Rosehill

Although the weather forecast was for very light NE winds, it was still good to arrive at Plymouth and see for ourselves the flat calm of the Sound. It was overcast, but not cold, as we sped out to the Rosehill (avoiding larger vessels) and later on the sun would emerge and light up our trip home. There was a cluster of boats marking the wreck and we caught up with the divers we'd met kitting up at Mountbatten. They were friendly and they let us use their shot.

The morning's wave comprised: Derek (boathandler), Clint and Anne, Phil and Debbie, and Kevin and myself.

Second pair in, we pulled ourselves through the murk down to the wreck. At the bottom it was dark and gloomy, and not at all promising. Visibility was about 2 metres, and in a few cloudy spots even less. Some indistinct shapes loomed ahead and I made for these hoping they'd give me some idea of where we'd landed (for practise I was leading). A little further on we found a boiler and we continued over the flattened wreckage southwards to the stern.

Rosehill was nicely encrusted and there was plenty of life about. Cuckoo wrasse and bib were most of the fish. There were frequent colourful sea-urchins and spiny starfish, edible crab, small sea anenomes, sea-fans (one with a blob that might have been a nudibranch), a cotton spinner, the soft-corals: the familar all-white white, and the orange bodied / white polyped variety.

After a swim over the hold section, we came to some more jumbled wreckage and round a corner (where I should have seen the propellor) there was the rudder. From here it was easy to find the gun, an old Japanese 12 pounder on its gun-mount. I managed to get a picture of the mount at least - it's fallen onto its side, you can just about see the toothed wheel and the tapered base to the right-hand side. The barrel is out of the picture, pointing to the left and up.

Very soon it was time to leave. There was a reefy slope and some flat shelly ground at the base nearby where we set down to deploy the DSMB. As the line rapidly payed out I noticed my octopus free flowing - so I thought I'd better put a stop to that! Very little of my precious air had 'gushed' away - but it was good to know I had a pony (as well as my buddy that is). Everything sorted we headed home.

Back at Mountbatten Nik had arrived with cake :) Thanks Anne too for the mini-rolls! And after some refreshment the second wave (Clint boat handler, Chris, Phil, Derek, Nik, and Tim) went out to Scylla. Many thanks to Clint for towing and managing a great day's diving.