Derryinver in Galway 2010

Dear all
Last weekend saw our last planned trip of the season to Derryinver in Galway.
9 divers headed off for the weekend and the quote of the weekend was “if you can spend over 80 minutes underwater in two dives in a day your are having a good dive day”.
With the weather unbelievably calm for the middle of October we met up with Shane, Captain of the Brazen Hussy, on Saturday morning loaded up and headed for the Bills rocks west of Achill island. After an hour and forty minutes on dead calm seas, including Dolphins along the way, we arrived at the Bills Rocks.
Our first dive was on the North side with a shear wall down to nearly 50m which allowed for a dive of any depth, with each group reporting back on over 40mins dive time. Shoals of Pollack numerous types of Wrasse, Crabs and Lobsters and a 30M+ visibility made for a fabulous dive. After a 2 hour surface interval which included lunch, sunbathing and a history lesson we had our second dive of the day. This dive involved diving the channel between two of the Bills rocks which allowed for a depth of 25-30M. This dive had everything large Pollack, Conger eels, Lobsters and believe it or not the odd 16″ British Navy Shell as the rocks were used for target practice by the Navy pre World War 1. Again divers reported back dive times of over 40 minutes with spectacular visibility.
We stayed overnight in the Maol Reidh Hotel in Tullycross and again the Hotel looked after us with their usual warm and friendly hospitality and if you got tired of the bar in the hotel there was a pub next door to the left and to the right.
Day two was a different day with the wind starting to rise from the North East. Our plan was to dive Friar island. Those of you who know inisboffin will know that this island is the other side of high island. With a 2-3m swell our Captain gave us a dive brief on a pinnacle of rock 200m from Friar Island to his knowledge it had only been dived once before and that was the previous Wednesday when he dropped divers on it for the first time.
Our dive started by following the anchor rope down to 24m from there we took as SE bearing and came across huge gullies with depths of over 50m and with great visibility you could see all the way to the bottom. Huge Pollack prowled the rocks with big wrasse hovering between the boulders. Our max depth was 35m and from which we retraced our route back to the anchor rope at 25m and did a circumnavigation of the pinnacle where we watched the other dive groups explore the rocks. The scenery down there was spectacular with everyone promising to dive it again (GPS co-ordinates logged). After a 2 hour surface interval in not so balmy conditions as the day before we were dropped at the south easterly end of Friar island with the plan to follow along the sheltered side of the island. 3 dive groups did more or less the same dive and every one saw and did something different! In total each diver had over 150 minutes of dive time logged in the two days with every minute of it memorable.
As a footnote our Captain Shane has decided to call the pinnacle KISH rock in our honour. With our name now on it watch this space as we will be going back.