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Displaying items by tag: Christopher Healy

#Diving - An Irishman who set a world record for long-distance SCUBA diving is preparing to double that incredible feat.

Christopher Healy set the Guinness World Record for the fastest SCUBA dive over a distance of 10km in October 2011 in an effort to raise funds for the Share a Dream Foundation, which raised the spirits of his son Stephen when he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

The experienced diving instructor - who runs the Atlantic Diving School in Co Clare - followed a long line of Irish divers such as Declan Devine, Sean McGahern and Paul Devane who've either smashed or attempted to smash records in the field.

And Healy has since written a book, The 10K Record, about the highs and lows of his journey to breaking the record.

But this weekend he aims to double that effort - and raise more funds for Share a Dream and Temple Street Children's Hospital - by SCUBA diving an unbroken 20km route in Lough Derg.

Staring at Mountshannon Harbour at 3am this Sunday 7 July, Healy will travel underwater towards Scariff and back via Scilly Island to Killaloe, aiming to arrive around 3pm.

He will be accompanied along the way by a small flotilla of support boats to replace his air supply and record his journey for verification.

For more about Healy's 20km diving challenge and how you can donate, visit the Facebook page HERE.

Published in Diving

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.