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 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.

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