Post date: Aug 25, 2013 2:35:09 PM

Saturday 17 August 2013

Pollonora No. 10.

I'd wanted to dive Pollonora No. 10 for a while, but somehow it had never felt right, although Jim had suggested it a few times. Today though it just felt right and i'd no apprehensions about diving the cave.

A surplus of bottles...

We rolled up to Kiltartan in the morning, Jim's van packed with cylinders (a bit excessively!), and a little picnic hamper with tea and ham and cheese rolls, very civilised. After a chat with the Nolan's we drove through the garden to the cave entrance and carried our gear down to the cave - two 12s for me, a rebreather and bailout bottle for Jim.

The cave is entred through a static canal, from which a rift drops down on the right-hand wall just inside the entrance, with an unstable boulder slope overhanging it. From the bottom of the rift a silt-floored bedding 0.75 metres high leads to increasingly larger passages. I passed first through the bedding plane, bumping a bit between the floor and ceiling, while Jim followed with more style in my silty wake. Through the bedding plane the visibility cleared, and the full cave could be seen. It was beautiful, quiet (apart from the sound of my bubbles) and peaceful. We progressed slowly down the zig-zagging passage, Jim moving in front, reaching a point about 150 metres from the entrance at a depth of 22 metres. Just before this point i'd begun to feel uncomfortable, and indicated to Jim that we should turn around. He pointed out that one of my bottles had fallen out of its bungee. I refitted it, but not too securely, and we swam out, stopping briefly at 6 metres in the entrance rift, where two rocks fell from the slope and banged on my bottle. Total dive time 27 minutes, water temperature 10 degrees C.

A fossil i picked up at -17 metres.

After the dive we returned to Ennis, spending the afternoon prospecting around the town, finding some flooded holes (we hope), sinks and springs.

That night we were invited to a party at Matt's house in Doolin, and planned to dive Mermaid's Hole to Pirate's Paradise on Sunday. However the sea state was too rough, so we fell back on plan B, and partied instead... ;)

Jim and Matt? Matt and Jim?

Sunday 18 August 2013

Polldeelin

The following day started with a decent lie-in, and then two muzzy-headed divers drove up to Gort again to dive in Polldeelin. Perhaps the hardest part of accessing this dive site is crossing the field, with the gate needing a bit of persuasion to open and then a maze of electric fence wire to negotiate down to the doline behind Kiltartan church. We hummed and hawed, procrastinated and eventually carried our bottles down to the river, cutting back on the planned dive to reaching and relining the boulder choke about 80 metres upstream. During the suiting up there was some retching but we both kept it together and got in the water. The visibility was very poor, a dark and murky one metre (if that).

From a large tree overhanging the spring, a thick line leads to -6 metres, and then normal line leads into the cave proper, passing through a constriction about 40 metres in. This caused me some consternation, and Jim, who was leading, had to turn around and show me the way through. A few minutes after this, i decided to turn my dive as i couldn't concentrate on the cave. Jim agreed, and signed that he would continue. On the way out i passed the constriction without recognising it, and then had a bit of a diversion on an old line. Jim surfaced just behind me, having found the line broken after a few more metres and not feeling up to relining the choke. Dive time 13 minutes...

We returned to Ennis for some lunch, and then again went prospecting near the town, finding a few caves which certainly deserve a closer look.

More photos to follow.

Al