The Italians are singing some kind of sea shanty. It's 7.30am and I'm lying in my bunk on the Loyal Watcher with a pillow over my head. On a liveaboard, everybody can hear you scream.
     In the Red Sea, you expect to see Italians. They are usually the divers in designer wetsuits, either walking across the coral, or doing human yo-yo impersonations with only a fistful of the dive guide's hair for company.
     But this is Ireland. Cold water, deep wreck, raining-every-moment-of-the-day Ireland. Call me old-fashioned but I just wasn't expecting Italians.
     Fabio, Eduardo, Antonello and Ricardo have the disturbing appearance of men who have escaped from the substitute's bench at AC Milan. Only Eduardo can speak English, but even he cannot understand why everybody keeps calling him Donatello or Michelangelo.
     To be fair to the Italians, they weren't expecting me either.
     "You!" exclaims Eduardo, gesturing towards me from the other side of the galley table. "You're not a technical diver!"
     "'Fraid so," I reply.
     "ImPOSSible!" he roars, slapping the table. The guys sitting either side of me shift in their seats, as if preparing to dash for cover.
     "Women technical divers, they all look like MEN!" continues Eduardo, gabbling a quick translation for his mates, "But YOU..." He makes a curvy gesture with his hand that requires no translation, and winks at me.
     It's the kind of scenario that only an Italian could pull off, but suddenly everybody is all smiles. Especially, and most shamefully, me.
     Everybody on board is hoping to dive the Transylvania, a huge liner, way offshore. Unfortunately, the Italians have brought the curse of the team shirt upon us. They wear matching fleeces with "Transylvania 2002" embroidered on the front and their names underneath, despite which everybody still refers to them as Leonardo or Raphael.
     Any British expedition diver knows that if you wear an item of clothing announcing your achievement before doing the dive, your expedition is doomed. As expected, the weather proceeds to blow a gale, it rains like a bastard all week and we are restricted to diving close to shore.
     Disaster? Well, no. The wrecks we can dive - the Laurentic, Audacious, Empire Heritage - are fantastic, and the viz is stunning. On top of this the Italians are genuinely entertaining: they cook pasta, sing, dance, argue passionately, flirt relentlessly and fall on the floor play-acting.
     Together with the Watcher's cook Abigail and her home-baked flapjacks, they make life on the liveaboard a pleasure.
     Contrary to my Red Sea experiences, these Italians are superb divers. An hour on the wreck doing photos and a shedload of deco is second nature to them; I hate to think how many songs they get through on a dive. They're still singing as they climb back onto the boat in the rain. And despite the language barrier, we find ways to communicate.
     Three Italians dive on Inspirations, but Ricardo is open circuit. He thinks Inspirations are dangerous. "Is he expecting you to drop dead on every dive?" I ask Eduardo. He nods, rolling his eyes.
     "He shouldn't worry about you lot," I say. "He's the one more likely to drop dead - when he gets his gas bill for the week."
     "HA!" roars Eduardo and immediately translates for the others, who laugh out loud. It's the kind of joke rebreather divers everywhere enjoy.
     Some people need no translation. I find Leigh Bishop knee-deep in photographic kit in conversation with Antonello. Leigh speaks no Italian, Antonello speaks no English, but both are fluent in Gadget.
     "Maybe you guys could get some team shirts for Italy's World Cup 2006 campaign?" I suggest as we disembark.
     "HAHAHA!" snorts Eduardo, "I think not." Well, I had to try.