… so, let´s listen to Jessie’s side of the story.

What inspired you to take up diving?

It’s something I have wanted to do for a long time, as I have loved swimming, snorkeling and messing around in the water since I was a kid. I did a couple of trial dives in Crete last year and was determined to learn to dive after I got home.

Why did you join Cork Sub Aqua?

I wanted to learn to dive and was more interested in joining a club than doing a one-off course as I intended to keep diving during the year rather than to just get a qualification I could use on holiday. I also liked the idea of being in a club so that I would have the opportunity to dive with others more experienced than me. The social side of it is also good.

Is learning to dive hard?

I don’t think it’s hard to get the basics, and after that it’s all practice. I think you learn something on every dive.

What is the most difficult part of the scuba skills?

Your buoyancy on the first few dives in the open water can be tricky, especially if there is a surge. Learning to dive in a dry-suit also made the buoyancy a bit harder for me initially, but I don’t regret that decision at all!

Did you ever have a scary moment?

Not so far, although I did experience some claustrophobia on a dive where the visibility was poor, and that wasn’t much fun.

How was your first boat dive?

My first boat dive was in Lough Hyne and I loved it. I didn’t find it daunting at all, although getting back on to the boat was another story.

What was your most memorable dive to date?

It was definitely the dive at the Ling Rocks in September. The conditions were perfect and we could see the surface from 30m. The dives on the south side of Puffin Island during the August bank holiday week away were spectacular also.

How easy was it to buy/ find all your dive gear?

It was easy enough to find new gear, although there is a lot less second-hand gear available for women (i.e. in a small size). I bought some of my gear in the UK as there is a bigger choice and it worked out a lot cheaper.  And the instructors in the club are more than happy to give advice on what and what not to buy.

Do you think that diving is for everyone?

I think that probably anyone could learn to dive.  It doesn’t involve any skills that you would need to have in advance, as long as you are comfortable enough in the water. Not everyone might want to stick at it long term, but it’s worth finding out!

What are your diving plans for next year?

I’m hoping to get out regularly to dive with the club, and maybe to get some diving abroad if I can.

Again, congratulations …. And happy polishing!

(JVM Dec 11)

A week ago, for the first time in several years, we dived the Kowloon Bridge. It is hard to know why we hadn’t dived it recently, we dive other sites nearby on a regular basis, but I think that the main reason was that after the bow section collapsed a few years ago it became less accessible: deeper, the deck moved from 5 meters down to 18 meters, and there was less shelter from the current so it had to be dived at a suitable tide.
What we discovered by going back was that the wreck we once knew as a colossal and impressive looming overhang with outsized everything: anchor, winches, hawse hole, and ore compartments, but that was also pretty sterile from a wildlife perspective has changed. Back then the outside surfaces of the steel of the wreck which sank in 1986 still had some intact anti-fouling and the shifting cargo of iron ore inside provided no firm anchor for plant or animal life to gain a foothold. Now the older corroded twisted and folded steel plates provides a maze of overhangs and hiding places for fish, as well as a surface covered in hydroids and anenomes, the preferred food of nudibranchs. If you have a macro lens bring it. I dived with a wide angle lens expecting something like the old Kowloon Bridge, but the way it is now is fascinating in a different way.

On Saturday (June 11, 2011) five divers boarded the CorkSAC boat and set course for the wreck of the UC42, located not far from Roche’s Point. For four of the crew, myself included, it was the first visit to the wreck of this German WW1 submarine.

We had a spot of luck as Graham and Anne from OceanAddicts were on site and had a shotline deployed. Our first two divers descended their shotline and deployed an SMB to mark the dive site for our second group.

Conditions were excellent (aside from a water temperature of 10deg), there was no noticeable current and the visibility was so good that the entire length of the wreck could be seen. We were diving at high water which made the depth of the dive about 30m, giving those of us diving on air just under 20 minutes bottom time. The UC42 is a compact wreck and this turned out to be ample time to do a complete circuit of the submarine.

Wreck diving enthusiasts will be pleased to know that the wreck is in pretty good shape. Mine slots, a torpedo tube and batteries to power the electric motors could all be made out and the propellor is fully intact. The wreck supports plenty of sea life including some huge conger eels, plumose anemones, deadmans fingers and several members of the cod family.

All in all the UC42 is an excellent dive. This diver can’t wait to return and spend a little more time looking in the numerous nooks and crannies for some of the less obvious forms of marine life.

Video below:

Pretty Good visibility and some reasonable weather helped make this a very good weekend’s diving. We normally try to pick a sheltered spot for Easter with some alternate sites to choose from if the wind strength or direction turns out to not be ideal. Dingle has nearby Smerwick as an option if the wind is westerly or southerly, but in the end it was northwesterly which made the dive sites around Dingle (Crow Rock, The Gravelly), and those near Ventry like Parkmore point, even the south east side of the Great Blasket accessible. As usual thornback rays were seen at The Gravelly, Octopuses are a dingle special, one was seen again at Parkmore Point. I felt a bit guilty as I tucked into a big lunchtime plate of calamari at the Dingle Marina cafe, at the fate of it’s cephalopod cousins the squid, which sort of lack that charisma. Speaking of charismatic wildlife, here is always the occasional appearance of the other star of the Dingle wildlife show: Fungi the bottlenose dolphin to entertain us on the way in and out of the harbour. Some of us may have seen a minke whale on the way to the Blaskets (too far away to be sure), and apparently we missed a basking shark at about three meters depth on the Three Brothers (which divers from the UCD club, who arrived as we were diving, spotted as we were about to leave).
The highlight for many will have been the Three Brothers, a wrecked steel trawler, off the Great Blasket, and with some excellent viz for April. The boat ride was a bit arduous, with a cold wind and some choppy waves, and long enough to put the endurance of the human bladder to the test on the way back. We would have brought two boats and two bottles except that the Humber steering had problems when we launched it on the Friday. With the Humber not exactly adrift, but not steerable, and with two other people having swum out to give advice and assistance, Lucie eventually headed out on the other boat to rescue her husband.
On the social side of events Cathy from Daunt graciously invited us to a barbeque expertly cooked by Chris Crouch on Saturday Night, and a very good time was had by all.

The trick to finding the wreck of the French steamship Hourtien, is not to look for the wreck itself, but to look for the gulley leading to it. Descending a bit north of the GPS marks and the rock that marks where the wreck lies we headed south east to find a deep wide gulley heading down to 30 meters, and with at least two congers in it. then once we had reached the maximum depth we wanted we turned back up the gulley until we came out in a flat area. A few bits of steel plate were lying about and we kept going shallower until we got to about 18 meters. There, quite close to shore is most of the wreck.
Wrecked in 1931 she lies in quite shallow water between the wreck of the Illyrian and Gascannane sound. Quite a nice spot and only a short spin from Baltimore, and sheltered from any westerly or northerly wind. We dived her near the middle of a spring tide and had no current.
As a result of being so shallow she is very broken up, even the boiler has been de-constructed more or less so that there are more holes in the casing than intact steel. Another consequence of being shallow is that despite some iffy visibility there was plenty of light for photography. I actually had to adjust the exposure of some of the photos down a bit. The light shines through the holes in the boiler illuminating the inside. Two anchors were spotted by people more interested in the exact function of bits of rusty metal than I am. Six conger were also spotted on the dive, in the gulley as well as on the wreck.

Ling on Night Dive

It is getting to the time of year again when the dusk is soon enough for a night dive to be at a reasonable hour (neither midnight nor the middle of the afternoon). With the boat conveniently moored at brightly lit and easily navigable Crosshaven, we headed out on Friday evening to dive the Daunt Rock. The trick is to kit up while there is still some twilight and have darkness fall just after you leave the surface. We timed it perfectly. Joost had the good idea of attaching a light stick to a surface marker boy that he towed on the dive. Gerry, who was coxing was able to follow it fairly well after darkness fell. With a neap tide there was little current and a half moon to help us navigate back to Crosshaven. The fish life is fairly tame on a night dive, some of the fish are actually asleep. Others such as Congers that would normally be holed up during daylight are out and about at night. Also Ling which I was able to photograph despite some challenging lighting conditions. We saw several small congers (or maybe the same one several times !). There is some metal on the Daunt rock, evidence of the fact that it was once the cause of some shipwrecks. The rock is buoyed, with a red lateral mark (I would have expected an isolated danger mark). You have probably seen the buoy many times from nearby Roberts’ Cove.

On Saturday morning, in bright sunshine and beneath the walls of Slade Castle, we made our preparations to dive Three Mile Rock. Diving out of Slade harbour presents its own challenges as the harbour drains almost completely at low tide, however we were lucky enough to get the boat into the water as the harbour was filling.

Three Mile Rock is a tidal dive and even at slack tide there was a strong current on the way to the bottom, however this disappeared once we dropped below a depth of 20m. We continued down to about 30m and began spiraling our way back up the rock. It was a nice scenic dive and presented divers with a who’s who of Irish diving including Conger, Crayfish, Lobster, Ling and a large shoal of Coalfish. Rockcook, which appear electric blue along their backs under torchlight, were also plentiful.

The second split of divers took in a scenic dive nearer to Hook head while we had lunch and prepared for the much anticipated trip to the Girl Arlene.

The Girl Arlene, a fishing trawler wrecked in almost 30m of water, did not disappoint. On descent we were amazed at the abundance of fish life. Predominantly poor cod, or pouting, but there were also plenty of ling, some conger eels and lobster. Those looking closely were also likely to find butterfish (gunnel), blennies, dragonets and sea scorpions.

After the fourth split had returned from another scenic dive off Hook Head we realised exactly the extent to which Slade Harbour drains at low tide. We could not get the boat anywhere near the slip . Thankfully, the kind folks from Hook SAC were on hand to use their specialised equipment (an Interantional 784 tractor) to extract our boat from the mud.

The tides were not really working in our favour on Sunday so we decided to go back to the Girl Arlene (twice) as it was one of the few sites we knew we could dive mid tide. It is true testament to this dive that while some members dived this site three times in two days, it seemed to get better each dive. For this diver, the treat on Sunday was a small octopus spotted on the second dive. He swam briefly across the bottom and set down again where he performed a colour change that a small group of us were luck enough to witness.

It is fair to say we could not have had such a good weekend without the help of the Hook Sub Aqua Club. They retrieved our boat for us both days and filled our bottles Saturday and Sunday night. Thanks guys, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

The slideshow photos can be seen on Flickr here -> Hook Head – June ’10

A conger sticks his nose out from under a rock.

Almost a week before school kids all over Ireland begin their state exams, Wednesday night saw normal club diving take place amidst diver coxwain exams. The cork boat was full with divers, instructors and two of our own ‘L’ plate candidates undergoing their exam.

There were also two candidates from the UCC club. As they were good enough to bring another boat (and they needed divers to cover), Neil and I were lucky enough to hitch a ride to Black Head and dive from their boat.

My buddy was a little aprehensive as they had dived this site the week before and the feedback was less than spectacular. However, a week can be a long time in diving.

This fella is on the defensive.

This time we dropped in much closer to the headland and forty minutes underwater passed in what seemed like seconds. The terrain was nice, featuring some small gullies and we were kept entertained by several lobsters and a couple of conger eels for good measure.

To cap the evening off the UCC lads showed there coxwain credentials by providing sweets aplenty.

I’d like to thank the UCC lads for the boat trip and congratulate the candidates from both clubs , all of whom passed their exam.

A very early start, and the slightly early birth of a child meant that there were only five takers for this dive. Light winds and a relatively calm sea gave us the chance to dive a wreck that none of the five of us had dived before. The early start was to avoid mid-tide but in the end there was very little current. The smaller of the two club boats, the Humber, was large enough, but I began to doubt this when we started to load all the gear for two dives into the bow. Fortunately the load was evened out when we put Jim’s lunch down at the stern end.
The stern and midships section of the Sloop HMS Mignonette lies in 35 meters near Galley Head Co Cork. It is about a nine mile spin from Union Hall. She was a small warship and is quite broken up. The bow section is so far away from the stern that it is a separate dive. The stern and midships part of the wreck is just about big enough to cover in about 25 minutes, which is what you will get using a 30% mix. Being a small wreck the shot has to be dropped more exactly, but the boilers show up well on the sounder. The GPS co-ordinates we used dropped the shot a little to the west of the boiler but having seen that this was the case from the sounder we finned a few meters east to find the wreck.

She struck a mine on St Patrick’s day 1917 and sank. The mine had been laid by a U-Boat. There was either no loss of life, or casualties not known. Five days earlier the Mignonette had helped rescue the crew of SS Malmanger that had also struck a mine. The day after, the 18th, another minesweeper: Alyssum went down 1½ miles further offshore. The wreck has lots of small barrell shaped objects with rounded ends that we assumed to be munitions, shells for the gun. We had been warned that some of these contain phosphorus so not to disturb them. There is no big gun aboard, that was salvaged some time ago and taken to Kinsale. We failed to find the Prop. But there was lots of stuff to see. The Great War flower class sloops were mainly used as minesweepers and were built with an old engine design, and as a result were slow, but they were not intended to escort convoys or catch the enemy, so slow was not a problem. They had a triple hull, and obviously this didn’t save the Mignonette, but maybe it helped save the crew. She had two boilers, and two funnels, but only a single propellor. To be honest I only saw one boiler, but others saw both. There is an engine and what seems to be an electrical generator.

It is dark at that depth, and the light was a little green from plankton, but on the wreck viz was reasonably clear. The seabed was rocky and flat with a little seaweed. There were plenty of small fish on the wreck. Wildlife included Cuckoo Wrasse, Pouting, and conger.

We left from Union Hall, and lunched at red strand. We brought second bottles for a dive on the “Norwegian” that did not work out as a wreck dive but was a pleasant scenic dive.

This small octopus find himslef in the spotlight while exposed on the sandy bottom.

A good crowd of club members made their way to Dingle last week for the bank holiday weekend. Those down early enough on Friday were treated to incredible visibility diving in Smerwick harbour.

We were lucky enough to have good weather Saturday morning and took the chance to take both boats to Great Blasket Island and dive the wreck of the Three Brothers.

Saturday afternoon saw us take the shorter spin to Parkmore point. This site boasts spectacular scenic underwater gullies and provided the suprise of the weekend when numerous octopuses were sited. Once the dispute regarding  the correct pluralisation of the word ‘octopus’ was settled (or so we thought) all agreed that the site was worth revisiting Sunday morning.

Sunday afternoon saw the small group of divers who could tear themselves away from the rugby visit a shallow site just outside Dingle Harbour known as “Fungi’s Bedroom”.

Fungi's Bedroom: A shallow but scenic dive.

This gorgeous cave-like swimthrough again provided outstanding scenery.

However, the real fun was on the way to the site. Fungi, Dingle’s resident dolphin, obviously found the outboard on the humber to his liking as he left two boat loads of tourists scratching their heads and followed us from the harbour to the divesite where he proceeded to circle the dive boat for the duration of the dive.

The weekend provided a wonderful showcase of what is great about Irish diving, stunning scenery, interesting critters and good visibility.

More photos can be found here.