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

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.

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 ?

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.

Just a quick note on the blog to let people know that I have booked the NMCI pool and a training room there.
Crossover pool training will begin (and hopefully finish) on January 19th 9:00Am to 10:30Am, crossover lectures 11AM to 2PM the same day. This session will be for people with existing qualifications from a different certification agency only, there will be no beginners at this session.
Any people who contacted us in 2007, expressing an interest in joining Cork Sub Aqua Club will have been sent an invite to a Club Open Night Thursday, January 10th.8pm. Soho Bar, Grand Parade, Cork. They will also have been sent the details of the required medical test. We will have a better idea of numbers and grades after the Open Night.
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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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There are few venues in Ireland where four dives would be possible despite force eight gales. Knightstown on Valentia Island was chosen for the October weekend because of various sheltered spots, but even so, suitable locations for diving were few.

We were joined by six or seven enthusiastic divers from NMCI SAC. They stayed relatively sober compared to the Cork bunch, but seemed to have enjoyed the weekend a lot.
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