'meat & potatoes' guy. I like a clean dive op. web page that lays things out nice. Dive shop & dive boats close at hand, so I can rent it, ride it & dive it right there. An op. I've noted to be well-reviewed by a number of people and thus popular/reputable; ScubaBoard, Undercurrent & Trip Advisor are places I research. I wanted the sand tiger sharks, but I wanted warm water, and a good chance at good weather. Tortuga James' post on typical conditions by season came in handy. From what I understand, August is apt to be in 'the doldrums,' just prior to risky hurricane season, warm water, not the time for the breeding aggregation with hundreds of sand tigers (per an Olympus employee) but there tend to be some on the wrecks anyway, and for somebody booking months in advance hoping to do 5 days of Full Charter diving, well, it seemed a pretty safe option. 2 big boats (1 18 max., 1 25 max. passengers) & 1 smaller boat; big boat could be nice on a 4 hour round trip on the Atlantic ocean. In Bonaire, I tend to use Buddy Dive Resort for similar reasons; a one-stop shop.

I like Tortuga James' website. If I understand correctly, it's a smaller boat, and tends to be rented as a charter trip by a person or group. But they often have spaces outsiders can get into (I guess you join a group as an extra). Trip price entails a fuel surcharge, and is shown to charter the whole boat. And Olympus' website let me check & see whether there were openings when I wanted to come; I didn't need to call anybody.

So I enjoy Tortuga James' postings and his website, and his op. appears well-regarded by others. But that little bit of extra uncertainty/hassle was off-putting, and I'd already heard of Olympus Dive Center 1st.

It seems to be N.C. is like Jupiter, Key Largo, Cozumel and Bonaire; a number of reputable operators offer service.

Richard.

P.S.: I've been doing some advance work on a hoped for future trip report. North Carolina is a destination for which there's a lot of info., but it's a piece here, a piece there, no one place I find out everything I want to know. I'm aware there's a N.C. Divers forum and a BFDC. I'm trying to piece together a concise but fairly complete story of the info. a new touring diver to the area (like I hope to be in August) will find useful.

---------- Post added January 20th, 2015 at 06:10 PM ----------

P.S.: Looking at Tortuga Charter's promotional video, I get the subjective sense they market to a similar customer as I suspect Captain Sl8er does in Jupiter; small, very friendly op. with emphasis on personalized service to insure a good time. I haven't dove with either, but C.S. gets rave reviews, and I suspect T.C. probably has big fans, too.

 

[lilnik10]

I love diving with Olympus! Although, they frequent some dive sites more than others, I feel like they do what they can to get you an enjoyable dive with the best possible conditions. I remember one trip to the Indra, we were the first there because Capt made the call early based on reports from other boats. By the time we surfaced, there were at least 5 other boats because the conditions were crap every where else. I have also been on the boat when the Capt has taken a vote to dive or not due to poor vis and even refunded part of our money after the dive since we did were not able to make it offshore as planned. But, I am pretty easy to please. If make a 4-5 hour drive to the coast, I want to be diving if at all possible. I can enjoy a dive even with only 10-15 feet vis like last September. Too rough to get off shore so we ended up diving the Suloid and Liberty Ship and found all kinds of cool sea life include and octopus and the biggest flounder ever!! If you want to dive off the NC coast you have to be prepared to roll with the punches and take what the Atlantic gives you.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Agree and disagree. They do run larger boats, but I have never felt crowded onboard. The 352 is NOT in my opinion over visited by Olympus, as in all my years diving with them I have seen that wreck twice. The Indra on the other hand is heavily visited in bad sea states, but that's because its one of the only (mostly) intact wrecks inshore.



Cant say I have ever dragged for a wreck in NC, nor have I seen it done on the boats I dive from very often. The standard is for the Mate / DM ride the hook to the wreck and tie in with very few exceptions. Hurricane damage is phenomenal in the shallows, and as seen in the last few years it can thrash a 60+ year old wreck in no time flat.

We're disagreeing over semantics. When a diver rides the hook down to set it, the captain is going to drop up current so that the diver ideally drifts down on the wreck. There is still some dragging that occurs over the wreck with the hook and chain, and the diver is still tying into the wreck structure itself, which does it's own bit of damage which becomes a large amount of cumulative damage over the years.

In contrast, on wrecks that use a buoy, the damage to the wreck is minimal (if it's permanently mounted to the wreck or non existent if the buoy is just off the wreck.

 

[tomfcrist]

The problem with buoys is that nobody is willing to pay to maintain them. So the dive shop foots the bill, maintains the buoy....and shizam there is a fisherman on the buoy when they get to the wreck....legally, it's first come first serve.