Killary

[balbrigganbloke]

It was a bank holiday weekend here in Ireland so a few of us went with firststagediving down to Killary
It was my first chance for some of us to dive since the Red Sea so it was a bit funny seeing people forget to connect their drysuit hose as theyre about to go in
We arrived on the Friday night after negotiating the joy that is bank holiday traffic and had one or two drinkie poos
On the first dive on Saturday we went to Conger alley(dont know why its called that we didnt see one eel there),I was all over the place with my buoyancy and my computer failed as soon as i hit the water so i was using my buddies one.I just wasnt comfortable and after 45 minutes i said thats me im outta there so up we came and i was thinking of skipping the second dive in the afternoon.After we had lunch i thought better of it and went decided to go out for the second dive.
Im glad i did i was really relaxed it was on Duneoin Beacon and the viz was excellent 8 metres with plenty of dogfish.
Had a few drinkies that night as well
On the way out to the dive site on the second day we came across a pod of about forty dolphins and they wanted to play so we got ahead of them and jumped in with fins and masks snorkels and stayed with them for about ten minutes.
The sundays first dive was again on conger alley but we had decided to go along the other side which had a funnel with a max depth of four metres which sucked you through if you didnt get bashed on the rocks getting there, unfortunately we did so we turned around and went along the wall.
It turned out to be for the best cos we came across a three metre wide thornback ray at twenty metres who in all reality shouldnt have been either at that depth or in irish waters ,it was excellent and we nearly wanted to come up there and then to tell everyone what we had seen.
The second dive was on the other side of Duneoin Beacon and it was nice again plenty to see and great viz
The last dive was on Monday and we did the north wall which had a graduated series of steps to it starting at five metres going to eighteen then thirty and finally about forty five at its deepest
When we went in first there were three triggerfish which was unusual to see for us, we moved on to the eighteen mark and there were plenty of doggies to see and play with, then we went to the thirty mark and saw two nice congers but it started to get cold and pretty dark i was glad that i had my princeton tec and my buddy had his beuchat so we had the best of both worlds with his wide halogen and my focused led.
We came up and went to about ten metres when i came across a doggie beside some kelp i went over to him and he took off, i could hear my buddy laughing at me 'ha ha you didnt get that one 'but under the kelp there was a seven foot tope who was motionless i showed it to him and could hear him say 'f£*+king hell hes huge' i stroked him and got a good look at him and my buddy did the same and we went up after a few minutes
It was a perfect dive site to end the trip nice and relaxing nice viz nice company id recommend it to anyone going to do a spot of diving down that way