With all the rain we have had over the past month, it was going to make diving a little, uncomfortable to say the least.

The plan today was to use Rose Bay Boat ramp for the first time, Rudy was over at Plunge diving (Jenny doing her open water) and pick him up at the wharf.

All was going well, we headed out towards South Head and decided to dive the Royal Shepherd. I stopped the boat and dialled it up on the GPS, we were 40m from it. We dropped anchor and headed down to find sand and vis around 2m. No wreck. So we ascended and tried again. This time the anchor held 30m to the south of the wreck and the boat was sitting over the top of it. We dropped the rear anchor and set a crossover from rear to front and down for the 2nd time.

Vis on the way down was good to 20m then the bottom 5 was crap. We found the engine and boiler and run out to the prop. A nice dive anyway. I had to deco for 5 mins and then a bounce dive to retrieve the rear anchor.

2nd dive we looked at Old Mans Hat, but it was pretty rough so we headed to Blue Fish just around North Head. We anchored and had a cuppa. The vis was better here at around 5m there is a wall that runs North South, which is pretty nice. Not a lot of fish but a nice dive all the same.

I had a pretty heavy deco penalty from dive 1, so Rudy got into the boat and waited. The boat was drifting a bit close to the rocks so he fired up the engine and headed out. Well, lets say we have a shorter mermaid line now by 4m....... I spent about 3 mins clearing the prop while the seas were getting quite rough.

All went well and we made it back to Plunge and then Rose Bay.

Royal Shepherd

Blue Fish