Report of day 3 - 2018 - Memorial Day

Peter Zaal wrote his experience:

An important day today: the finalization of the Rossarol project. The main goal for today is the placement of the 100-years memorial plate. Yesterday we managed to put the concrete foot in place where the plate should be at on top of it. Today we will bring down the memorial plate and attach it to the foot.

Because of this final day and important event there is also a lot of press today for several international dive magazines. Some of them will capture this event above water, but quite a few will also dive to the Rossarol and see the wreck and the memorial plate for themselves. They will bring underwater camera's to record everything and write articles to be published later on in the magazines.

 

As always we started the day with a short debriefing of yesterday's dives. We all concluded that yesterday was quite some work and not so easy as it might look at first. But in the end we placed the concrete foot, as well as cleaned up some more old obsolete lines and were very happy with the result. Having a clear goal, good procedures and tasks divided over the teams really worked out very well!
And since that worked out so well we decided that for today we sort of keep the tasks and teams the same: the memorial plate will be dropped down from the boat on a line and team Berry and Josef(Pepe) will go down and bring the plate to the foot. The will be assisted by team Nic and Mathijs for the navigation, and team Barend and myself will clean up the concrete foot and swim towards to others to help with navigation and attach the plate to the foot.
Since this all will take some time, the diving press will go down about 20 minutes later, and Jeroen will guide them to the memorial plate, which is a little off the wreck.

So how did it really go? Barend and myself went in first. We descended from the shotline and when we came closer to the Rossarol we immediately noticed that the visibility was unfortunately a lot worse than yesterday and the day before. Luckily by now we are quite familiar with the wreck so we found the concrete foot, which is about 10 meters from the wreck, pretty quickly. But this visibility is really a pity for the photographers.
We started by removing the line what was used yesterday for lifting the block, unscrewed the bolts where the plate will be attached, as well as cleaned up a navigation line to the foot.
By now the other teams should be down and busy with the memorial plate moving it to the wreck. Barend and me attached a reel close to the concrete foot and started reeling out towards them. The visibility was so bad that we actually didn't find them, and so I was getting a little worried that they might not find the wreck at all and we would not succeed in placing the memorial plate, and all the press was there for nothing...

We headed back and when we came closer to the wreck luckily we saw them and joined them to the concrete foot. It took a little time to get the plate in the correct position. Handling a large plate and stand at 50 meters depth in the water is not really easy, but finally we managed to attach the plate and fix it with the bolts. Yes, main goal fulfilled!

By now it was also a bit dusty, so the other teams went away and we took a couple of minutes to let it settle down. At that point Jeroen came with the diving journalists, and we took a little time with them for some pictures.