Club History
Naas Sub-Aqua Club where we came from.
The Club was formed in 1974 by a few very enthusiastic people who resided in the general Naas area. In the early days of the club there was substantial Army influence in that a fairly high number of the members were serving in the Army. At this time most or all of the diving was carried out from the shore.
In 1975 we were on a diving weekend on Valentia Island and envying all the other clubs in their inflatables whizzing in and out to the good off shore dive sites. The Drogheda SAC passed the word around that they were selling their boat. We purchased it and Benny Maxwell and Bill Gamble organized Aidan Sharkey of Drogheda SAC to leave the boat at the Irish Ropes factory car park on the way home from Valentia. Now we were on the way to more adventitious diving. Our next purchase was to be an air compressor, Benny and Bill sourced this from Tom Mason. This was in the late 70s and now that we had a boat and a compressor we had the resources to dive off shore anywhere around the coast.
In the early 80s with the club expanding we needed another boat. Our next boat was an ex Army aluminium assault craft. The trailer needed to transport this boat was manufactured within the club at very little cost. A new 35 HP Evinrude outboard engine was purchased from Finlay Marine in Monasterivin for this boat. With so much boat capacity and a lot more adventitious diving we now had a serious shortage of air capacity, so it was necessary to acquire another compressor. This we sourced in the UK, its delivery was organized in 1981. As the assault craft was not the most seaworthy dive boat, we decided to sell it and purchase an Osprey 5.1 M RIB. This boat served us well for a good number of years. In the mid 80s we purchased a MK IV Zodiac from Tony Gahan at a very keen price. He also loaned us a 60 HP outboard engine for a couple of years free of charge.
In the late 80s the club had expanded to where we had a membership of about thirty and this put us in a situation where we again short of both boat and compressor capacity. We set about some serious fund raising and Cathriona Byrne organized a fashion show which proved to be very successful. It raised about €3,800 a lot of money at that time and was probably the biggest injection of funds into the club up to then. This assisted in the purchase of a 5.5 M Northcraft RIB and 18 CFM compressor.
As you can imagine there was a lot of wheeling and dealing over a long number of years before the Lotto came to the rescue and made in easier to purchase the boats and equipment that we now have.
A great deal of gratitude is owed to the foresight and hard work a few dedicated members in the early years who nurtured our club through some very difficult years to the very successful club that it is today.
Phil Brady.