A Weekend Diving in Teelin
After a couple of Sunday dives in Lough Owel, it was time to head for Co. Donegal and get our first few sea dives in. We had a great weather forecast with no significant wind promised so things were looking good for weekend.
We hit the road at 2PM on Friday and given that no trip to Donegal is complete without a Pitstop in Killybegs’ famous Seafood Shack, we had to stop for a seafood medley and chips. Suitably nourished, we headed for Teelin pier where the first order of business was to launch the boat and get kitted up for our first sea dive.
Given that we were all accompanying trainees, this was to be a relatively tame affair at the mouth for Teelin harbour. This was my son’s first sea dive and again I was able to accompany him. I was also trying out a new Suunto Eon computer which was a big upgrade over my new computer. Unfortunately, I had a bit of an issue with my relatively recently serviced regulators which hadn’t been tightened properly. I’d gotten away with a couple of dives on them, but my primary started blowing past the O-ring so I had a slow leak immediately on entry. It was annoying but not a major problem and since I was on a twinset in 7 metres of water, I decided to push on for the quick 20 minute dive. It wasn’t a great dive — really just a poke around a sandy bottom but the visibility was Ok
After our first dive, we checked into the hostel, had a bit of a chat about the dive and headed off for an early night.
The second dive of the trip was probably the best of the weekend. Due to the exceptionally calm conditions, we got in on the corner to the left of harbour as you head out. This is a nice rock reef and the visibility was exceptional. I did this dive with another of the more experienced trainees so we got 16 metres on this one. There was loads of life on this reef with abundant sea anenome and dead man’s fingers. There was also plenty of fish life.
For our second dive that day, we headed up the coast a little sliabh league and dived in this bay shown here. Unfortunately conditions weren’t anywhere near as good as when this photo was taken so that was a bit of a disappointment with a dive mostly in kelp — not really a great experience for Irish diving. It was also a high-energy dive as we were trying to find a bit of a reef of some sort so air consumption was quite high.
That was it for the Saturday and we only managed one dive on Sunday. This was further up the inlet we dived on Friday. This was a bit better as we landed in aboulder field. At least there were a few things hiding under the boulders.
After that, we recovered the boat, packed up and hit the road after a good start to the diving season. We managed to get four decent dives in which is never a certainty in early May.
