Valentia Island, Co Kerry
Our final away trip for the season was in mid-August to Valentia Island and was organised by Robbie Bolger. Conditions for the whole week could be described as ‘challenging’ but it was well in the season and we were well prepared for it. As with ‘Bofin we got full value out of our boats. We actually got out to The Skelligs on two separate days and dived some new sites there. On the first visit this week, we did Blue Man’s Rock on the south cliff of Skellig Michael. On day two, we had prepared for two dives and did Blue Cove on the NE corner followed by a dive at the NE of Little Skellig after some packed lunches. We are intrigued by the names of the two sites at Skellig Michael and wonder where the reference to ‘Blue’ came from.
We also dived the southern tip of the Island at Cuas Diarmuid, about 200 metres from where the European end of the Atlantic cable to Newfoundland was located from the 1850’s. The Birds dive site at Doulus Head also got a visit as did Beacon Rock near the lighthouse when all else was lost due to the sea state. It may not be the first choice of dive site in good weather, but Beacon Rock is perfect for inexperienced trainee divers and can be very interesting due to the bio-diversity found around the shallow reef and surrounding boulders.
We stayed at local rented houses, and we used the nearby ferry slip to launch and recover our boats each day. We had the option of leaving them at visitor moorings in the channel but decided that this was the safer option in the conditions. We made sure our launching and recovering was as slick as possible as we did not want to cause annoyance to the ferry operator.