Cork Sub Aqua Club

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.

Sunday morning 8AM at Aughrusmore pier near Cleggan. Dave consults the chart. The weather doesn’t look too bad in the Harbour, but there were big waves and white horses out at sea. We had an eventful time towing up yesterday, basically one boat had to go back to Cork due to trailer problems. But two boats made it. Dave made the dificult decision not to launch this morning due to the weather, it was a marginal decision, but the right one. Shore dive Sunday afternoon. We used the facilities of Scubadive west. Lots of pipefish (both snake pipefish and greater pipefish), Scallops, a small conger and a tompot blenny sharing a cave.

Thanks very much to Rory, for towing up his boat and coxing for the week.

Monday we dived the east side of High Island. The ground was pretty good, but not as good as the west side as we would discover later in the week. Pretty flat at thirty meters, it got much better as we got shallower, above twenty meters. Diving with Trish and Lucas we saw two big Congers.

For the last dive of the day we went around to the west side of the island.

Tuesday we were again able to get around to the better west side of High Island. A playful seal pup hung out with Clare and Lisa for their dive. In the afternoon we dived again at the west side of High Island. This time we dived a bit nearer the edge at a wall that had plenty of crayfish and lobsters proving that the fishermen don’t get them all.
Brendan cycled up from Cork. Well done !

Wednesday again at the west side of High Island. A 40 meter dive with lots of curious cuckoo wrasse checking us out. That night, with deckchair and white wine provided for the shore marshals; James, Lisa, Gerry, Trish and Dave R did a night dive that had the eyes of lots of cuttlefish shining back at our torches from the sea bed, small brill buried in the sand too and a sea scorpion. We were so thrilled with the cuttlefish that eight people decided to try a night dive the following evening.

Thursday. No boat diving but you don’t always need boats to dive. A few people did a 38 meter shore dive at a sheltered cove by Killary fjord and were rewarded by seeing some thorn-backed rays. The night dive went well but there was not the same abundance of cuttlefish as on Wednesday, though they were seen by Steve and Trish who ventured further out than the others.

Friday. the weather had finally calmed down enough in the morning for us to go beyond High Island so we headed to spotted rock. Watched by loads of seals (impossible to count because they kept ducking below the surface and coming back up again to fool us). We dived a wall that dropped from four meters to about fifty and met a lobster who had probably gotten big enough that it will no longer fit into a pot and ought to last well into a well deserved lobster old age.

On land there was also some wildlife to be seen, some species easier to identify than others. Ireland has only one native species of lizard, so the lizards seen by several people nearby the pier must have been: Lacerta vivipara. Nearby there were bright blue damsel-flies of which Ireland has several species, most of them living in bogs, and requiring more expert identification than I can provide.

Saturday back to Cork.

The Ling rocks are a group of submerged pinnacles only 10 kilometers or so offshore from Oysterhaven near Cork City. Popular with divers and anglers, they should be dived at slack water. Also being so far offshore they require light or northerly winds and a calm sea. The shallowest of the pinnacles has depths of 25 meters even at a neap high tide, but some of the pinnacles have shallowest depths as deep as 33 to 40 meters. You will find several marks on both of the Cork club boats’ GPS for the Lings. The marks above (N51 36.847 W08 19.191) are for the shallowest pinnacle, and are also the marks that Seamus uses. I have dived the Lings with Daunt SAC, and they dive a different slightly deeper pinnacle, near the mark called ‘Lings 4′ on both Cork GPS units.

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The village of Allihes was the location for the Cork SAC August week long diving holiday. The coastal village is overlooked by eroded hills and a worked out copper mine (top right). The houses are brightly painted. Strangely for a village with three pubs and and only one shop, there is also a disused methodist chapel that was used by the miners from 1812 to 1884 (bottom left). Abstinence has not been an enduring success here, least of all for the members of Cork SAC.
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South of the rock the tides bring strong currents ripping past the Old Head, so keep North of the reef that extends from the point of the rock outwards. Drop in near the rock. If you find yourself in a shallow gully in nine or ten metres of kelp, head northwards, up and over a small reef for more depth. Here you’ll find a nice long gully running East to West with depths between twenty and twenty-five metres.

Best dived at slack water, and it’s not recommended to stray too far eastwards from the rock.

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.

06/07/05: ” If your into the history of the Kowloon and some facts here is a website that gives you the background:

http://www.iol.ie/~donale/Kowloon%20bridge.htm

The wreck lies NE-SE with its bow facing NE, but dont bother with compass bearings, 100,000 tons of metal will put pay to that. And there in lies the biggest problem on the Kowloon. Where the hell are ye, and in which direction are you headed. Infact, the very first time I dropped onto the Kowloon, I landed at 6m in Kelp and had no idea in what direction to head and thought how will I find the Kowloon from here.Little did I know I was sitting on top of it. Its worth noting your depth as that will give you some indication of where you are at.The sides of the Kowloon are at around 12m near the bow and as you work away from the bow, the first part of the lower deck is at 25 meters.You’ll know your on the deck as its covered in iron ore pellets. The deck slopes gently down toward the starboard side, so this is a good way to get your orientation as to which side of the ship your on. If you work along the deck, you should either come to a large bulkhead if your working toward the bow, or pass over the open cargo hold if your working away from the bow. The bulkhead rises to about 10 meters, and forms a wall that runs from either side of the Kowloon. The ship is 40m wide, so while swimming along the bulkhead, you may think your actually swimming along the side of the ship. If you stick to around 12-14m you eventually hit either the port or starboard side of the ship – knowing that everything forward of the bulkhead wall is toward the bow you should be able to navigate along the outside hull of the ship toward the bow. The outside of the hull is full of jewel anonomies and other soft tissue things, you might even find some nudibranks if your that way inclined – looking at micro fauna on one of Europe’s larges wrecks has to be a sad pastime. Pick a depth of 12-14m and work toward the bow – if your on the starboard side you will see the large hawspipe and broken chain where one of the Kowloon’s anchors used to be. Keep working forward and you’ll feel the front of the ship slope and you’ll round the bow. If the viz is good you should see the bulbous bow section below you – drop down to about 20m and you’ll be sitting on the bulbous section – its massive and worth even swimming away a little to get some scale of how big it actually is. If you continue round the bow toward the port side of the ship, again at around 12-14m you should eventually hit the anchor. This again is massive, all 40 tonnes of it. I’m sure Rick will try lift it. You could quite easily miss this – so make sure you keep your depth to around 12m.Further back from the anchor away from the bow, you’ll hit some large openings in the side hull. You can enter the ship quite easily here – there is little or no silt inside, so there is no chance of a silt out.Just beware of some of the jagged edge openings and the water surging in and out. You may have to time you entry and exit with the water flow.

You can work back about 30m inside the ship until you come to a wall – as far as I know this is the inside wall of the bulkhead mentioned above. You should be able to see a large circular hole in the floor – its about 10m in diameter and a ladder runs down to lower floors on the port side. If your on the top floor, you will be able to drop down 1 floor, where a similar size hole awaits, dropping down through this, you should hit a floor with 6 smaller cylindrical wholes about 3m long and 1m wide. I’ve dropped down through one of these holes, but have gone no further – you’ll be at a depth of around 22m at this point. You can easily navigate back up to the second floor and exit out through the hull from any of the 3 floors. Do cover all of this will take you 40-50 minutes – the finners among you may do this a lot quicker – but I would say keep that section to one dive.

If you want to work away from the bow, toward the broken section of the ship’s mid section, then keep to the lower deck at 22-25m where all the iron ore pellets are scattered. This is usually sheltered from the currents, so you should be able to navigate it easily. You should come across an open hold – but I’m a little sketchy on this as its been a while since I’ve dived toward the mid section. Because the Kowloon snapped in half, the stern of the Kowloon is light years away as is a separate dive – even for those who have the fancy fins, so the mid section has a lot of torn metal an broken pipes etc. Even the blind among us should be able to tell that broken twisted steel from the smooth bow section – so that’s a good indication of what end of the ship you are at. Again beware of the broken twisted steel, surges are common, so mind how you go. Note, that if you follow the deck, you could easily swim out of the wreck and onto the seabed and away from the wreck and not even realise it. So if the concentration of debris, metal and iron pellets begins to become sparse, you’re better off turning round, unless your carrying your passport. Because the mid section is deeper, you may have to profile up to the sides of the ship

- there is a very nice profile along the sides of the ship from the mid section heading to the bow. Its like a double hull, with box section compartments 2m wide and 2-3m long and about 2m deep – this is not maybe the best description, but you’ll see them for yourself. You can swim through some of them and they are always full of life. You should be able to profile along either side of the ship from 25m, up to 15m as you work from the midsection back up to the bow.

Some things not to do on the Kowloon:

- Drop over the side, down to 33m to the seabed. There is little to see at the very bottom around most of the ship and all you’ll be doing is looking up at a 20m wall of anonomies. The bottom is sandy mud and despite some Kowloon debris there is little to see. Only at the very back of the mid section where the ship is broken is it worth being on the seabed.

- Spend time fining at 20-25m along the outside of the hull away from the bow – again, there is very little to see unless your chasing nudibranks.

- Because there is a 100,000 tons of steel, stuck in the middle of a very high energy area, surges are very common, the shallower you are, the worse the are. So don’t spend too much time at 6m on the way down

- try and drop over the side of the ship to about 12m, or head for the lower deck at 20m+ – you will get shelter from the surge there.

- Again, because of the surge, be careful when your at the top of the ship sides. Sometime the surge is not bad, but you can get thrown over and back, octo’s, torches, reels and anything else that’s loose can get broken, or snagged.

Apologies, if this was a little long winded – I don’t swear that what’s above is 100% accurate, but its some observations of how I have seen the Kowloon over a number of dives. It would be great if others who have dived it give input also, as the wreck is massive and it is very hard to get a good picture of what its like in one dive.

Happy trails and remember, the only fining required is the one fin kick required to get you back into the rib.”

Cheers

DB

http://www.ruttledge.se/?p=165

http://www.divesitedirectory.co.uk/dive_site_ireland_cork_baltimore_wreck_kowloon_bridge.html

http://www.irishwrecksonline.net/details/KowloonBridge548.htm

http://www.burysac.org.uk/reviews/kbridge2002

http://www.aquaventures.ie/kowloon.htm

o6/11/06: “Rianne Smith in Aquaventures has confirmed that the bow of the  Kowloon bridge has collapsed. The shallowest depth is now 17m. She
mentioned that Jerry had problems finding the wreck recently (which
was unusual) but divers confirmed that it collapsed above the bulbous
bow.

Cheers, Don. “

Position is pretty approximate but that doesn’t matter, since this wreck is partially uncovered and can be easily seen from a good distance away. The bottom at about 15m is quite silty. Plenty of growth around the deck area and lots of holes to stick your torch in, or to get lost in if you’re feeling foolhardy.

Also interesting are the many cars which have turned up in the vicinity of the wreck. Obviously a hazard to road traffic as well as to fishing vessels.

Although it’s suffered a little from being overdived on some of our club holidays to Bere Island, owing to its sheltered position and convenience to Lawrence Cove, it’s a nice enough wreck, and worth the dive.

To the front of the island slightly to left of centre of picture there is a triangular rock that juts up. Line the boat up with the tip of this rock and motor towards it until the depth is 8 – 10 metres. Drop in and straight down and you should be on the wreck at this stage. Slopes down to 33-35 metres.

Divernet article on the Iberian.

See this site on the map.