The weather forecast was very good for the weekend of neap tides so plans were made to launch the RIB and go diving.

Dive 1

• Divers: Mark, Julie, Ken
• Max Depth: 15.7 metres
• Dive Time: 47 minutes
• Water temperature: 16 degrees C
• Viz: 10 metres
• Dive details from Ken

First dive of the year in the newly refurbished Lowestoft Diver RIB. Warm June day (24C)
virtually flat calm enabling a fast run from Sea Palling (on the plane) out to the Haisborough
Sand. Located the Oxshott wreck, a cargo freighter built in 1915, sunk in 1941 apparently
due to a navigation error in bad weather.
The vessel remains a substantial wreck with visible boiler, other deck equipment and
vertical spars sticking 3m out of the sandy sea floor.
Divers – Mark (lead), Julie, Ken
Coxswain – Simon
Topsides Cover – Jane, Kathlin
We arrived about 30mins before slack water and were entertained by a grey seal! The
anchor successfully hooked midships. Slack was about 25mins before high water at this
location.
The divers descended down the anchor line. Max depth was about 15m, vis 10m, water
temperature 16C. As well as the seal shooting a few metres wide of the divers like a Polaris
missile, there were shoals of bib, sponges, soft corals, sea anemones, plus some reasonably
sized crabs and lobsters. Dive lasted about 40mins.

• Dive details from Julie

Simon, Jane and Kathrin were surface cover. We dropped the grapple and descended via shot line with the wreck coming into view almost immediately we began to descend.

There was a little current running throughout, so Mark used a wreck reel, Julie followed, and then Ken at the back with his camera. The current required a little effort finning out, but the drift back was sublime.

We saw a young grey seal from the boat, and it stayed with the divers throughout the dive, swimming around us and playing with our air bubbles. It came very close.

We saw many small fish and lots of medium sized fish, about 10 to 12 inches long, of a variety of species and colours. Julie also saw something that looked like a large tuna fish, silvery in colour. It moved very fast, so disappeared very quickly behind the SS Galloise wreck nearby.

We also saw some very large lobsters and a huge crab.

Julie led the way back to the grapple, unhooking it from the secured points along the way. Julie then led the ascent and Mark lifted the grapple back to the boat as we ascended.

We did a 3 minute safety stop and then all divers slowly surfaced.

Ken came back with some lovely photos of the dive.

J Green