Underwater the jagged shape continues for more than 50 metres down, with sheer walls and separate pinnacles splitting out from the main rock face.Great Skellig is one of those places you only have to look at from a distance to realise there must be some fantastic diving there. A jagged wedge rising 214 metres from the open Atlantic, it is understandable that some of the tourist brochures refer to it as “Ireland's St Kilda"
Underwater the jagged shape continues for more than 50 metres down, with sheer walls and separate pinnacles splitting out from the main rock face.
Everything is squidge. Large patches of densely coloured and packed jewel anemones, plumose anemones on the edges and corners, and clumps of dead men's fingers looking plain and isolated in a sea of colour.
As usual for the Skelligs, there isn't any current to notice, just a little bit of movement from the ground swell.
I zigzag across the face of a pinnacle, following it down to about 25 metres. I could easily have gone deeper, but with photographs to take there is just no point. Here I have more than enough marine life on spectacular scenery with the benefit of some daylight still reaching me.
With no nitrox available, I am back on open circuit. A dumpy 12 and a pony. I suffer my usual problem when swapping from a rebreather - I absolutely guzzle my way through the air.
Ashore on Great Skellig it is 700 and something steps and 214 metres up 'till I am looking back at Little Skellig and the mainland. It's a clear day and I can pick out gannets swirling above the largest colony in Ireland. Shaped like a smaller guano covered version of its big brother, there is more good diving to be had beneath Little Skellig.
On the way back down I take time to have a look round the renovated remains of an old monastery, a cluster of dry-stone huts perched two thirds of the way up the rock. The design dates back to the stone-age, but these buildings were in use only a few hundred years ago.
That night in the pub Sean's blarney is on top form. It's a good job he has already warned me not to believe a thing he says as he launches into one tall story after another. The pier at Ballinskelligs dries at low water, so passengers transfer to and from the larger boats by tender. Apparently he had one group believing that all 22 of then would be going out to the Skelligs in a small aluminium dory with a 6hp motor he was using as a tender at the time.
We reflect back on a previous encounter on the Skelligs when I was diving from club boats. Sean had a group of divers just round the corner from us and we got chatting about dive sites.
It was Sean who told us about Washerwoman rock. A few hundred metres south-west of the tip of Great Skellig a shallow reef comes just short of breaking the surface with a canyon through the middle. The groundswell builds and breaks over the reef, with the resulting surge feeding dense walls of dahlia anemones while any divers get the benefit of swirling in the washing machine.
Understandably you need near-perfect surface conditions to dive it. I didn't get to do it this time round, but can remember diving it back on that club expedition and marking it as the best dive of the trip.
Tucked in behind Bolus head I drop in on a kelp covered shelf of rock at 7 metres, then follow the steps of rock out and down. By the time I get to 30 metres I have found some nice splashes of life on the vertical and overhanging sides of the rocks, but nothing that really blows my mind like the diving on the Skelligs.
What had appeared as a shallow shelf on the way down is actually a maze of narrow cracks and chasms cut into the rock, all camouflaged from above by the waving fronds of kelp. Fed by the surging waves, but protected from scouring, the walls of the maze are covered in hydroids and anemones.
I can see the shadow of the cliffs above me and the surge getting stronger. The canyon I am exploring is partly blocked by a fallen boulder. I time the waves to slosh over it and drop into the narrow mouth of a cave. These kind of crack caves cut by waves pounding into a cliff face rarely go far, but you never know.
I don't see it swim past me, but look back to see a seal exiting the cave briefly silhouetted against the outside light. It isn't in the same league as the Skelligs, but it is good fun diving and a lot less effort on a grey and stormy day.