Last August I grew a patch of hair on my chin to augment my pirate costume for the annual Beaufort Pirate Invasion that occurs every August. Directly after the Pirate Invasion weekend, Tortuga ran 10 out of 12 days and had a gorgeous stretch of bluebird days.

This year came around and I was faced with another string of trips following the Pirate Invasion weekend, so I felt compelled to stop shaving my chin whiskers to tempt the sea gods to honor me with another stretch of nice weather. Well, it worked and we ran 8 out of 10 days with some really nice days at sea and not a single blow out!!

25 miles out on Lake Atlantic in the background

As with last year, the pirate patch cannot hold off the winds forever, and I have a sneaking feeling the razor is going to have to come out this weekend, as a strong high pressure centered over the mid atlantic is forecast to push brisk 20 knots winds across our waters this weekend with seas building to 5-8 feet.

I recently posted in a thread on www.ncdivers.com inquiring whether the Radio Island rock jetty was really worth diving. My assertion was that any dive spot is a good dive, you just have to open your eyes and notice what it is you are able to see. The Radio Island jetty is the most common shore dive on the Crystal Coast. There is a nice beach where you can anchor your small boat, or a public parking lot for those who drive. It is a very protected piece of water, so you can dive it in all weather conditions. It is a great place to do training, check out gear, or just get a leisurely dive in. Visibility varies, but 10-15 is common. It is important to dive it at high tide when the current goes slack. It can rip like a fast river at mid tide, ebbing and flooding.

Radio Island Rock Jetty

This morning I decided to “walk the walk” and since the tide was high at 10:20, I grabbed my gear and a steel tank with 23% in it (someone topped off a Nitrox tank with air), lowered the skiff from the lift into the water and headed to Radio Island. I got there a little ahead of the Discovery barge and got in the water about 20 minutes ahead of the slack tide. I wanted to beat the crowd of about 10 divers waiting on the beach for their gear to arrive. I finned out to the drop off to find about 2 knots of current with the flooding tide.

For the first 20 minutes or so I would hold on to a rock and observe everything I could see in the 10′ of visibility. Then I would let go and fly down the jetty about 50′ or so and then repeat the process. When the tide went slack, I finned back up the jetty at a leisurely pace, stopping to check out interesting stuff. I saw lots of tropicals, stone crabs, oyster toad fish, tautog, filefish, small spadefish, and the usual suspects, pinfish, sea bass and grunts. I picked up a couple of bottles that had been there a while, but not so long to pre-date the twist off cap so I left them on the bottom. One bottle I reached for had a big flounder right next to it that I didn’t see until it swam away in a flurry of silt. I used my knife to break open some sea urchins and watched the feeding frenzy that resulted. I stayed on the bottom for 50 minutes with a max depth of 37 ft. I did see 3 other divers at one point. I realized as I swam back towards shore that the best light and colors are around 20′. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised that I surfaced exactly where my skiff was anchored on the beach.

So I am sticking to my original story…any dive is a good dive and Radio Island is totally worth doing. I would not drive down from Raleigh to dive it but when you are here and the tide is right, go for it. Just focus on the stuff you can see and you will be surprised how much of it there is. We are happy to shuttle our customers over to Radio Island in the skiff for a dive on any day our trip on Tortuga gets blown out. It much better than letting your gear dry out!!

Last Thursday I was having lunch with my brother in Durham when the phone rang, the caller ID indicating a number I did not know. I answered “Good afternoon, Tortuga Charters” and a woman’s voice inquired if I had space on the boat for Saturday. I quickly answered that a dive shop had the whole boat chartered and she just said thank you and hung up. After a lifetime of sales, that bugged me because I didn’t even take the chance to at least engage her enough to pitch diving with me at some other point.

The night before, I spoke to the dive shop owner and he told me he was still looking for one more to fill out the six pack. I waited a while and then went to my recent calls and called her back, leaving a message that I knew it was a long shot, but if she needed just one spot that I may have one available. She returned my call and quickly told me that she indeed only needed one spot and was a former associate editor of Sport Diver magazine. Now a freelance writer, she was commissioned to write an article on NC diving. After calling several dive operations she was not able to secure a seat on short notice. She had been on an extended adventure and was doing a different piece on kayaking in the Outer Banks. Being close to our area. she pitched the magazine on the opportunity to do a story.

Saturday morning, she boarded Tortuga as the sixth diver, the other 5 being blood thirsty spearfishermen. She quickly explained that she would not be allowed to reference spearing in any form in her article. We dropped the spearos on some ledges and when they were done with their dive, went to the U-352, a German submarine that was sunk in 1942 by the Coast Guard cutter Icarus.The mate Reid did a normal tie in and I deployed the Carolina Anchor Line rig and the waited on the bottom as the writer  descend along the line. They did a full dive on the U-boat and found good conditions.

We were live boating with the spearos, dropping a jug on the rocks and sending them in without anchoring. After they were done with their 2nd dive, we motored over to the Spar. The Discovery Diving Crew boat Outrageous V was still tied to the bow of the scuttled Coast Guard buoy tender, so we decided to just drop the float marker on the stern of the ship and sent Reid and the writer into dive with the sharks. Her 2nd dive was great as well, she returned with eyes wide open after her encounter with 30+ sharks.

She had a great day and totally out of dumbluck, Tortuga will be featured in the next Sport Diving magazine article on NC Diving. As soon as I know which edition the article will appear, I will post it here!!

This past weekend I had a group from Solomons MD on Tortuga. It is a group that charters me often, and I always enjoy having them on the boat. The difference this time was that they decided to dive with Tortuga 2 consecutive weekends and stay for the week in between. They towed their 26′ Sea Hunt center console down from Maryland and planned on doing some diving during the week. I moved my 20′ skiff off my lift behind the Casa and offered them the use of it for the week.

They invited me to join them on Monday to dive from the Sea Hunt and I decided I would tag along, get a few dives in and show them the ropes a little bit. After talking a little about the sort of diving they wanted to do, we went down to the Tortuga Sunday night and pulled some GPS numbers from my chart plotter. Monday morning, we splashed the boat and headed for the inlet. I was quickly reminded of the difference between Tortuga and a center console boat with twin outboard engines. My hat nearly blew off as the Skipper powered up the 150hp Yamaha engines and the boat jumped up on plane. Tortuga is appropriately named, and like in the story of the “Tortoise and the Hare” she is slow and steady. Tortuga barely notices a 3′ chop, but I was reminded again how much you need to hold on when you are going 25 knots in a center console boat in any chop at all.

It only took us 45 minutes to get to the rocks I had chosen just west off Cape Lookout shoals. It was a sunny day with the fresh air that only a north wind can bring this time of year. Instead of tying into the ledge, we decided to “free boat” and marked the spot with a jug buoy that the divers could move around on the bottom and the boat could follow on the surface. We dived two up and two down.  I began to notice that what seemed routine and commonplace practices to me as a Dive Boat Captain, were not so apparent to my friends. It became apparent that my experience and local knowledge were very valuable as they began to work out their own system for diving from their boat. Not only do I run a Dive Operation, but I have hundreds of dives from small private boats in similar conditions. (Read “Hiding on the Bottom“)

That is when I decided that I would offer similar services for others who want a little help getting set up to dive from their private boats. I created Guide Services. Hopefully I can get some folks pointed in the right direction and make them aware of the additional safety concerns of running a boat with divers (charter or private).

We ended the day with a few grouper, a very large sheepshead and a handful of trigger fish. Visibility was a respectable 30′ and the water was a balmy 76 on the bottom. I was able to squeeze in 3 dives on 2 tanks.

I really enjoyed myself, my customers learned some things and so did I!

Guide Services

Since things got busy with the dive season, I have been slow to put the fingers to the keyboard and write my blogs. It has been a great season so far and we are only half way through. We ran a few days in April, but things really heated up in May. I had a group of Spearos in for the May 1st weekend for opening day of grouper season and then the following week I had my Scubaboard DNY’ers in for a whole week. We ran 6 days in a row, the last day we had a Humpback whale sighting. June brought some nice weather as the summer weather pattern set in and the water warmed up.

July has brought us the end of the dramatic thermocline with cobalt blue water. Diving has been superb.

Tied in on the wreck of the Shurz

We have seen some incredible life on the wrecks this summer, big Sand Tiger Sharks, Atlantic Sunfish (Mola Mola), lionfish, sea turtles, Queen Angels, and Big Rays just to name a few.

We have a lot of diving left this season, and still plenty of open spots on the calendar. What are you waiting for, grab your gear, come on and lets get wet.

Last Thursday on the way home from dives on the Papoose and the Aeolus we spotted a humpback whale near Cape Lookout. It was an awesome sight, the whale breaching the surface over 30 times. Here is a short clip one of my customers shot with my camera. I tried to edit out the dead sea time.

Tortuga Whale Sighting from Tortuga Charters on Vimeo.

This time of year the weather pattern is pretty predictable. Here is how it goes:

Cyclical cold fronts dominate the weather conditions. As the front approaches we have warm and humid SW winds steady for about 2 days out. As the front nears we have increasing winds and seas to Small Craft Advisory conditions 24-36 hours ahead of the front. As the front passes, temperatures drop, rain and squalls occur and the wind shifts to the NW blowing strong. 12 to 24 hours after the front passes, the wind moves to NE and cooler dry air moves in and the wind is strong and steady but quickly diminishes and fair conditions (maybe even a bluebird day) set in for 24-48 hours. The wind turns light to the south. When it shifts to the SW the next front is on its way and the pattern starts over.

Basically we get 4 divable days out of 7.  There are exceptions. Sometimes the front will stall and return as a warm front and a low pressure area will develop and move up the coast. This makes the foul weather linger around a little longer.

By mid summer we can have long periods of strong SW flow (the Bermuda High sets in) as the cold fronts cease. We also can have a stretch of up to 10 days of dead calm. Towards the end of summer and into to fall we start storm season as the tropical lows take the weekly pattern the cold fronts had in the spring and early summer. They say that the weather is beautiful in hurricane season as long as there is not a hurricane.

I hope this helps in setting your expectations.

We had a great day on Saturday with Special Forces Soldiers from Ft. Bragg. Visibility was 60′ on the Hutton and the seas were calm. The guys chartered a 3 tank inshore day and drove down from Fayetteville early in the morning Saturday to be at the boat by 7:30 am. Trained to catch 40 winks whenever they can, these soldiers slept between dives and on the way home. Between dives 2 and 3, we changed to the Suloide wreck 3 miles away. We got there, tossed the anchor and Ryan the mate went to the wreck, tied in the anchor, returned to the boat, got all his gear off and the guys slept through it all, we had to wake them up to get them to do their 3rd dive!!

I am not an overly superstitious fellow, but I have to admit that once I lose sight of land, I have learned to expect the unexpected and the unusual. Murphy reigns at sea, and mistakes and mishaps can be deadly, if not merely highly inconvenient. There are a lot of theories of why bananas have long been thought to be bad luck on a boat. The superstition has been around since man set to sea, and I don’t embrace any one idea on the matter, I tend to just accept them all.

Why tempt fate? I actually went to the trouble of performing the proper renaming ceremony when the “Just Joshin” became “Tortuga”, with the one variation on the process was that I used a 16 ounce Miller High Life beer. After all, it is the “Champagne of Beers”.

Saturday morning we had a beautiful day brewing, clear skies and light north winds. My customers were lodging at the Casa, and when I stopped in to get the bean bag chairs, I noticed a half eaten banana on the counter, the peeling folded back and beginning to turn brown. At the dock, I brought this up and asked very directly if anyone had any intentions of smuggling any bananas aboard Tortuga, because they are strictly forbidden.

The color of Tortuga could be described as light “Banana Yellow” and I am quite fond of the hue. When my feet are placed terra firma I enjoy the flavor of the ripe fruit. My favorite blend at the Cold Stone Creamery is banana and coffee ice cream (with toffee crunch on top, of course!).  I have nothing against bananas as long as I am not at sea.

As we turned the corner around the Duke Marine Lab headed for the Radio Island channel, a customer spoke up. She said: “Captain, I have a confession, I have a banana in my bag.”

I hesitated for a moment. It was a beautiful day and I was in fine spirits.

“Well, I am not going to toss it overboard, but if we break down, it is all your fault.” I scolded her half jokingly and we all laughed a bit about the exchange.

I am not going to get into the events of the day. I will just say we have had more efficient days at sea, from the Captain and crew and from the customers. When we returned with our weary bunch of divers, a Captain friend called to see how the day was. All I said was “I had a bananas on the boat sort of day” and he just laughed and said “I know exactly what you mean.”

In another life I sold “Process Improvement” consulting for software engineering. I firmly believe in constant analysis of existing processes and continuous improvement. Well, my briefing has three new line items and one is:

“No Bananas, No Exceptions!”

The most beautiful day of 2010 on the Crystal Coast was this past Saturday. We didn’t have a charter scheduled, but when we saw that day coming, I rounded up a few of the “usual suspects” to run a Captain’s fun day. It has been a long winter and Tortuga had not been offshore since November.

We were greeted to a calm sea with 5 knots of wind and the ride out was nice and smooth without any white caps or swell. The inshore water is still a chilly 51 degrees but after we had run 25 miles or so it warmed up to a balmy 65 degrees well offshore. We pulled up to the Naeco  and one of the divers  suited up and splashed with the anchor in hand to hook in. He returned and reported the bottom temperature was around 63 degrees and the visibility was around 20-25 feet depending on who’s shoe you were using to do the measuring.

The Naeco was a oil tanker sunk by a German Submarine in March of 1942. She rests on the bottom in 2 sections 2 miles apart. We dived on the more popular and accessible stern section. It is one of our deeper dive sites at a max depth of 140 fsw. We generally stay high on the wreck in the 120’s.

It was a Captain’s fun day which means I got to dive!! There were  lots of lionfish, angelfish, butterfly fish,  and grouper. There had to be well over 75 grouper and 90% of them were of legal size. There was one monster sandtiger shark and another smaller 6 footer. Grouper and snapper fisheries are closed to both commercial and recreational fishing until May 1st, and it seems to be working. The wreck is covered up with big grouper. One of the divers was able to pull a 12# spiny lobster off the wreck.

On the surface 2 loggerhead sea turtles that stayed with the Tortuga the entire time we were anchored. They must have been attracted to the new turtle graphics on the side. Between the warm air and bright March sun, it was shirts off weather during the surface interval.

The Tortuga ran great, motoring out and back at an easy 19 knots and burning 68 gallons on the 90 mile round trip. What a great day!!

Turtles just love the Tortuga