An evening out to celebrate the club’s 25th Anniversary will take place on October 10th at the Quay 16 restaurant aboard the M.V. Cill Airne.  Contact a member of the committee if interested in attending

The 2008 AGM will take place in the Graham Bell Suite of the Grand Hotel, Malahide on September 24th, 2008 at 8:00pm.  Please let Cathal know if you are interested in putting your name forward for a committee position. 

Some shots from the Club BBQ held on Ireland’s Eye on July 19th can be viewed here.

On May 10th, Howth Coast Guard hosted the JSAR (Joint Search & Rescue) Games 2008 between Irish and Northern Irish Coast Guards. Portmarnock Sub Aqua Club assisted with the logistical operation and had two RIBs on the water as well as a hosting an exhibit in the tented village.  Click here for some shots from the day. 

PSAC members (above) enjoy a seafood snack between dives during the club week on Valentia Island.  Click here for a trip report and images.

The date for the pirate-themed Club BBQ has been changed to Saturday, July 19th owing to inclement conditions forecast for this weekend. 

(P.S. Those of a sensitive disposition should not select “Read the rest of this entry”).

The article below appeared in The Irish Times Magazine on May 31st.

THE FRENCH EXPLORER Jacques Cousteau had this to say about the fluidity of movement that characterises the underwater diver: “He can fly in any direction - up, down, sideways - by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.” He should have said eventually man becomes an archangel. For the first couple of dives, man is instead clumsy, ungainly and prone to panic, particularly if he dwells too much on just how very odd it is to be breathing underwater.

My introduction to the strange universe of sub-aqua diving came about five years ago in Kerry - the bravado of a morning’s training session in the pool (”This is easy!”) was soon replaced with the terrifyingly gloomy reality of an afternoon dive in the uninviting sea. It was early season and the visibility wasn’t great, which just served to compound the all-round eeriness of the experience.

We didn’t go particularly deep (perhaps eight to 10m), but I knew enough to know that if the panic got out of control, I couldn’t just make a break for the surface without ending up with the bends. So I just sort of lay there, marooned like a dead whale on the seabed.

My sister-in-law was my dive buddy. You are supposed to stay with your dive buddy through thick and thin, looking out for each other and communicating with a mystifying array of hand signals, all of which we had of course forgotten (except the universal signal for okay, which was hardly much use if we got in trouble).

The visibility was so poor I could barely make her out in the gloom and I kept making okay signals at other people’s buddies instead, which is surely poor diving etiquette. Later I discovered that she had her own panic attack and returned to the surface, abandoning me to my fate - so much for dive-buddy loyalty.

Given all that, it was with great trepidation that I met up with members of the Portmarnock Sub-Aqua Club (PSAC) to try another dive. The club was founded in 1983 and has about 50 members (ranging in age from 16 to 70 and with a 50/50 gender split) who meet regularly from March to October. In addition to weekly sea dives, weekends away and occasional foreign trips (lucky things, they’ve just returned from Egypt), the club hosts a weekly pool training session at their HQ and venue for my dive, Portmarnock Sports and Leisure Centre.

My buddy for this dive is Marie Grennan, and with more than 700 dives under her belt, it’s fair to say I’m in safer hands this time around - no disrespect to the sister-in-law. Grennan is appalled at the notion that I went for a sea dive after one morning’s pool training and isn’t surprised that I didn’t particularly enjoy the experience. PSAC members undertake two months of weekly pool training before they are allowed near the sea.

“There are pressures on commercial dive companies to get people out in to the water quickly,” she says, “so it’s very different to a club. We are training people who we will be depending on in the future. The time we spend in the pool is to ensure that they are comfortable in the water, especially if something unsuspected happens, say their mask falls off during a dive. All our members are involved in training on an ongoing basis.”

The importance of that training cannot be underestimated. There have been a number of diving fatalities in Ireland in recent years, and the fact that many of those cases involved experienced divers only highlights the inherent dangers of the sport. “There are very few accidents,” says Grennan, “but they can happen. That is why all our training is geared towards safety.”

There are, she tells me, two common misconceptions about diving in Ireland - that the water’s bloody Baltic and you can’t see anything. Water temperatures are easily combated with the appropriate gear, she says, and visibility is only rarely an issue. “At times of the year, the visibility in Ireland is excellent. We have dived on a 35m wreck in Dublin Bay and didn’t even need a torch.”

Annual club membership will set you back €460, but for members who are diving once or twice a week, that’s pretty good value. The fee includes training, insurance and use of the club’s boats and compressors. You will, however, need your own gear - entry-level equipment (wetsuit, stabiliser jacket, mask, fins, air bottle) will cost about €1,200, or slightly less if second-hand.

In the pool, Grennan starts by getting me to kneel in the shallow end, just to get used to the sensation of breathing underwater. Comfortable with that, we swim off down to the deep end, exchanging regular okay signals as we go. All in all we spend just 15 minutes or so underwater, but it’s enough for a beginner in one session.

“Diving is always exciting,” says Grennan afterwards. “Sometimes you go down and you get a bad dive but you never come up without feeling euphoric.” I’m hardly an archangel just yet, but I can definitely see her point.

© 2008 The Irish Times

Click here for a trip report and some images from the June Bank Holiday trip to Kilkee

Click here to view some images from the May Bank Holiday trip to Schull.