Poseidon's Parlour: Stallion Rock 'n' Roll

As part my own personal challenge to myself to dive more places I haven't dived before I had organised a boat out of Inveraray to take me and seven friends to Stallion Rock & Kenmore Point - two dives that can theoretically be dived from the shore, but access is limited, restricted and/or tide dependent.

We set off in fair weather and given that the previous day's weather had been miserable and our forecast was a little uncertain we were all buoyed by this. Our initial plan had been to dive Stallion Rock first and Kenmore Point on the way home given that Stallion Rock was a little further from port, but the presence of another dive boat meant that we switched that around - it made little difference to us.

The entry from the boat was, to be honest, a little sporting as the boat was not ideally suited to diving with having to clamber over the side onto a platform for entry but it wasn't my worst boat experience - at no point did I think there was any significant danger.

My buddy for the day was Jim, with whom I've shared a couple of diving adventures. We were last off the boat. A situation that arose for two reasons:

I didn't want to hold anyone up as I put on my twinset and donning it would be easier with less kit swilling around the boat
If another diver pair had trouble (equalising etc), as event organiser I could hopefully help them from the boat and would happily dive as three if required

As it was everything went to plan on both dives so no significant intervention was required.

Jim and I plopped in at Kenmore Point last, moved closer to the shore to give us a visual reference going down and sank straight down to 30m. It was a decision that was probably a mistake. We were diving the southern wall and would have been able to enjoy a gnome garden and some more life had we just stayed at 20m where the main part of the wall bottoms out (thereafter it is silt with occasional boulders). That said, it was good to go down a little deeper with Jim, to ensure he was comfortable with that depth before doing Stallion Rock which benefits from a deeper profile.

Heading north we moved up and really got the benefit from doing so as the amount of interesting life improved. We surfaced on my SMB and new LOMO reel to replace the reel lost on the previous week.

After some sandwiches and tea provided by Joe (our skipper), we got ready for Stallion Rock. Topographically, I was keen to explore as much of site as I could so Jim and I had a short discussion about depth and made our plans. This time we were rewarded for our decision to go deeper, as it turns out Stallion Rock isn't really even a rock. Instead, it's the peak of an underwater cliff that at depth has been hollowed out into a wall with overhang by thousands of tides. It was beautiful. As I swam along underneath I felt a little insignificant and enjoyed the the deeplet anemones and creatures that had it made it their home.

I came up exhilarated, glad to have gone deeper, and relieved that the swell had dropped down a little from our time of entry. As we bobbed about I asked Jim how many dives he'd done. He said that was 200th dive and also the deepest he'd been - two milestones on one dive.