Rotorua Friday Diving

[milldog]

today was the day for the dive on Rotorua, this was going to be the first reel dive after the Salsette problem so I'll say i was abit apprehensive about this wreck, i met Mark Powell at 0730 on the quay next to Wey chieftain or dive boat for the day,

we had managed to secure two spaces to do the dive primary to finish off my Trimix course and secondly to shake off any demons that might be still sitting on my shoulder,

the trip out was rough by my standard and i ended up chumming the wreck site, so got into my kit twin 18's and two AL80 stages waited until graham was happy and then in there was still abit of a current running and this was evident on the line down, we reached the wreck at 55meters for those who don't know the Rotorua here's a brief description from Weymouth diving:

Rotorua
A massive 11000-ton wreck; torpedoed in WW1. Lying on her side she stands some 15M above the seabed at her bow. For some reason after being dived quite extensively in the mid eighties she was forgotten and until I started going there in 1996 she was virtually unheard of by divers. Possibly it’s the fact that she lies smack in the middle of Lyme bay and is quite a trek but nowadays with fast modern boats that is no problem. Max depth 60m.

we landed on the deck plates and drifted off for a look around the wreck, defiantly worth another look/dive so much to see the crabs and lobby's on here have had a good life one particular one looked like it could drive me home, on this occasion i was happy to leave then as i was still trying to calm myself, this got better as the dive progressed and by the time 40 minutes was up i was really enjoying the wreck, its amazing how you notice all that netting and fishing line now regardless how little,

we drifted off and i sent off an SMB using my pathfinder reel not that good for this, and as i normally deploy my SMB at 21 meters with the spool i didnt like this, mark deployed his at 21 and because of the drift we lets them go and followed them, until a jelly fish took a liking to Mark, a little shuffle and we were clear of her advances towards Mark, the rest was uneventful, just the way i like it

we got back on the boat with a runtime of 118 minutes with a 40 minute bottom time and a max depth of 55.5 meters this wreck is deeper but there was no need to visit the sand this time, we dekitted and had hot tea pushed into our hands, i had a coat hanger smile for most of the trip home and no more demons a fantastic dive for a friday big thanks to graham from Wey Chieftain, Mark for the patience and Johnathan for letting us have the spaces oh yeah and i passed cool

i'm not going to talk about the mars bar at 6m

[warmwaterdiver]

Congrats Graham on the pass