Wilmington

August 2006: Well, we were supposed to be heading to Morehead City, NC, for a weekend of diving with some of our friends from Blackbeard's Scuba Club but had a change of plans . Diver Down in Morehead City cancelled our trip at the last minute because they had a bigger group that wanted the boat. The worst part was, they had already cashed our checks! While we got our money back, it forced dive club president, Ryan Johnson, to scramble to find a new location. Needless to say we will not be diving with Diver Down again any time soon.

Ryan did an awesome job and found us Cape Fear Divers in Wilmington, NC. North Carolina is one of our favorite places to dive - primarily because of the sharks - and Wilmington did not disappoint. The hardest part about the whole trip was that Sara wasn't able to join Scott underwater...all in good time.

On the first day we dove two 250 ft. hopper dredges - the Markham and the Hyde. Both wrecks were sunk in the late 80s/early 90s as part of the artificial reed program. Here we saw many sand tiger sharks and came back with a handful of teeth. Vis was good and the water was warm - what more could a diver ask for!

Day two led us to two World War II wrecks - the Esso Nashville and the John D. Gill. Both boats met their demise at the hands of German U-Boats. The John D. Gill was sunk by the U-158 on March 13, 1942 and just nine miles away the Esso Nashville was sunk by the U-124 on March 21, 1942. Seeing that much history on the bottom of the Atlantic is always such an awesome experience.