Fifteen divers made the trip over on Saturday morning with two ribs and three compressors and a whole load of diving equipment. The request to travel light seemed to have gone on deaf ears!!. The sea was particularly kind to us this year (for a change) so the journey over was really smooth and we had our choice of sites. In the group were me, Steve, Dave M, Gar, Marco, Laura, Kevin St John, Colin, James, Chantal, Ciaran, Christina, Neil, Kwan Yin and Ka Lok. It was a great mixture of old and new members with all grades represented from M*** to Diver * with everyone pulling together to ensure that the travelling and the diving went well.
We managed to dive the spectacular pinnacles on the west side of the island as well as the Arch, and Tor Head. In true adventurous sprit we explored two new sites…. Well, some you win and some you don’t !!
While the vis was not as spectacular as we’ve seen in Tory in the past it was still very good and we saw a huge variety of life from shoals of fish to lobster, conger, crayfish, blennies, nudi’s anemones, wrasse of all description and lots of other stuff that we couldn’t name. Not only did we have great diving but we had two beautiful walks, covering the East end on Saturday and the West end on Sunday to see a beautiful sunset.
Special thanks must go to Dave M, Steve and Colin for towing boats and compressors and to Laura for meeting the boats at midnight on Friday to help us launch at the earliest possible point. Thanks also to everyone doing compressor duty, log duty, jeep duty etc, it was a real team effort.
It was great to see the Curragh divers are still as calm as ever in the face of adversity…. Unfortunately Danu experienced engine trouble over the weekend and eventually gave up the ghost after the last dive. The good humour in which all the divers handled the situation was really great to see, there was anchoring, towing, dashing to the ferry and all the comes with a broken down engine… but everyone stepped up with great spirit and got back to Maheroarty only a few minutes later than planned.
Well done everyone and thanks to all for making it such a fun weekend. – Jean K.