Introduction
The wrecks at Malin Head have been on my “to-do” list for a very long time. In 2023, when Ben Lair @ Paragon Dive Group told me he was planning a trip there, I told him I was in without hesitation.
I will detail my trip there including travel, lodging, dive operations, and a summary of the dives we conducted. I will write separate, detailed posts for each of the wrecks.
Anybody going to Malin Head should be comfortable diving in 60-100+m depths in sometimes rough, open ocean conditions. This is NOT diving for the faint of heart or those not willing to be on a boat for 2-4 hours (or more) of transit time each way from the wrecks. But, if you are hearty, the wrecks around Malin Head are world class!
Below are links to each section of the report. As usual, this report is very detailed. Feel free to skip sections that aren’t of interest.
- Travel & Logistics
- Accommodation
- Food & Dining
- Dive Center & Dive Operations
- Malin Head Wrecks
- Titanic Museum
Travel & Logistics
The dive operations are in the north of Ireland in County Donegal and the most common way to get there is to fly into either Belfast or Dublin and then rent a car and drive the 3-5 hours. If you want to locate where it is, you can type in “Mevagh” or “Carrigart, Ireland” and that will get you reasonably close.
Outbound Journey
Since the drive was only about 1.5 hours more from Dublin vs. Belfast and I could get a direct flight from LAX->DUB, I decided to fly direct (or so I thought). Aer Lingus (which I will avoid at almost all costs at this point) has a once daily direct flight.
I got to the airport early to check in my usual 200 pounds of luggage and they were kind enough to take four bags without any extra fees (I was flying business class). We were just about to board when they said “we have some technical issues but don’t worry (famous last words), we have a spare part that we just need to get and install.” That same thing happened twice more and then at about 11pm and after 3+hours of delays, they said they canceled the flight and our bags would be delivered to baggage claim and they would rebook us.
I got my bags at about midnight and was at LAX without any information or a rebooking from Aer Lingus and left to fend for myself. I headed back home since I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.
I will spare all the details, but I was delayed for two days and eventually flew on British Airways (their new business class configuration is really nice) LAX-LHR and then Aer Lingus from LHR-DUB. I incurred two expensive rides to/from my house and Aer Lingus only refunded about 1/4th of the total cost.
Pro Tip : Avoid Aer Lingus for international travel from the US if you can (even if it means connecting).
Rental Car
I had originally planned to spend the night at Dublin airport on Saturday and drive to Donegal on Sunday. I landed at about 1:30pm and figured that I would just power through and so I got my rental car from Hertz.
Another tip to be aware of: they will try to force you to buy local rental car insurance. They wanted to charge me 60 Euros/day which is absolutely crazy. I indicated that my home/car insurance has coverage and that the credit card I was paying with had coverage. The agent said “sorry, without proof, I can’t rent you the car.” I wasn’t falling for this scam. I called the credit card company and had them email the coverage to me which I then showed to the agent which he reluctantly accepted and didn’t charge me the $5,000 deposit “since I was a Gold Member with Hertz.”
Pro Tip : Get a copy of your insurance coverage before you leave if you plan to rent a car.
Note that you will definitely need a rental car (or at least travel with somebody who has one).
I then drove the 3.5 hours to our AirBnB rental which was on “Island Roy.” For anybody driving, they obviously drive on the “other” side of the road and the driver side of the car is on the “other side” so be prepared and take it easy and slow.
Return Journey
I was originally flying back DUB-LAX on the 6th but the weather conditions were not good for diving and I was also hoping to make a board meeting in NY on the 6th so I decided to change my flight to the 5th and fly DUB-JFK instead of DUB-LAX. One would think this would be a relatively “easy” thing to do — but not with Aer Lingus.
Without wasting anybody’s time, I can tell you that it is 10 days later and I still haven’t received my refund from Aer Lingus for my original flight and can only hope that they live up to their promises on the website and on the many, many calls I made to them (which I recorded).
I went to the Titanic Museum in Belfast (more on that later) on the 4th on my way to Dublin and then stayed at the Radison Blu at the Dublin Airport after returning my rental car. I find staying at the airport hotel is a good way to deal with returning airport car rentals and getting “sorted” before a morning flight the next day.
My flight from DUB-JFK was actually a good one and, once I was on-board, I liked the service on Aer Lingus.
My summary would be: Aer Lingus is good if there are no problems and you don’t need to make changes. Outside of that, it is decades behind “normal” airlines in terms of technology and responsiveness. I had to pay for an extra 4th bag this time and I think it cost me about 75 Euros. Also note that when you leave Dublin you clear US customs & immigration before your flight. There is also a lounge after you clear both.
Again, without going into a ton of details, I also got caught up in the global United ground stop when I tried to fly home from EWR-LAX on the 6th and sat on the tarmac for 5 hours (no exaggeration) before we de-planed and then waited another hour for them to formally cancel my flight.
United was unusually bad in this situation. Somehow they “re-booked” me on a SFO-LAX flight with no flight from EWR-SFO. Also, somehow, the fight continued to show “on-time” even though it was 4.5 hours after our scheduled departure.
I gave up on United and completely canceled my reservation and booked a flight home on Jet Blue in the new “Mint” class which was actually very nice.
I am currently on a “United Airlines Detox” plan (this was the third flight on United that had cancellations and massive delays in the past month). This essentially means I won’t be going to Chuuk, Bikini, Palau, etc. because I cannot stomach flying United anymore.
Accommodation
Ben had booked an AirBnB house on “Island Roy” which was a short 5 minute drive from the location where we boarded the dive boat. There are four houses all in this little area that are for rent. It was nothing special but was quiet and had plenty of electrical outlets for charging lights, cameras, dive gear, etc. The house had a small fridge and washing machine, dryer, etc. which made it convenient.
There were definitely some funny oddities like the coin operated electricity metering machine! Every once in a while, we would put our 1 & 2 Euro coins into the machine to keep our electricity running!
Food & Dining
I would classify most of the food as “hearty.” 🙂
Given that we were gone almost all day, every day on the boat, we bought a lot of supplies for eating lunch on the boat and, if we got back in time, had a quick dinner someplace close either in the town of Carrigart or Downings (both which are ~ 5minutes from the house we stayed in).
There is a “Centra” small store with plenty of food & drink supplies in Carrigart. Of particularly funny coincidence, the coffee they sold had a type called “Into the Abyss” which I thought was particularly fitting for our diving. 🙂
Quite a few times, we didn’t get back until late at night (9pm or later) so we got food to go or Dean’s wife helped us order to-go food and brought it to the house (more on dive day logistics later). This would often entail a burger or sandwich or pizza. Probably the best meal I had was a very nice seafood pie at Ocean View restaurant.
Dive Operations
For anybody who plans to dive in this area, this is probably the most important section so I will go into a number of details which will hopefully be helpful to future divers that haven’t visited this area.
As far as I know, there are only two primary dive operations in this area and I think one of them is only running charters with pre-existing customers. We dove with Mevagh Diving on the Laura Dean with Dean. The dive boat is a catamaran which helps with stability on the ocean, especially when trying to pick-up divers with a ton of dive gear.
There are a number of things to know about the dive operation.
The first is that there isn’t really a “dive center.” You setup your unit and do any cleaning, maintenance, charging, etc. wherever you are staying and then arrive at the boat fully ready to go. The other is that there is water and coffee on the boat and a fridge you can store food in, but it is up to you to bring food & drinks so plan accordingly. The days are likely to be very, very long.
Given the distance traveled and the depth of the dives and the typical decompression obligation, there is one long dive per day. This is NOT warm water / recreational “we’ll do up to 5 dives a day” type diving. 🙂
Tides
The first thing to understand that departure times are dependent upon tides, how far you plan to go to the dive site, and the expected return time. Sometimes you leave at 9am, sometimes noon, and sometimes 2pm and the schedule is usually determined the afternoon before the next dive day. This means that divers need to be comfortable with unknowns and be adaptable.
A “normal” schedule would be something like “Boat In 11:00, Ropes Off 11:20, Diving 13:30.” This basically means you need to be at the dock around 11am, load all your gear and be ready to leave the dock at 11:20am with about a 2 hour transit time to the wreck.
Note that transit times to most wrecks at Malin Head are at least 2 hours and often 4 hours or so. The conditions can be pretty rough so if you are prone to getting seasick, it is highly recommend you take seasickness meds.
Below are a couple of videos to give you a sense.
Weather
This is the North Atlantic ocean so conditions can get pretty nasty. We were were very lucky during my trip there and only had a day or two that got canceled for weather; however, on the week after my trip, they only got 1-2 dive days for the week. This is just the way it goes.
Below is the four day weather forecast for when I was there and getting ready to leave at the end of my trip.
There was a pretty big storm that came in with 10-15 foot swells and 30-40 knot winds. I ended up leaving on Monday the 4th. Below is a short video of what the weather was like at the house we were staying at the morning of the 4th:
Dive Boat
The boat itself is perfect for diving with a large deck on the back with a diver lift and a comfortable cabin where you can relax on the long transit times.
Diving
They follow a process somewhat similar to what we do in Southern California. They get to the dive site and install a downline with a buoy on top and they also attach a deco station with bars at 20′ and 30′ (6m / 9m) that connects to the downline at about 70-90 feet deep and there is a “quick release” from the downline to the weighted line at the end of the deco station line. A simplified diagram is below:
Due to conditions, everybody gears up with ALL of their equipment on deck. This includes the rebreather, bailout tanks, and any extra equipment like cameras. When a group of divers is ready, they bring the boat back to the downline and then drop the divers in who follow the descent line down. On descent, you place a “cookie” or marker on the connection between the down-line and the deco station line.
The last diver up removes their cookie and then releases the deco station and weighted line and then the team does “drift deco” on the line. If you make a mistake and pull the trigger before the last diver is up the line, then you buy everybody dinner! This happened once on my trip but I won’t reveal who made the mistake. 🙂
At the conclusion of deco, you go up the line and wait at the buoys on the top of the deco station. They then get close and you swim away from the deco station and they pull upside you and you get on the lift. Below is a video of me coming up the lift.
Malin Head Wrecks
There are a massive number of wrecks in the Malin Head area. We had the opportunity to conduct 6 dives on 5 wrecks. I will detail each of those in different posts and will add the links below as I post them, but here are the five wrecks I dove during my trip:
Titanic Museum
On my way back from Donegal to Dublin, I decided to take the long way and stop in Belfast to see the Titanic museum. Since I dove the sister ship the Britannic and given the legendary sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage, I had to spend some time there.
In case readers aren’t aware, all three ships in the Olympic class were built for White Star Line at the Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast at the site of the museum. The gantries are still there.
The drive from our AirBnB to Belfast was about 1/2 single-lane backroads and 1/2 major freeways. I found it very enjoyable and it gave me a chance to see some of the Irish countryside. It is filled with beautiful vistas and a lot of cows & sheep!
I got to the museum and tried to buy a “standard” ticket and the next availability was 3 hours later. I was disappointed and walked around the building taking some photos and then remembered seeing some “premium” entrance pass options. Of course, those allowed me to enter at any time (I wish the ticket sales person would have just told me that). In any event, I booked the “White Star Line” pass option which also included a 1 hour guided tour of the museum which was very insightful and I highly recommend paying extra for it.
I found all the options and the museum itself to be a little “confusing” but eventually worked it all out.
Thanks To….
My wife who “held down the fort” and kept the house going and took care of our puppy. She puts up with a lot and I probably don’t say “Thank You” enough.
Ben Lair @ Paragon Dive Group for organizing the trip and leading the charge. I believe Ben is considering organizing another trip to Malin Head in 2027 so if you want to, get in touch with him. (Disclaimer: Ben is a friend and we dive together often but I do not receive any commission or form of payment if somebody books a trip based on this).
The other divers in the Dive Team including Ben Lair, Justin Judd, Greg Melzak, Travis Cormier, and Ivan Arzola.
Dean, his wife Ciara, and Anna who were all such fun to be around and Dean runs an amazing dive operation. They are really on top of it and it was a joy to dive with them.
“AI Transparency” Statements
- I used some of the AI tools in Lightroom to remove backscatter, enhance photos (nothing crazy), etc.
- All prose was written by me, reviewed by others, with no AI assistance.
- Any errors in spelling or grammar are mine and mine alone.
awesome write up – photos, videos (the elevator is cool!), and maps of weather and wind are clutch..
Thanks, Ben! It was quite an adventure.
Well done as always Brett: glad you’re one of the “Malin Crowd” now!
Thanks, Ken!