Cork Sub Aqua Club

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

Okay, so enough talking, time to go diving!

The weather forecast is wrong as per usual and its actually a gorgeously crisp day with skies so azure blue it almost hurts to look at them.  It’s obviously time to get wet, and get the diving season started in earnest.  I meet Michiel a little early and we complete his fitness test – a new mandatory requirement from CFT – so we hit the water.  Swimming 100m out from Oysterhaven slip, a quick bracing duck dive and then a short tow whilst practicing EAR.  Finally back into the slip.  Michiel heads into to change while I get my camera a look for any signs of photogenic hermit crabs that sometimes may be found close inshore.  Not today, maybe next time.

By the time I give up Dave has towed down the new boat and elected himself to cox.  We all jump into helping prepare the boat and launch it, before sorting, assembling and loading our gear on board.  We elect to try a simple dive out in Newfoundland Bay (that’s “to the left and around a bit” in CSAC parlance).  It appears to be a good choice for as soon as we pull in to our determined dive site we see at least five seals watching curiously our every move.  The come quite close, even to within 15m and Michiel and I are increasingly hopeful of an underwater encounter with these majestical creatures.

Alas it was not to be, but we weren’t disappointed with what we saw.  A variety of different crab species from the tiniest of hermit crabs (I finally got that picture) to devellish looking velvet swimmers, to big bruisers of edible ones.  Anemones and other brightly coloured shells really made for a great first dive of the year…  Back to the slip to recover and tidy up the boat, new covers and all, before heading home for a well deserved hot chocolate.

The wreck of the Santo lies in water up to 35 meters deep (depending on tide) to the south east of Roches point. It is a long boat trip from Oysterhaven, so we have also dived her out of Crosshaven instead. When we last dived her on a spring low tide she was about 30 meters down. She was a dredger, and her most distinctive feature is the chain of buckets if these can be found. The Mark ‘Santo2′ on the Cork SAC GPS can be used to drop a shot close to the anchor. Reeling east or a little north east from the anchor the boiler can be found. Beyond the boiler there should be a big sprocket and stretching away from that the chain of buckets which are at least a meter in diameter. I should point out that the bucket chain shown above was taken on a dive a few years ago, my buddy and I failed to find them on the most recent dive. If visibility is poor they can be difficult to locate. The wreck is small, but seems to be comparable in size to the Aud, though in fact she was only about a fifth the size. Her boiler is upright but with large holes and has formed a home for fish, which seem to be abundant on the wreck: pouting and cod in the boiler, but also conger, lobster and cuckoo wrasse around the wreck. You can find YouTube video of a blonde ray on the Santo from John Ryan of NMCI SAC. The Santo sank in 1900 on her way from Scotland to Formosa (then part of Japan), now Taiwan.

Cork Sub Aqua Club contains a few members who mainly dive on Wednesdays through the summer. They are joined by larger numbers of Sunday or Saturday regulars too, but some members hardly every dive Wednesdays, or haven’t for years. The Wednesday dives usually finish shortly before dusk, and tend to always leave from Oysterhaven. At various times, if tides and weather permit, there can be slightly earlier dives on Friday afternoon and these can venture further, to the Lings or the Aud perhaps. The Wednesday dives don’t really aim for the wow factor, they are simply a nice break from the midweek routine. They are rarely very challenging in terms of depth or distance traveled, so they attract a more relaxed crowd. Usually a smaller crowd too, adding to the easygoing atmosphere on a less crowded boat. The relatively laid-back atmosphere suits people whose jobs allow them to make it to the site by 6:30, (or 6PM a bit earlier or later in the year). It also suits divers who are busy transporting their kids to activities on the weekend, and wouldn’t otherwise get an opportunity to escape for a bit of underwater peace and quiet. If a boat is already on the mooring, or if it is mid-summer, or if there is a dry coxn then the dives can venture further afield, sometimes around the old-head, but normally they stick to a seven or eight kilometer radius from the slip. The Wednesday dives rarely involve depths of more than twenty meters.
The visibility underwater is usually reasonable, even if the weather isn’t always. If the weather is good then things are a bit more crowded, but there is still a chance to enjoy the late summer evening with a mid-week dive, and maybe a nice sunset on the way back. In September the dives can almost be like night dives. There is always the prospect of seeing something especially good: a sunfish breaching, big shoal of mackerel, congers, a porpoise or dolphins, or maybe even a leather backed turtle. Pipefish tend to be a speciality of the area. The spectacular sometimes happens in an ordinary setting, we are quite used to seeing it, so we sometimes don’t notice. Even if the weather is a bit rotten, as it has tended to be in July and early August 2008, what else would you be doing on a wet Wednesday night ? Sitting at home watching Coronation Street ?

Finally, a little good weather. Water temperatures reached 14 to 15 Celsius this weekend, and although there was a bit of a bloom about, I had one of the most enjoyable dives I’ve had in a while. We dived in the morning by the Kedges; Fiona, Lucas and myself. The ground was quite open, with an abundance of macrofauna; dogfish, crawfish, butterfish, blennies as well as lots of pollock and plenty of juvenile fish. I heard somebody spotted a seahorse, or maybe a pipefish, but we weren’t that lucky.

The afternoon dive had less life, but interesting ground with lots of nice gullies.

The Aud lies at about 31 meters depth near the Cork Buoy at the entrance to Cork Harbour. She was a covert 1916 world war one German sponsored gun-running enterprise to the Irish Volunteers but she was discovered by the British navy. She was scuttled by her crew when she was being escorted to Cork. The remains of the wreck are very much scattered, and the boiler is pretty much the only intact part. A very entertaining dive, the bullets are everywhere, and look like gravel on the sea bed. Keep an eye out for congers and ling, but the anglers seem to know this place well so we didn’t see many fish.

It was a relatively early 8:30 AM start from Oysterhaven to make the one hour time window after low tide that is the best time to dive this wreck. The sea was flat calm on the way there but the forecast force 3-4 southwest winds had made it a little more choppy on the way back. The earliest down had less disturbed silt to deal with but even Laura and Eileen, the last two to dive, described the visilbility as fairly good. I would say 10 meters at the beginning but it was more disturbed near the boiler.
Thanks to Claire for coxing and for the chocolate and coconut chunks. Thanks to the O’Connell family for the loan of their boat.

Aud Bullets

Declan C diving the Aud

More Aud Bullets

Originally uploaded by riordan_david.

The Marina Cahersiveen

Members of Cork Sub Aqua Club, Daunt SAC, Blackwater SAC, UCC SAC, Limerick SAC, Aughinish SAC, and one bloke from Irish SAC, were guests of the Inbhear Sceine SAC for the regional weekend at Cahersiveen Co Kerry May 2007. The sun shone on Saturday. Most boats headed the short distance to the Basalt Cliffs, where there is spectacular ground, with deep anenome covered gullies to be found, and any depth you want down to 40 meters. A fearless male Cuckoo Wrasse guarding his territory pursued us for the early portion of the dive (perhaps seeing his reflection in my mask). A lucky few diving with Nigel Kelleher were treated to the sight of some basking sharks late in the afternoon.

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The race is on to find where corkonians like to get cold and wet (why is another question entirely).  Will the local favourites like the Sovs and Newfoundland Bay feel the contempt of familiarity and lose out to those once-in-a-season (if that) big-ticket dives like the Bull, or the Fastnet? Will rusty metal beat the allure of pretty fish? Does the high ranking of the Lusitania reveal a secret Yellow Box in the soul of every single-cylinder Kelp Hugger?

Meanwhile, the great Nudibranch debate rages unabated, with, at last count, the withs languishing in eighth place to the withouts third. No doubt there’s still breath in those naked lungs though.

No amount of planning can compensate for the Irish weather, so our much anticipated dive on the U260, a German u-boat sunk off Glandore in about 40m, came to a sudden end on a dreary Saturday morning in Union Hall.

So that the trip wouldn’t be a complete loss, some of us set off on a mission to find the man who’d appeared at the pier at eight o’clock in the morning looking for divers to retrieve his missing rudders. After waking half the residents of Glandore, and getting a few more requests to retrieve missing stuff, we tracked down our mystery man, the inconsiderate students of whose sailing school had been leaving a trail of missing rudders half way across the harbour (“They’re not supposed to capsize”). Despite our well planned, methodical search, we actually managed to find something. In true Famous Five fashion we were treated to lashings of lovely nosh for our troubles.

The next day we got a real dive in. It’s nice to see that after our spell of warm weather, the sea has taken the hint and decided to warm up a bit. We dived High Island, and, though the viz wasn’t great, the life was as good as I’ve seen it in Irish waters: a leopard dogfish was spotted, chunky well-fed nudibranchs grazed on the soft coral, and a curious crawfish came out to investigate my buddy, before he realised the attention was focusing on him and got shy.