Rosehill

Usual thing, meet at the boathouse, get the boat ready and make way to Plymouth. Nice weather (very warm but hazy). Kevin boathandled. Clint found the wreck and shotted the boilers! Buddied with Adrian; I led and the plan included a mid-water DSMB deployment exercise. Down shot, I took us in small circle then once I'd got my bearings (compass useless on the wreck), along the line of the wreck from the boilers to the stern. Coming down we went through a layer of snotty green bits, but visibility at the bottom was a very good 8m or so. All well so far, considering how the Rosehill is hard to find, and also visibility is often poor. Gorgonian fans grow on the collapsed hull, on a thick turf dotted with urchins and small anemones (above) and these with all the fish above them were a lovely sight.

Amongst the wreck there were spider and velvet fiddler crabs, and round and about lots of fish including bib and cuckoo wrasse (males were bright blue), and I saw several leopard spotted gobies. Later in the dive I saw plumose anemones and the orange (as well as white) variety of dead-mans-fingers (soft corals). The stern section was easily found and steering gear, rudder, upstanding propellor blade, and gun (below) examined. Compare it to the picture from my first dive on the Rosehill last November.

Everything very pleasant and relaxed and after 30 min it was time to go. According to tables I would have 7 minutes of deco to do. I had a go at inflating the blob manually but the weight of the cylinder made it difficult and not wishing to waste more time, cracked the bottle and up it went. Adrian had deeper decompression to do and the this and the couple of minutes extra (not very far off the bottom) had given me 19 minutes of deco to do (far more than planned); I used some pony air, and Adrian donated (so that I'd have more in event of separation). Then back on my own air at 3.5m for 10+ minutes. A number of important lessons for planning were learned. And now need to figure out how to fill the DSMBi manually (say it failed - or if I want to use it for training). An uncomfortable ride back bouncing over the chop, but the sun was out and we'd all had a good and/or educational dive.