Topsail DIY Diving / North Topsail

[pcrx9000]

My family and I are staying in Topsail the first week of August. We are bringing our boat which is outfitted for inshore diving. We are looking for coordinates for interesting sites near North Topsail and Topsail proper. There is no longer a dive shop on the island. We have been unable to locate Tom Collins, and all of the wealth of internet information is either far north of Topsail or South like Wilmington. I have a Wreck Map (just for entertainment) and it shows Dozens of wrecks right around Topsail, but there is no info on the sites regarding specific GPS coordinates for them. Ideally, we would be diving near the North end, as that is where we stay and launch the boat.

 

[SOFDiver]

I've been told that there is a good dive shop in Sneeds Ferry, and that a fossil bed has been located off Topsail. I left the island in 1991, info above is from DEMA contact. Good luck, let us know what you run down.

 

[Kristi@CCDS]

Hey there! My husband and I used to own and operate a dive shop on Camp Lejeune there, in fact I still own a home in Sneads Ferry about 5-10 mins drive to Topsail Beach. Unfortunately the long and short answer is there really isn't much diving directly off the coast there unless you run a good ways out. The shelf is VERY shallow for miles off the beaches there. Vis is crap the closer to shore you are. While there may be some reefs/ledges fairly close to the inlets, expect vis to be no more than 50 on a VERY good day. Best bet in this area is to hook up with one of the shops out of Morehead or Wilmington for a charter unless you can locate some GPS from a local for any ledges. Don't know what set up you have for a boat, but watch out for conditions, they are often rough...3-5 foot seas offshore, sometimes worse. A decent shore dive is Radio Island just FYI. I actually know Tom, he's a good guy and knows his stuff I think he's kind of gotten out of running charters for the most part due to health issues unfortunately.

 

[LunaBuna]

My family and I are staying in Topsail the first week of August. We are bringing our boat which is outfitted for inshore diving. We are looking for coordinates for interesting sites near North Topsail and Topsail proper. There is no longer a dive shop on the island. We have been unable to locate Tom Collins, and all of the wealth of internet information is either far north of Topsail or South like Wilmington. I have a Wreck Map (just for entertainment) and it shows Dozens of wrecks right around Topsail, but there is no info on the sites regarding specific GPS coordinates for them. Ideally, we would be diving near the North end, as that is where we stay and launch the boat.

I checked my Navionics app and it doesn't look like there are any wrecks right around North Topsail. However, as someone mentioned earlier there are a lot of wrecks off the coast near Morehead City. I've heard one of the best is Papoose (it's quite a ways offshore though). The pics are a screen shot of my Navionics app around the North Topsail area and the other screen shot shows the Papoose off the coast of Morehead City. The red pin is the location of the Papoose- the little icon that the red pin is on is the icon used to indicate a wreck. You can see lots of other wreck icons in the screen shot so there plenty to choose from. I have not had the opportunity to dive Papoose yet but hoping to one day soon! The cool thing about Navionics is that the information is continually updated.

Do you all snorkel as well?