Cork Sub Aqua Club

On Sunday seven divers departed Oysterhaven in gorgeous autumn sunshine to dive the City of Chicago. Conditions were ideal and after descending to the shallow shipwreck below divers enjoyed a variety of activities including a subaquatic golf ball hunt and a spot of underwater juggling. For those looking for more orthodox enjoyment there was something for everyone with dogfish, crayfish, lobster and nudibranchs all making an appearance.

However, as was the case when we encountered basking sharks after diving the Bream Rock earlier in the summer, the dive was somewhat overshadowed by the appearance of a small sunfish half way back to Oysterhaven. There was some commotion on the boat and after a little “will we, won’t we” discussion several divers donned snorkel gear and went for a closer look. For his part, the sunfish was happy to stay near the surface and provide a few minutes of entertainment (and plenty of photo opportunities).

The second dive of the day was at Black Head where there are some nice rocky gullies. Conger eels, lobster, crayfish and friends were all present but for this diver the highlight of the day was the guest appearance by the sunfish.

The June bank holiday weekend saw CorkSAC head to Fethard on Sea, Co. Wexford for our usual mix of diving and socialising.

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.

Lucie and I were lucky enough to visit dingle last weekend and do a couple of dives ahead of next weeks club trip to Dingle, Co. Kerry.

It was a great weekend with Seals, Dolphins and the Sun all making an appearance. Here’s a short video of the highlights (apologies for the poor video quality on the deeper dives).

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

Octopus

Declan Garnish Pier

The first Saturday was the only day that no diving was possible due to weather. Sunday and Monday followed the pattern of a brief respite from overnight winds in the morning and early afternoon before it blew up again later. But two dives (albeit with lumpy boat trips) were possible both days. From Tuesday we were able to travel further afield round to the south side of Dursey Island.
Drift dives proved to be unexpectedly popular. I have seen four planned drift dives ever with Cork SAC (intentional ones as opposed to mis-timed slack water) and two of those were last week. It is something we should do a bit more often because they are a blast. We calculated that on the second drift dive on Friday, one buddy pair must have traveled almost two miles in 45 minutes. Unlike in Renvyle, when the first night dive was a highlight, this year the traditional night dive was nothing to write home about, so I won’t blog about it either. By Thursday things had calmed down enough for a dive at Crow head (where the octopus posed for the camera). By Friday my favourite dive site: the Cow was dive-able and that was a fabulous dive. Saturday we went back to the dive sites nearer Garnish Pier to allow the boats to be pulled earlier. The best diving was Thursday and Friday.
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Fivebeard Rockling

Bullen’s Bay lies to the east of the Old Head of Kinsale so it is a good spot for a shore dive, snorkel or night dive if the wind is Northerly westerly or south westerly. There is a mixture of sandy and rocky sea bed types with a reef a little offshore that is exposed from mid to low tide. Depths of between 5 and 7 meters are normal at high tide. During the summer there is plenty to see with pipefish being fairly numerous, and dogfish, even cuttlefish. During the winter it is a bit more sparse but there is always the chance of finding something a bit unusual such as the fivebeard rockling pictured opposite.

If the posts on this blog have tempted you to take up diving and you live near Cork then:

Cork Sub aqua club is looking to recruit about fourteen beginners with no prior diving experience to begin instruction and pool training in November 2008. The training will be towards CFT and CMAS one star and two star certification. Training is free of charge except for pool costs (should be about 100 euro); but you will have to join CFT and Cork SAC. Training nights will be Mondays 7PM ( a little bit earlier on pool nights to allow time to get changed), with theory classes and pool work on alternate weeks. The training will be in Ringaskiddy near Carrigaline about 15KM from Cork.

A medical will be required, you should also be able to swim 200 meters in a pool (any style and not timed).

You will eventually be expected to get your own equipment but for initial training we can borrow from existing members. If you had a wetsuit or semi-dry to begin with that would be good.

The one star course is planned to run until mid December 2008.
This qualifies you to dive to 25 meters (obviously after some qualifying work in the sea, and becoming dived up to that depth) with a two star diver, or thirty meters under certain limited conditions.

The CMAS certification is recognized world wide.

Two star course will run in February.

We will also take people with prior qualifications but as part of a separate crossover course to run in January 2009.

Contact 086 1089435 if you are interested.