Sound of Mull – Revisited

A recent trip to Lochaline to stay ashore in the Highland Basecamp dive centre allowed us to revisit some of the popular shipwrecks in the Sound of Mull. The ‘relatively sheltered’ and tidal waters of the Sound provide ideal conditions for recreational scuba divers, and support a number of dive related businesses.

During our stay we visited the steamships Rondo, Hispania and Shuna and a 20m Wooden Fishing Vessel in Loch Sunart. The three steamships plus the SS Thesis are regularly visited and core favourites of divers from around the UK and abroad. Here are a few pictures taken during our visit, more can be found in the dedicated pages for each wreck in the Argyll section of this website.

Highland Basecamp is a new operation based in the old dive centre at Lochaline and will diversify into other sports such as kayaking, mountain biking, paddle boarding, hiking while retaining its core of being the base for divers and provide air filling and boat charter services. For a full range of their services, contact details and booking follow the link above.

With the continued good weather on the West Coast, conditions for our dives were good, a light plankton bloom was in evidence but in general the visibility on the wrecks was 10-12m+, with a heavier bloom in Loch Sunart reducing visibility to around 4-5m. As you would expect the wrecks continue to degrade, for me this was most noticeable on the Rondo where little structure more than 2m above surrounding seabed remains.  The Hispania seems to have settled further towards seabed level, there are cracks a corrugation in the port side, and the Shuna’s deck house and bridge is slowly loosing its external plating. That apart the wrecks are still very impressive and provide excellent subjects for trainee and experienced wreck divers, “lang may their lums reek”.