Busy week for Sheephaven Sub Aqua Club

Sheephaven divers conducted a busy week of diving last week, with dives on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and the PortnaBlagh snorkel on Sunday. 

The divers took full advantage of the August holiday week and glorious weather conditions to conduct a mixture of shore and boat dives, starting on Monday with a return to St John’s Point, where they can comfortably conduct a 30 metre dive into a different seascape to the rest of the county, due to the limestone nature of the rock formation. 

Club divers on Lough Swilly

This location is a favourite for divers visiting Donegal and in addition to the ease of access the marine life includes some large fish species such as Ballan Wrasse which have become familiar with the presence of divers. 

The Tuesday boat dive was to Tory, with a departure from Magheroarty pier and dives at two different locations on the eastern side of the island in the vicinity of Ardlarheen Point and Marnid Rock, respectively. 

Both sites fall away to 30 metres and initially are vast kelp parks that give way to boulders and have a superb array of marine life, abundant in both fish and non-fish species. 

The Marnid Rock site is subject to tidal current currents but the Ardlarkeen Point site was a much easier dive site and in both cases surface to surface times of over 35 minutes were achieved. 

In-water conditions are at an optimum at present, with temperatures of 16 degrees Celsius and horizontal water visibility of at least 10 metres. 

After the mandatory two hour surface interval, which involved a lunch break at Port Doon pier the diving re-commenced around the corner at Doon Balor, starting under the Arch and carrying on to the end of Doon Balor.

This site has a number of interesting features, including a deep bowel hewn out of the bedrock under the Arch and large boulders which form caves with multiple access points at the early part of the dive. 

Water depth starts at 15 metres and eventually falls away to 30 metres at the end of the dive and similar to the morning dives water conditions and marine life were at an optimum. 

Wednesday’s dive was from Rathmullan to the Laurentic, in best conditions possible and timed to arrive at slack water on a high Spring tide. 

The dive was conducted in two sticks with the first divers on Nitrox 28 and completing a 30 minute dive time without any decompression penalty. 

The second stick were on normal air and conducted as a no-decompression dive, in both cases the divers  commenced the dive from on top of the ships engines and made the best out of the excellent bottom conditions as they explored to any part of the wreck that they choose. 

Saturday morning saw a return to the Laurentic, once again departing from Rathmullan, but this time with the benefit of a dry coxswain, thanks to John Joe Rowland, which allowed all the divers present to conduct their dives in one go and speed up the process considerably. 

The week  finished on Sunday morning with a lovely snorkel in pristine water conditions from the harbour in PortnaBlagh across the bay to the Otters Cove, where the recovery of a missing lobster pot and its safe return to its owner closed out a wonderful week of Donegal diving. 

Finally just a word of thanks to all who helped tow, launch and mind moored boats over the week, their generosity was very much appreciated indeed.