Diving the shipwrecks of North Carolina
. IT IS ALL ABOUT HUNTERS, THE HUNTED AND THE HAPLESS By Stephen Weir Fidgety. Overheated. Impatient. The man with the double nitrox aluminum tanks and fully accessorized dry suit (with neoprene sneakers and matching gloves and hood) waited as the dive boat was secured to the remains of a Nazi U-boat sunk off the coast of North Carolina five wars ago. One of a dozen club members from Boston, he was sweating both figuratively and literally to get wet. For him this was the ultimate North Carolina T-shirt dive, the reason why he spent close to a day white knuckling it down the interstate to secure a berth at the end of the bench of the 55ft long dive boat Midnight Express. To his right, a photographer from Raleigh stood in the on-deck shower area. He grabbed the ship’s hand-held fresh water hose and filled his thin 3 mm wetsuit with hot water to get himself toasty warm before jumping into the rolling Atlantic Ocean. One diver was dressed for the south, the other for under the ice. Bu...
