I began my dive on the Kowloon Bridge thinking that maybe I could sketch it for a wreck tour. It wasn't until I was halfway round the bows that I realised just what a ridiculous notion that was.
Think of the biggest wreck you have ever dived (and I have dived quite a few of them), then double it, then double it again, and again… Even then, you won't really appreciate the scale of things until you actually dive this 160,000 ton monster for yourself. It takes a long dive just to get round the bows, and that is the shallow part of the wreck.
On the bows I am not having an easy dive. A strong surge is washing over and round the wreck, making it impossible to get onto the deck and see the no-doubt oversized winches and other fittings.
I explore a few compartments at the back of the bow section, then try to get round the corner to see the anchor on the port side. Swirling eddies force me to drop to the seabed at 30 metres to get round the torn and jagged metal, then rise again up the side of the wreck to see the anchor at 12 metres.
Not the sort of dive profile I like, but well worth the effort to see a 25 ton anchor still held tight in against the hawse pipe. Everything is covered in enormous plumose anemones. Apparently on the starboard side the anchor is gone and the hawse pipe big enough to swim through. On a day without the ground swell a shallow dive round the upper part of the bows would be fantastic.
I had arrived a few days previously to perfect diving weather and we are soon on our way to Fastnet. Having spent the early part of this season in warmer places, this is my first serious cold water trip of the year and the north side of Fastnet turns out to be an ideal warm up. A wall descending in steps to 28 metres with overhangs and short canyons cut back. Everything has a good covering of yellow dead men's fingers and sponges with clumps of anemones on the more exposed corners.
I float along the wall and give myself an imaginary pat on the back for having a successful dive. A pre dive check of my Dräger rebreather had shown up a leaking scrubber canister that took a while to sort out. I had almost missed slack water. Still, better to do the check. To quote Richard Bull, “most rebreather accidents have already happened before you get in the water.”
I quite enjoy the dive despite the disappointing 5-metre visibility; conditions contrary to the usual 20-metre plus visibility of the west coast. The spring algal bloom had arrived with a vengeance.
The rest of the week continues with a nice combination of wrecks, reefs and drift dives. As I potter about the recent wreck of the Huntress, a wooden trawler that went down in 1998, I reflect on the typically Irish solution to the bureaucracy involved in creating an artificial reef “we were towing it to Schull when the line broke.” In a particularly convenient position that makes it good in most weather and convenient for recently qualified divers, of course.
The dive of the week for me was the U260, a German submarine that went down in the closing stages of WW2. I have a good half hour dive at 44 metres followed by a lazy 25 minutes decompression.
After the U-boat and the Kowloon bridge, the other really good wreck came as a bit of a bonus. On Friday evening I join John Kearney and a few local divers for an evening trip round Mizzen head and across Bantry Bay. We stay the night in a hostel on Bear island. It is a trip John is experimenting with, to check out some new dive sites and develop plans for 2 day excursions away from Baltimore.
John's original plan was to dive off Crow head, well out of day trip range from Baltimore. Overnight the wind picks up making the headlands exposed, so we motor back across Bantry bay to the wreck of the steamship Iberian, just into Dunmanus Bay to the north of Mizzen head.
Visibility is an improved 10 metres and I can easily follow the wreckage down the slope. It has broken into a zigzag from 6 metres to 36 metres and I have a great time working out how it all fits together. Unusual for a steamship, the condensers had never been salvaged and there are piles of tubing scattered between the boiler and the engine.