Mull - June 2018

Eleven divers visited the island of Mull, just off the west coast of Scotland.

The weather was not great with some rain on most days but that did not curtail the diving, except for some limits on where we could dive due to the wind and tides. We joined the boat, The Brendan, with skipper Malcolm on Sunday 17th. We had arranged for a J of O2 to be collected from a local dive store on Mull, and the first job was to get that and all of the kit onto the boat. The plan was to do nitrox fills on the boat, between dives, and this worked albeit with a lot of work for the person doing the blending (me !)

Once that was stowed we started off with a fairly easy first dive on a site called Muck Wall. This was a very nice wall with lots of anemone on it. The second dive was on the Rondo and we limited this one to around 30 metres, but we'd be back later in the week for a deeper dive to the bow. For those that don't know the Rondo it's sits against a rock face at a very steep angle so it's a great dive for any depth between 6 metres at the stern and 50 metres at the bow.

Day 2 and we visited the Pelican, which is a fairly small wreck with a lot of silt on it. Any finning close to the bottom or touching anything on the wreck meant the slit would cloud up the reduce the visibility very quickly. The second dive was on the Hispania, which is a great wreck and allows swim throughs of the hull in various places.

Day 3 and a dive at WaterFalls first. Not much there but we did find a few scallops. The second dive was on the Shuna, which is fairly big with lots to see. This was the first day that Mick had dived, as he'd hurt his ribs, unfortunately his buddy failed to tell him his suit was not zipped up so he got out fairly quickly! That's the second time in 26 years, apparently. The rest of us had a good dive on the Shuna which still has it's cargo of coal in the coal bunkers.

Day 4 started on the Breda which had very good visibility and plenty to look at, including the bags of concrete still in the holds. Due to tides it was decided that we'd do a second dive on the Breda rather than move to another wreck. This allowed us to do a bit of penetration into the parts of the wreck that were easy to access.

Day 5 and sea conditions meant we'd be limited to sites, so we opted to go back to the Pelican for the first dive and then on to the Shuna for the second. Vicky also had a zip problem, and this time I have to take the blame. It's a typhoon suit and has a slightly different zip arrangement, and it needs an extra tug to make it close properly. Unfortunately I didn't know that, and even a tiny hole can let in a lot of water.

Day 6 and the last day of diving. First dive was on the Thesis which is pretty flat but still and nice dive. We were planning to do the Rondo for the second dive, so those of us planning to go deeper took stage cylinders for a practice on the Thesis. Five of the divers wanted to go to the bow of the Rondo for the second dive and this is 50 metres. The bow is actually below the sea bed by a metre or two so when you are in the bow you have to go up to see the sea bed. It was pretty dark down there but very good visibility. We needed to do a little bit of deco but it was worth it to see the whole of this great wreck.

Everyone enjoyed the trip and we hope that we can come back again soon. Thanks to Malcolm the skipper for looking after us for the week.

Photos from the trip