Thursday – Mooring the boats
Eighteen divers and a dry-cox headed to Killary for the Easter weekend away. The sun was out, the water was cold and thankfully the rain was quite agreeable overall.
Everyone arrived throughout the day on Thursday, with Joe and Michelle providing an excellent instructional video on how the mooring in the fish farm worked.
Dinner was in Hamiliton’s that night… and well most nights, but the food was delicious and the pints were only a fiver and with the boats safely moored everyone was able to ease into the first night.
Friday – Doonee beacon & Conger alley
Friday – Doonee beacon & Conger alley
Day 1
Friday started with some two-stick diving to Doonee Beacon and Conger Alley. Visibility was excellent and there was plenty of life to found. There were even some dolphins, who dropped by to welcome some our divers to Killary, surely a sign of good things to come for the season.
On a more personal note, my first dive was a disaster, loose reel, wrong weights, general chaos, but it really underscored how useful the Easter weekend away is to sort out your issues early so they don’t interfere with the season. I was so amazed the patience, wisdom and general helpfulness of our more experienced divers, even when everything goes wrong they keep cool and offer some guidance (much needed in my case) to get you back on track.
As is to be expected in Ireland there was a little rain to contend with on our second dive, but the tanks were filled, some warm tea and coffee was had and with everyone getting back into the rhythm of a day’s diving, we set off to Conger Alley. Fortunately, by the time we got back to the pier the rain had stopped and we were treated to a rather spectacular rainbow.
Saturday – Conger alley & Doonee beacon
Day 2
The pier started to fill up on Saturday, with DCU and Dalkey SAC joining in on the action. With everyone starting to the feel the cold a little more, and with few extra layers and a few extra weights we headed back to Doonee Beacon for our third dive. With everyone dived up in the afternoon, people started to get some 30m dives in and were particularly impressed with the abundance of scallops on sea bed and some rather sizeable conger eels.
Sunday – A soft day…
Day 3
I bowed out of the Sunday dive as the my drysuit was no longer dry and our leading diver candidates had enough staged incidents to deal with without me throwing a real life one in too. The rain arrived again so everyone agreed that the last dive of the weekend would be a morning dive to Conger Alley. Those of us that were left met in Hamiltons that evening greeted by the now familiar sight of O’Dog in the corner reading the paper. We had some dinner and drinks and my fellow divers providing the entertainment with some of the funniest stories I have ever heard in my life.
Acknowledgements
A massive thank you to everyone for helping to make this weekend great, from our towers, the coxwains, those manning the compressors and our leading diver candidates for all their hard work. It is amazing to see how talented so many CSAC members are, fixing all the little problems with compressors, trailers and ribs that can could easily ruin a weekend away. I can only hope to be half as competent in the future.
A great start to the season, fad a mhairfidh sé.
Gráinne Carew
