Welcome the March/April 2005 Newsletter

On Taking up Diving	A.B. Ginner (written winter 1964)
First Trip West - Killary Training Weekend	Carina Girvan
Killary Photos	Various Members
Trip to Hook	Jean Kelleher
Hook Photos	Jean Kelleher
Cape Town 2003	Rory McNeary
Barbados Photos	Gerry O'Dowd

This is going to be another quite short newletter to keep you up to date on what's been happening so far this season. With Easter being so early this year the season started much earlier than usual so we have a lot more to show for ourselves than we would normally have in mid April.

Already we have had two away trips, Killary at Easter and a day trip to Hook. Both of which were very successful. Kevin MacFarlane is busy organising the next trip to Belmullet at the end of the month and Peadar Farrell is organising the trip to Achill for the June weekend. Most divers are snorkelled up and the normal weekend diving from the clubhouse is in full swing.

Training is going strong with 1* certificates already obtained by our new trainees. Congratulations to Colm Lyons, Ronan Murphy, Carina Girvan, Tom Archer, Garret Devitt and John McLaren. Congratulations also to Roisin McArdle on getting her M2. Best of luck to the new 1*s in the rest of their training during the season, hopefully they'll all have their 2* by the end of the season. We have a number of people itching to do the 2* already and hopefully they'll be doing their exams before long. Well done also to Orna McCarthy, Paula O'Riordan and Kevin St.John who attended the Rescue course and will be doing lots of practice lifts in preparation for their test. The Cox'n course was held in Dublin South Region this month was attended by Paula, Orna, Colm and Declan. We also have three candidates who are busily training for their leading diver test.

There has been a lot going on with bringing the club's equipment up to scratch, including getting a new O2 kit, sorting out the boat boxes, first aid kit and getting the new boat into the water. The boats have been cleaned and anti-fouled and a new steering cable put in the old Lencraft. The problems with the showers in the clubhouse have been sorted, and the clubhouse has been generally tidied up. Many thanks should go to Mick O'Loughlin for tiding the clubhouse, doing the antifouling of the Lencraft, fixing the steering cable..... I could go on.. thanks also to Simon Carolan for all his help with the O2 kits and boat boxes and clubhouse , Gerry O'Dowd for all his work with the new Lencraft, John O'Connor for all his help in with all these tasks and for providing the venue and coffee for a lot of this work to be done.

Kevin MacFarlane has been busy organising the weekends away as well as ensuring the safety and professionalism of the diving in the club. Please help him by letting him know in good time if you want to be included on any course that is being run by the Dublin South Region (details on the Courses page). Also can you let know if you intend going on the weekends away so he can do the plans accordingly.

Elena will soon have the juniors out snorkelling in the open water. This normally goes on, on a Tuesday evening and is great fun for all involved. The senior snorkellers are now very compentent snorkellers and do great work assisting Elena with the younger groups. If anyone wants to volunteer to help her, you will see the great progess these younger members of the club are making. You will also enjoy an evening snorkelling in Sandycove.

Rhona will be organising a social gathering quite soon which will I'm sure, as always, be great fun, so keep an eye out for that.

In this newsletter we have an article from A.B. Ginner (1964). You'll have to ask Mick Moriarty or John Hailes if you want to know the true identity of the writer. Carina Girvan has given us her account of her first time to the West of Ireland - Killary. Rory McNeary, one of our latest recruits, has given us an account of his time training as a commercial diver in South Africa.We have some photos from Killary, Hook and Barbados. As my begging e-mails were, in the main, futile (until the last minute), I have had to put pen to paper myself. No, I have not written about leading diver training (I'm saving that for a later newletter), I've just written about my first, long awaited trip to Hook.

Jean