Where should I go after business in Atlanta and Greenville???

[Insta-Gator]

Delta has direct flights to Grand Cayman and Cozumel from Atlanta. Other than that I wouldn't bother bringing dive gear. Quarries are cold and boring, IMO. Local lakes have horrible viz. YMMV

 

[Lorenzoid]

Yeah, I'm not looking to do any freshwater diving. I'm just starting to get dialed in with weighting for using different kinds of tanks in saltwater. However, I don't consider 6hrs to be a long drive for a day of diving, which Morehead City is within according to Google Maps from Greenville. Does that help? Where would I go then?

After I posted the question, I started looking at Charleston, because I figured that's where responses might lead. Kind of surprised.

Don't think I'd splurge for the whale shark. I'd rather try seeing it in the ocean by going to where they may roam rather than the aquarium, and when I think that it's over $11/min .... !!! Myrtle Beach looks promising though!

If you drive to Morehead City, the main dive ops there are Olympus and Tortuga. You can search here on SB for reviews--all favorable, I suspect. Be forewarned that NC marine weather can be fickle. I don't know anything about Myrtle Beach, but it looks like diversteve has the info.

I agree with you about the Georgia Aquarium. I can see it from the window of my condo, but I am not interested in diving in it, especially not at $300+.

 

[tbone1004]

realistically you're better off holding off until you're AOW/Nitrox, if you don't have Nitrox it isn't worth the drive. Come out on a longer trip. Remember that these charters leave around 6am, so you have to get out there the night of the 13th, and most don't get back until mid-late afternoon because of the long boat rides, so even if you get back at 2pm, you won't get back to Greenville until 9pm, and then another 3 hours to Atlanta from there. If you can move your flights to Raleigh it might make sense, but it really just isn't worth it. The weather is very fickle so there is no guarantee you'll get to dive here, if you don't have Nitrox you are extremely limited in bottom time, you have the FAD time you have to be worried about, and then you have to make that drive back after a long exhausting day. It's just not the best thing to do..... Don't want to be a debbie-downer, but if you're coming to dive the wrecks here, you need to make a trip out of it.

You can dive out of Myrtle, but to me it isn't worth it, the wrecks up in Morehead are much better...

 

[divad]

the damming of the river is a theme in the movie Deliverance. Dive and hear the banjos.

Dam banjos. I HATE those damn banjos.

 

[diversteve]

In Charleston there's Charleston Scuba. We signed up for a dive with them but as mentioned above - was weather canceled. Around the 4th of July. They don't have a real big boat though so I suspect that's a factor.

All of the Low Country is often pretty murky diving - when we dove the Perry we didn't see it until we were about 1/2 way down the rope. And it's only about 60+' or so. Express orients their trips by 1/2, 3/4 or full day - the difference will be the water clarity is generally better since most of the dime is spent covering the distance out to the site. They do have a pretty fast Newton dive boat though. Unless they've changed, the DM on the Express boat sets the anchor on the wreck but then stays on the boat. They have a pretty good system of ropes to get you from the back to the front. Although we didn't need it either day we dove with them.

It's almost exactly a 2 hr drive between Charleston and Myrtle Beach if the flights work better. North Myrtle is the busier end - a lot of the dinner theaters, shopping etc. in that area - Express is in Murrell's Inlet - 20 -30mins. south of Charleston so you'll miss most of it. There's also about a dozen restaurant options in Murrell's Inlet also.