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Diving

Dives

I've dived with Mark Inall 18 times:

Dive number	Date	Site	Location	Area	Country	Wreck	Freshwater	Depth (m)	Bottom time (min)	Total time (min)	Divers	Quality	Summary	Equipment
248	31 Aug 1985	Bass Rock		Forth	Scotland			40	11	14	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		The Not the Royal Fusilier because of overrun idiot factor. Probably just as well - wind NE 6-7 and sea like a food processor. Dived with Mark Inall, straight down to 40m. Literally thousands of shrimps, plus several lobsters, crabs, butterfish, anemones. At end of dive saw a line of starfish demolishing a mussel bed.	own
269	15 Feb 1986	Falls of Lora	Loch Etive	Oban	Scotland			15	6	6	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Prelude to next, amazing dive. Extremely fast. What do you do when bearing down on a cliff at 9 knots in a cloud of bubbles? Came up after getting into a backwater.	own, except aluminium 72 and a made-up weight belt.
270	15 Feb 1986	Falls of Lora	Loch Etive	Oban	Scotland			26	15	15	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		The definitive gnash. Barrelled under bridge doing Superman impersonations, through gullies into a quiet section with masses of sponges. Then picked up by Mk II current and taken down to a sandy bottom at 26m. Dark but good vis.	own (as 269) 27lbs.
279	19 Apr 1986	Belnahua		Oban	Scotland			58	4	7	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Not the HF. Both echosounders packed in, weather bad, and worsening, cold, set. Crossed fingers, dropped the shot, went down the line, narked, shook hands, came up, drank, ate, drank, drank.	own, Rollo's twin 55s
280	20 Apr 1986	Easdale Quarry	Easdale, Seil Island	Oban	Scotland			55	10	20	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		The legendary Easdale Quarry at last. Truly lifeless, with massive slabs of rock going down past 55m. Water clear until the silt is disturbed. Not as narcotic as yesterday, but a somewhat more satisfying dive. [4 stars for being memorable]	own
284	3 Jul 1986	Markgraf	Scapa Flow	Orkney	Scotland			44	18	33	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall, Sarah McCracken		Threesome with Sarah and Mark. Bows very impressive still, rearing vertically out of the sand. Fairly fast trip around to the starboard side. Sarah helped me lug a lump of wreck as far as the bows before dropping it. Knackered.	Twin 55s, 28lbs
288	7 Jul 1986	Helena Faulbaums	Belnahua	Oban	Scotland			55	15	45	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		First pair onto the wreck. Recce trip, with Mark. Eyes pressed against mask as we noticed far more artefacts than I've seen before - binnacle, pedestal, portholes etc. We got up to the bows - very impressive with starboard anchor chain curving away to the seabed. Sea life - dead men's fingers, cup coral, wrasse.	Twin 55s
292	10 Jul 1986	Belnahua		Oban	Scotland			7	15	15	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Malcolm's pedestal having been recovered to shallow water lashed to the boat, we had to shorten the lifting bag line and tie on a line to shore. Easily done with much jungle warfare amongst the kelp. Little did we know the task had only just begun.	Snash's twin 50s, 28lbs
293	11 Jul 1986	Helena Faulbaums	Belnahua	Oban	Scotland			58	15	55	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Fantastic weather - mirror-calm and sunny. Slick operation to raise the pedestal followed by a trip to the stern. Bottom at 58m. Prop blades sheared off. Good vis.	Twin 55s, 28lbs
297	23 Aug 1986	St Abbs	South side of the Firth of Forth	Forth	Scotland			15	45	45	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall, Simon Nash		A swell dive! HW springs. Strong wave action and poor vis. Shoal of pollack or saithe and wrasse. Getting out was somewhat interesting. (Snash: 'EUSAC White Water Boys!')
313	14 Dec 1986	Falls of Lora	Loch Etive	Oban	Scotland			25	15	30	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Hell of a long gap since the last dive. Weather ideal - calm, sunny, clear. Mark and I had three attempts - on the first two we were spat out very quickly. On the third we went through the gully system just as fast as we could cope with. Hit a slack patch, then found the current again and hit the cliff! Suddenly everything went dark - I was pummelled from all sides and felt a strong pressure on my ears as I was dragged down. With one hand on my suit inflator and the other on my mask I eventually hit the surface. Mindblowing. A seriously difficult dive. (Times: a: 5 mins, b: 3 mins, c: 7 mins). Tide: near neaps, incoming tide.	Club 78
314	21 Dec 1986	Wallachia	The Gantocks	Clyde	Scotland			30	20	32	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		The less said about this the better. Perfect conditions made irrelevant by the fact that Kirkintilloch got there first. Graham had a jar, but all Mark and I did was break one and lose the lifting bag (duly returned by Joe Murray). Aaargh!	Club 78
337	14 Apr 1987	Meldon	Loch Buie	Mull	Scotland			14	40	40	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Launched at Carsaig in flat calm. Wreck easy enough to find, with rudder post above water level (on which the old boat was holed). Stern intact, with prop and rudder - wreck becomes progressively more smashed up as you go forwards. Others have said that the bows are nice, like the Thesis, but we didn't see them. We did see a wrasse and a lobster sharing a pot. Finished by swimming along the prop shaft tunnel to the end - by far the best part of the dive. It rained all the way back.
341	16 Apr 1987	Hispania	Sound of Mull	Mull	Scotland			24	23	25	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Full flood and springs! NFP. Tough pull down the line to the stern, into hold and through tunnel to forward hold, then up onto the bows and into chain locker. Back into the teeth of a gale to the engine room (more collapsed than I remember). Back to stern and up.
381	2 Jan 1989	Shiprock	Port Hacking	Sydney	Australia			12	50	50	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Rough weather, so plans for an inflatable boat trip scaled down to another Shiprock dive. A larger group than usual - Sarah, Mark, Andy Holroyd and Jackie as shore cover, along with John Ward, Andrea and Derek from Richmond RAAF BSAC. It was Mark's first dive in Australia and, like me, he was amazed at the quantity, variety and colours of the fish. We trogged slowly along, peering into crevices, seeing what we could see. What we saw was a moray eel, several catfish (or rock ling), scorpionfish, a big shoal of old wives (which have poisonous dorsal spines), leatherjackets, rock code, yellowtail, and on the crustacean front, hermit crabs and some really delicate little shrimps. The highlight was an octopus, which retreated over the rocks in an incredibly fluid motion. The poor thing was desperate to get away, but it wasn't until Sarah tried to grab it that it jetted off into the murk leaving two spots of ink behind it. Two cuttlefish finished things off nicely. Good curry afterwards.
382	14 Jan 1989	Tuggerah	Royal National Park	Sydney	Australia			46	14	25	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall, Sarah McCracken		Took Mark and Sarah out for a real Sydney wreck (birthday present for Mark). Met Peter (the Swede) and Jeff, who dived with me on the 'Undola' last month, and Richard. Sea horrible - divers all chunderous - but worth it. Visibility on the surface was brilliant - clear blue water - well over 100 foot vis. Not so good on the bottom, though - about 40 foot. Thousands of fish forming not so much a veil around the wreck as a wall. Headed to the bows first, where Sarah met a numbfish, and was totally shocked by the experience. They're very lazy, and I was lucky not to be fried while digging it up. Anyway - back to the boiler (with resident small moray) and the stern, with yellowtail, old wives and toadfish. Back to the line inside planned time despite being temporarily lost in fish. Deco stops and anti-chunder stops.	(wet sleeve)
391	18 Feb 1989	The Steps	Bicheno	Tasmania	Australia			30	20	25	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Still sunny, but rough - many white horses. Descended to weedy bottom at 16m, swam anticlockwise round reef to SE corner, where there's a big cave formed by house-sized boulders. Max depth here of 30m. Abundant fish - bullseyes most common, then leatherjacket, banded morwong. Saw scalyfin for the first time in Tasmania (white-ear). Other fish - blue-throated wrasse, catfish and ornate cowfish (in weed at the end of the dive). Usual masses of sponges. Basket star - a black and white starfish with branched legs. When unravelled from the sponge it looks like [illustration in logbook]. Found two cuttlefish under an overhang and witnessed their amazing colour changes. They go red when startled (ie when they first see you) and spread their tentacles wide. When relaxed their colour matches the background. It happens very quickly. With torch off it was easier to see the changes - one showed bands of light and dark moving swiftly forwards to its head (4-5 per second). Amazing. Vis was tremendous - saw the boat from the bottom at 30m. Watched the others get into the boat (and cavitation bubbles from the prop) from the 6m stops. Forgot to unplug suit inflation hose before getting into the boat, and pulled the fitting out of the suit. Very wet!
392	18 Feb 1989	Muir Rock	Bicheno	Tasmania	Australia			20	33	35	Iain Hosking, Mark Inall		Heavy swell meant that the tunnels and swimthroughs were exhilarating, to say the least. Mark and I dived into every crevice we could find, including some dead ends, where it was necessary to brace your hands against the sides of a tunnel to avoid being plugged into the end like a cork into a bottle. First highlight was a banded stingaree, sandy-coloured, buried with only his tail and eye showing. Played with it for a while before turning our attention to a globe fish which was persuaded by Mark to inflate itself with water. I just about collapsed laughing when this spiny ball was batted towards me. In this condition it has little attitude control and it could only just move forwards. Once left in peace it deflated itself in about 10 seconds. Other life - morwongs, bastard trumpeter, white sea-urchins, Devonshire cup coral, a shoal of yellowtail, sea carp and the usual bullseyes and leatherjackets.