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But circumstances meant that if I didn’t take this opportunity I’d probably end up waiting at least another week for the first dive of 2010, so, even though my drysuit was still broken, I decided to brave it. Glad I did, but you probably guessed that.

We dropped into about 8 metres just off the rock. A bit of bother with the bilge had added another twelfth, so we decided to play it safe and head roughly North and West instead of following the reef out to sea. The kelp was punctuated by a series of short sandy-bottomed gullies, each of which seemed to have its own micro current system. At one point I resolved to point into the current and just fin to stand still, but even staying as low as possible this was exhausting.

So we went up and over a ridge and things slackened off a little. We hit a nice bit of a sandy plain, with a few rocks thrown in for good measure. Viz wasn’t fantastic; a bit gloomy, but not so as you couldn’t have a poke around without losing your buddy. There were a good few pollock around, a few wrasse, assorted crabs..

When my buddy was down near fifty, I stuck up an SMB. Still a bit rusty, after practically no diving last year, so I forgot to keep the line taught and it snagged on the reel after I’d inflated. I tried to fix it, but I was being dragged away from my buddy with the current, so I let it float. When we tried to do our safety stop we were being dragged along at a good old rate, so, without a buoy to help our cox’n find us, it seemed prudent to just surface.

We came up in the channel between the Bream and the Head, a little South of where we’d like to have been, but a combination of good planning in bringing along the second boat, and good boatmanship meant we were back in the boat soon enough, recovered reel and all.

And back home in time for Sunday dinner. Beat that.

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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.

Please contact us for more information.

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.

Hope to see you there.

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…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.