Took up an offer for a couple of nights in Don & Mercy’s place in Kilcrohane this weekend. Haven’t had a dive since last June so I needed to get those snorkels out of the way. Besides, we still haven’t figured how to get baby, buggy and dive gear all in the car yet.
Saturday morning was bright and sunny. And crisp, definitely crisp. Not a day for climbing back into a wet semi-dry, so I just did the one from Dooneen Pier. I went first, while Fiona looked after Diarmaid. I swam around the small rock south of the pier and headed west towards the rocky bay. The tide was too low to swim through, but there was a nice little cave in the cliff face just to the left of the channel. When it came to Fiona’s turn the water was high enough to get through and she enjoyed her snorkel on the south side of the island.
Today was slightly less inviting, but I still managed to drag myself into the water. Headed left this time, into the cave and explored the bay beyond that and around the corner. Nice spot for doing a few duck dives – the water was pretty clear and I could see the bottom a few metres below; a nice mix of boulders and flat white sand.
Staying down for a third night so I might get my quota of snorkels out of the way. We’ll see what tomorrow’s like. Tapping this in slowly on my Hero in front of the warm fire. BTW, anybody looking at this on their mobile? Let me know what you think of the new mobile theme.
For prospective members with no previous diving experience, there will be an opportunity to try out SCUBA equipment in a shallow heated pool under supervision by our instructors. This will take place in the Leisureworld pool on the 26th January at 7pm.
Cork Sub Aqua will hold an open night upstairs in Counihan’s Bar on 21st January. Members will be present to discuss our training plans for the year to come and answer any questions you may have concerning diving in Cork, conditions, training needs, club equipment, costs, or any other matters relating to diving.
Divers with existing diving qualifications are particularly welcome, as we will be doing crossover training early in the new year. If you have not dived before, please register your interest as soon as possible, because we will only be able to provide training for new divers if numbers justify it.
If you made an enquiry during the year about joining the club you should be contacted soon with more details. Enquiries can get overlooked sometimes though, so don’t hesitate to get in touch again.
I hadn’t dived the Folia for several years, not because club dives on the Folia are especially rare, (there had been a few already in 2009), but because I just happened to be unavailable whenever one was arranged. So I was looking forward to this. My recollection was that the wreck is really quite impressive. She lies at a depth of 33 to 38 meters several miles off Ardmore Co Waterford, and is within sight of Youghal and Ardmore. Despite some imperfect visibility it was a very enjoyable dive.
The problem of photographing and describing a wreck the size of the Folia is a bit like describing and photographing the grand canyon. It is difficult to convey the impressive scale of a wreck in a series of photographs or words, especially if conditions on the dive were not especially favorable for photography. I would like to dive the wreck again with clearer viz, like I had the previous time I dived, and a fast wide lens. The Folia is one of those dives that people like to do many times because it is probably one of the largest wrecks at a non-decompression diving depth off the south coast. There is always something new to discover. OK the Kowloon Bridge was an order of magnitude larger, but since the bow section collapsed also an order of magnitude less fascinating.
Sometimes known as the Folio, her real name was Folia. Militarily speaking the U-Boat that sank her did a pretty good job by preventing a large cargo of artillery shell casings from reaching the Western Front. The deaths of seven of the crew was the sad price paid. Despite extensive salvage that has destroyed much of the superstructure aft of the boilers there are still many of the shell casings to be found. We saw evidence that salvage continues. In effect she is being turned into a habitat for marine life. There are lots of nooks and crannies on the wreck. This is a good place to see congers. As a consequence of being a cozy home for fish, it gets some anglers, so watch out for hooks and fishing line.
I used a 28% mix, and we had about a 20 minute bottom time with plenty of no-decompression limit to spare, partly due to a miscalculation on my part, we headed back to the shotline a tad early. Launching from Knockadoon was OK, but there were waves coming around the point which made retrieval a bit challenging. Thanks to Brian for towing and coxing, and to Helen for organizing the dive, also Joost for helping us drop the shotline on the correct spot.
For those interested in the history of the wreck there is an article on the Waterford County Museum webpage: http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/160/4/?lang=en
Just a quick reminder that the quiz night is on Friday 16th October, 8.30pm in Douglas RFC hall, St Columba’s Hall (AKA the Tinny Shed), All are welcome booked or turn up on the night. there is a bar for those who’s knowledge may need assistance
There will a raffles with prizes,
a first prize of €120 for the quiz winner.
€20 per table to enter, Teams of four.
Tables of 4 will be teamed up on the night if required.
Should be a laugh, see you there, friends & family and random punters welcome.
Four divers from Cork SAC, Steve Clare myself and Brian went to Cocos Island and Costa Rica in August. Since then quite a few people have been asking me: “when are we going to see your photos from Cocos?”. You see the problem has been that, after my old camera gave up the ghost in 2008 I kinda lost interest in underwater photography for a while, before buying Graham’s old camera to try out an SLR. With one thing and another I only got about half a dozen dives with the SLR before I went to Cocos, and really only decided to bring the camera at the last minute, so I have been a bit shy about showing the photos which I know to be not the best. Nevertheless the dives in Cocos were brilliant and I hope the photos don’t do them too much of an injustice. Anyhow Brian has the better photos, so ask him too!
If you ever saw the start of ‘Jurassic Park’, the jungle covered island that the intrepid dinosaur seekers fly into is Isla Del Coco: or Cocos island. The island, and the waters around it, are a national park of Costa Rica. Eight park rangers and maybe some coast guard are the only residents. To put it in an Irish context, Cocos is about the size of Valentia Island, maybe a bit smaller. It is a thirty six hour boat trip from Puntarenas (The main pacific port of Costa Rica). It is steep with dense foliage, and volcanic in origin. The coastline, apart from a few bays, consists mainly of steep cliffs down which numerous waterfalls cascade. According to Wikipedia it gets an an average annual rainfall of over 7,000 mm (275 in). That is about seven times the annual rainfall that Cork gets. There is a dry season and a wet season. We went in the wet season. The boat has a rainwater collection system. Long hot showers are not a problem, the tap water is drinkable, and unique in my experience of liveaboards elsewhere: in Egypt or Australia; there is a laundry service aboard ! But it didn’t rain that much, a bit for the first few days, the sea was 27 to 29 degrees C, and we were glad of a bit of cloud cover because when the sun shone it was almost too hot. All the waterfalls are very atmospheric, like a lost world, but the amount of fresh water during the wet season tends to affect underwater visibility a bit. Dry season it seems is clearer but with fewer fish.
Enough about annual rainfall and laundry, what about the sharks? There are many to see, on every dive, and sometimes your field of vision is filled with them. So dense that the hammerheads almost look like flocks of birds wheeling and swooping above. Not just Hammerheads, but also silver tips, white tips, black tips (which we didn’t see), galapagos sharks, silkies (which kinda look like galapagos sharks except to an expert), whale sharks (which another boat saw). The difference between white tips and silver tips is that white tips have white tips just on dorsal fin and top of tail and are smaller, silver tips are larger and have a silver trailing edge to all their fins. I have seen big sharks before, even hammerheads, but never the huge schools that you see at Cocos. Plenty of rays too including manta, marble ray, and mobula. The usual reef wildlife that would amaze you elsewhere: moray, turtles, lobsters and all, seem almost to be bit players, with the sharks as the stars of the show. Read the rest of this entry »
To simplify adding your photos to the blog, etc, I’ve introduced the tag ‘corkaquatic’. Here’s an example of an image gallery based on a flickr search for that tag. So far just flickr photos, but the plan is to expand to other services, so start tagging…
…you can tag your photos in a batch from the Organizr . E.g. select a group or set from the drop-down menu on the bottom left, and drag them into the main window, then select ‘AddTags’ from the menu at the top.
You can even tag other people’s photos for them. I’ve added photos from Joe and Donal here to illustrate.
The wine tasting event scheduled for August 14th has been cancelled, and will be reorganised for sometime in November. A few of us will head to Dennehy’s for pints instead.
