2024 Mash Up
2024 left me gobsmacked. So many things I’ve always wanted to do, a bucket list of joy and so devastatingly interrupted by the passing of my Uncle Phil. I needed sport more than ever to keep me going.
Sitting around doing nothing is not a good way to recover from loss.
Not for me, anyway.
I trained in #lanzarote and #mallorca , climbed #sacalobra (again) completed my first #ironman 70.3 in Venice (when sick!) raced #annecy #triathlon olympic distance, went paragliding over #lakeannecy climbed #alpedhuez for real, learned to fly a drone @djiglobal sea kayaked the length of #menorca camping on sandy beaches with just the best people @muchbetteradventures raced Weymouth 10k, circumnavigated #portland by kayak with @channeleventsuk and saw a dolphin, learned to roll my kayak (work in progress) Dived with #lundy seals and bought some shares in racehorses!! I don’t think I’ve been caving or cave diving once, but there is more to life and I’ll get back to it when the mood takes me.
People keep trying to get me to slow down. Why would you do that? I like my life how it is. Why would I want to slow down? Life is too short, so make the best of it now. It’s not a dress rehearsal....
Autumn Atlantis
Autumn saw my final trip of 2019 on the Atlantis. The divers were working a little shallower and I had a reasonably quiet trip. We were treated to some stunning sunsets and the views from my cabin were pretty cool too.
View from my cabin in the south north sea.
I was very happy to be invited to talk at the Birmingham dive show yet again. I'm lucky to have such a wide range of topics to talk on.
Last year I talked about my cave diving exploration project but this year I was able to talk on Ghost Fishing.
This was doubly exciting as Ghost Fishing UK had a stand at the dive show for the first time and it was definitely the best thing we had ever done in terms of outreach.
We raised a huge amount of cash for the charity and all the volunteers on the stand, working for free all weekend, were flat out from the second the doors opened.
My talks on the Diver stage were packed, especially Sunday which was several layers deep in standing room only.
There is clearly an appetite for divers to help the aquatic environment and we are very happy to provide them with a pathway to making a real difference.
Boka Atlantis. Image: Christine Grosart
Offshore Life - A Man's World?
In 2016 I made the decision to leave the NHS full time and embark on an ambition I'd long held to work offshore.
I can't really tell you why I found it appealing. I guess I just like to do cool stuff that not many people get to do. And as a side effect, stuff that not many women do.
How I travel to work
When I was a teenager I remember a tv series called 'Roughnecks'.
It was a bit cringey but at the time I thought it looked definitely interesting. While I was still working in horse racing, I started studying Geosciences with the Open University and started exploring different work avenues. That all got put aside though when I got into the ambulance service, so now I'm still offshore but in a different role - Offshore Medic.
The North Sea
The number of women working offshore in the energy industry is still pitifully low - just 4%. It's quite normal for me to be the only woman on a vessel or platform and as a rule, out of 100 people on board, only 4 or 5 will be women and most of those will be in admin or domestic roles.
I have met a couple of women who had slightly fancier roles, such as ROV pilot Charlotte Cunningham to took some awesome images of the Normand Clipper with her drone. And I have encountered project engineers and roughnecks who are women. There are several female offshore medics but this seems to be the only role where numbers are on the increase.
I have never encountered any issues offshore being female and it is actually a very pleasant, uncomplicated environment.
Dive Support Vessel: Bibby Polaris
Towards the end of 2017 I got the job I had wanted for a long while - dive medic on a DSV, Bibby Polaris.
This involved doing medicals for saturation divers who lived in dive chambers for up to a month at a time and spent most of that time at depths between 90 and 110 metres.
It takes them around 4 days to come back to ambient pressure again and as well as looking after the vessel crew and contractors, I'm also there to manage any problems the divers may have.
Early this year (2018) I was keen to get onto a production platform. My opportunity came in March when I was sent to Norwich (no change out of a 6 hour drive) to fly to the Indefatigable field and join the 23 Alpha gas production platform. It was my first flight in an offshore helicopter and I felt a real knot in my stomach and an overwhelming sense of excitement, relief, who knows...but it had been my ambition for so long and now here I was, all dressed up in my survival suit and life jacket with EBS (Emergency Breathing System) walking out in among a full compliment of guys (no girls on this flight) and stepping onto the chopper.
The sea was like glass and was sparkling. We flew in glorious sunshine over huge wind farms and the various vessels down below left white streaks of wake behind them.
I strained to see out of the window to see the platform come into view.
Nope, not ours....next one.... The helicopters often do several pick ups from neighbouring platforms so I had to wait for our turn.
The chopper slows down to a crawl on the approach and the helideck crew surround the helicopter ready to pounce if something goes wrong. I located my bags and an old gentleman kindly took one of them down the stairs for me. I thought this was just a bit of old fashioned chivalry and didn't mind...until I realised I was the only one with two bags! I had to keep one hand free for the hand rail so it was good to know I was an equal!
I loved my time on Inde 23A and the guys had been on there a long time and were super friendly and helpful.
It was a bit of an HSE role as well as medical so I muddled through what I could. On my last day the OIM (platform boss) sprang an 'Emergency' drill on us and myself and the first aid and fire team were heading over to the middle platform to deal with an injury following a gas leak.
It was good fun and I was sad to leave.
I appeared to be up and running and as my ambulance shifts got fewer and fewer, my job opportunities offshore increased. I did a short stint on a 'Walk to Work' vessel Island Condor, which acted as accommodation for several platforms in the south North Sea.
I then headed off on a horse riding holiday in Morocco to take a well earned break, before boarding the Normand Clipper and then heading to the platform 'Brae Bravo' for Marathon Oil.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the offshore life and am always amazed at how different the environmental concerns are now to several decades ago. The oil and gas industry is now making hug efforts to be as clean as possible, many with 'zero discharge' policies and many of the vessels I have been on have been designated the some of the cleanest in the world.
I was fascinated when watching the ROV tvs at the amount of sea life homing in on the wells and the rig jackets. on one platform, the jacket (steel support legs) had 30 years worth of hard coral growth and was basically now a coral reef. The life down there was incredible.
Claymore Alpha platform and my current workplace, Seven Kestrel for Subsea 7.
As we speak, I am on board the well known Claymore platform in the North Sea, having just finished a week on a Semi-Submersible exploration vessel. The food is fantastic and I'm made to feel very welcome. I'm in the gym every day which is something I just couldn't do when I was working in excess of 12 hour shifts on the ambulances.
Not long now til I'm back on dry land and back in the water! If that makes sense....
It's been a busy summer and there is still plenty on my to do list. Stay tuned for more, including our most recent cave diving exploration.
Life on the Ocean Wave
This is my new office.
Several hundred nautical miles from land, somewhere between Shetland and Norway, my medical bay is quiet.
I can’t hear any radios screeching for ambulances to clear, no controllers watching my every move, no drunks rolling in their own vomit – alcohol is not allowed offshore.
I’m on board the Olympic Areas, a spanking new ‘multi purpose’ vessel designed for the oil and gas industry. She’s a Norwegian vessel and I’m enjoying the copious amounts of salmon for lunch – and dinner. Having left full time employment in the NHS early in 2017 and trained for over a year as an Offshore Medic and Diver Medic, the opportunity came quickly to leave dry land and head out to the oil rigs of the Thistle Field.
View from my office
I was flown to Aberdeen by business, my hair grew long, I ate some fantastic food and the 80+ crew on board were super polite and a pleasure to be around. This is just as well as I was on board for 5 weeks!
Thistle Alpha lit up at night.
Life on board can be quite comfortable! Once I had passed all my offshore courses I received a lovely good luck gift from the B&B I was staying at, in Aberdeen. I also had a half way delivery from Helen on MV Valhalla with some creature comforts delivered to Lerwick port call! A wonderful start to a new career.
The Woman from Atlantis
Work over winter had been somewhat sporadic. I was enjoying the freedom of locum work, being able to wherever, whenever I pleased but financially it was tough.
In May I was offered a trip on the Boka Atlantis. It was a huge dive vessel and I was back in my comfort zone, as medical cover for not only the crew but the divers in saturation too.
They were diving and living at depths around 100 metres. When not doing ‘bell runs’ they live in cramped conditions in the saturation chambers and their every move is monitored. Food is ‘blown in’ through the hatch and even the toilets are flushed for them by the Life Support Supervisors.
They breathe high percentages of helium in a mix called heliox and talking to them on the comms is like communicating with a very high-pitched Donald Duck.
Luckily, I speak helium so communicating with them is fairly straightforward.
Things can manifest quickly at over 10 atmospheres of pressure and their health and hygiene is taken very seriously.
I do their medicals before they go into the chamber for up to 28 days and again when they come out to make sure all is well.
In addition to this, I manage the day to day running of the hospital on board and run training sessions weekly for both the first aid team and the divers covering all sorts from cannulation, Advanced Life Support and catheterisation to basic first aid and stretcher drills for the marine crew.
It is a busy friendly vessel and it looked like I would be spending the foreseeable future on board.
To get a feel for what it is like for divers on board a DSV (Diving Support Vessel) the documentary film 'Last Breath' is a true story about a saturation diver's brush with death when it all went a bit wrong on the DSV Topaz. Available now on Netflix.
Some of the guys in the film now work on the Atlantis and it really does bring it home that this is a serious game we are in out there.
The Crazy Claymore
“Claymore. I’ve heard of that...” I thought, looking at my email.
My first trip back to work after the dizzy success of Licanke, was to a big and well known North Sea asset, the Claymore Alpha.
Claymore was involved in the demise of the ill-fated Piper Alpha and continued to pump oil to the stricken platform while she burned.
A helicopter lands on the Claymore Alpha. Image taken from Boka Atlantis, by Christine Grosart
A dark history, but it fascinated me nonetheless and I was slightly perturbed by the comments I received from several people about heading out to the platform.
“Claymore? Oohh, you don’t want to go there....”
“Off to Claymore are you? Oh, right...”
Lots of teeth-sucking seemed to be triggered by the word ‘Claymore’ and I wondered exactly which pack of wolves I was about to be fed to.
I landed on the helideck and was given a long and very safety orientated induction.
Martyn, the existing medic was remaining on board while he learned the ropes for the HSE role on another Repsol asset. This was convenient, as it was considered you needed 10 years offshore experience before taking on something like the Claymore on your own. I was pleased he was on board.
View from the hospital on Claymore
Claymore was busy with 240 people to look out for and there was a waiting room with at least half a dozen customers to see before morning coffee break.
The gym was huge and superb and I made good use of it.
The food was also excellent. Saturday Steak night (cooked to order, for your liking) was closely followed by a Sunday roast and possibly the best apple crumble and custard in the world.
Usually by 9am my sides were hurting with laughter about one thing or another and it started to feel like home.
Many of the guys had been with Claymore longer than they had been with their wives.
The platform was friendly and day by day, I gained more and more experience and ventured further outside my comfort zone.
Life on board the Claymore. Superb hospital, training kit and gym!
Martyn was a godsend and he worked hard to bring me up to speed with how things ran on the Claymore. He was infectiously enthusiastic and I lapped it up, relishing the learning opportunities that came my way and my CV started to grow.
After just over 2 weeks, I was notified that I had been asked back by the OIM (the rig boss) to cover a full 3 week stint later that summer.
After 3 weeks off, I returned and was welcomed like an old friend.
After 2 weeks, Martyn was off to the Auk, a smaller neighbouring platform to start his HSE role. I was left on my own as the sole medic on Claymore after only 2 years offshore. Either I was doing something right or they were desperate!
I was doing full inductions on my own as well as running the huge sick bay and doing the water testing.
It was a mental week with several challenges thrown my way, but I loved it and looked forward to getting up every morning for work. It was so different to working on the ambulances.
I was sad to leave the Claymore but she had given me a huge wealth of experience and a huge confidence boost.
I asked Martyn one day, after a particularly ridiculous morning: “Does it get any bigger than this?”
Martyn laughed.
“No” he said. “If you can handle Claymore, you can handle anything”.
Manic Media
I was delighted to get a call much sooner than expected, to join my second home the DSV Boka Atlantis, for an emergency job in the North sea.
A pipeline had liberated itself from the seabed so we were off out to fix it with our hotshot team of sat divers (cue the A-Team theme tune…)
Coming home from weeks away offshore is like Christmas every time – there is always a bunch of parcels you forgot you ordered waiting for you.
One such parcel was particularly exciting for me. Owing to the charity work I do for Ghost Fishing UK and original cave exploration, which is my life’s passion, Santi Drysuits offered me an ambassadorship.
Christine in her new Santi Drysuit. Images by Marcus Blatchford at Vobster Quay
It is an honour to be asked by a top end drysuit manufacturer who truly believe in supporting our charity and supporting those volunteers not just at the sharp end but who graft so hard for no remuneration behind the scenes.
The media have been busy with our charity and the BBC Women’s Hour Power List 2020 has kept on following me and they finally persevered and caught up with me when I got home for an interview.
You can listen in here:
Not long after, BBC South West nabbed me for a piece about volunteers who look after our southern coastline.
A slightly stranger one was being asked to talk about working offshore for Woman and Home magazine. They were quite insistent that the interviewee should be 40 or older and never appeared in a similar magazine. I was quite sure that this was not my genre but sadly even more sure that I had, indeed, hit 40. This milestone was a total anti-climax and due to Covid had been spent on the oil rig, Dunlin.
You can read the full article online here: Woman and Home - Women at Sea
I didn’t tell anyone it was my birthday as it seemed pointless. I guess the party will have to wait a while.
In the run up to my first ‘live’ ghost fishing mission of the season, I jumped into our local quarry with photographer Marcus Blatchford and fellow Cave Diving Group member Connor Roe.
I hadn’t seen Connor since his efforts in Thailand assisting with the underwater rescue of the Wild Boars football team.
By the way, if you want to read all about it from the horse’s mouth, I highly recommend this read from one of the guys who found them. It’s probably the only truthful account of the whole affair you will read.
I’m proud to know both Rick and Connor, Rick much better over the years and they are the most down to earth people you could ever meet.
Connor Roe, with one of his less fortunate victims…
Photo: Christine Grosart
We had a lot of fun with scooters and cameras and I got to try out my new Paralenz Vaquita. I had a good shakedown with my DSLR wide angle underwater set up in preparation for the Brighton Ghost Fishing UK mission where I hoped to bring back some images of the action.
Underwater photography: Expensive, difficult and time consuming!
Christine in her new Santi Drysuit. Images by Marcus Blatchford at Vobster Quay
Christine in her new Santi Drysuit. Images by Marcus Blatchford at Vobster Quay
Largs to Gran Canaria
Dock yard in Las Palmas. DS7, very similar to the DS4.
Whilst I've been pretty comfortable mooching around the North Sea as a medic, with the occasional excursion to Denmark, the Netherlands or the occasional hazy night in Lerwick, I haven't really been anywhere 'nice' in my offshore travels.
By nice, I mean warm - and safe.
So, I couldn't really turn down my next little job which was to travel with a drilling vessel as she made her way to the dock yard in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.
The DS4 was infamous for going AWOL from her cold stack in Largs, in the firth of Clyde when she broke her moorings in huge gales.
The weather when I arrived was almost as vile and I was drenched before I even made it up the gangway. I was looking forward to some better weather in the canaries!
A 10 day very pleasant transit saw us arriving at a very busy port, with a handful of sister ships tied up all awaiting work.
My company had arranged a flight home for me, which they put back at my request so I could see a bit of Gran Canaria.
I wondered if there was any decent cycling here...
It turned out that the canary islands are nothing short of a cycling 'mecca'. Lacking confidence and still terrified of cycling with other people who were all absolutely guaranteed to be better than me in every single way possible, I opted to go on a 'cappuccino' tour with Freemotion Bike centre. This sounded gentle and surely must involve lots of coffee stops and photo opportunities.
If it was too easy (after all, I had been doing Alpe de Huez on the watt bike every week offshore) I could pick a harder tour on a later day.
I know nothing about bikes. They have two wheels and that is pretty much it. I'd heard that Specialized were a good brand and for 30 euros a day rental, I picked one.
I didn't have my cycling helmet with me, but one came with the rental. I had already warned FreeMotion that I would need 'normal' pedals as I couldn't yet ride cleats. No problem, they said.
After a very pleasant evening at my all inclusive hotel apartment, complete with pool and kiddies evening disco, I got a taxi to the bike centre only 20 minutes away and got in the queue to collect my helmet and bike. I hadn't brought any suitable cycling shades and figured I could just grab a cheap pair at the bike shop.
One 140 euro pair of Oakleys later and I was set to go.
It was my first time on a proper road bike and my first time on road tyres. What could possibly go wrong?
Betty, our guide, advised me to have a quick ride up and down the car park to get used to the bike. After watching me give it a spin she advised me to do it again.....
We weren't far away from setting off when I noticed lots of people looking in my direction.
Did I have a hole in my shorts? Were they admiring my trainers? Feeling self conscious and fighting off every desire to just give the bike back, get in a cab and go straight back to my hotel, I realised what they were looking at.
I googled it later and discovered to buy one new would cost about £5000.
I took out some extra insurance and sympathised with Betty, our guide, who gently pointed out that even she 'didn't get to ride that one'.
Betty spends her winters in Gran Canaria, guiding tourists around the island on two wheels. Fair enough.
She also spends her summers cycling up mountains in Switzerland.
Oh shit.
How on earth she tolerated hapless tourists like me, day in day out, I don't know. She was truly inspirational and I wanted to be like her - immediately.
There was only one other guy with our 'cappuccino' tour. A banker, quite tall and pleasant was allowed out occasionally to go cycling.
Cycling scenery Gran Canaria
They both set off at a brisk pace. I could keep up - just - but as usual, got a bit bedevilled at roundabouts (going the wrong way round now as well) but the traffic was forgiving. Confusingly so, in fact, as the traffic here gives way to cyclists on roundabouts.
To a Brit, where the traffic basically tries to kill you at every opportunity, this was most perplexing. I wobbled and almost fell off in the middle of a 4 lane backwards roundabout when the traffic slowed and politely waved me through.
I just about managed to keep up, wondering how I'd do 35 something miles in the heat, when they both instantly left me for dead each time we came to a hill.
I dropped Expensive Specialized into his lowest gear and span comfortably up each hill - getting there in the end - and enjoying the super fast, super smooth downhills on the other side with the sea breeze cooling me down and the view of the bright, sparkling azure ocean in my view the whole time.
Speed both thrills and terrifies me. I'm acutely aware of what will happen to my body if I come off at 30mph - I've done it enough times on racehorses - but it's the skin removal and traffic that makes me twitchy. But hey, I'd have been having fun until that point.
We stopped briefly on occasion to let us regroup. After setting off a few times up hill I noticed a weird buzzing sound coming from banker's bike.
He was on a bloody e-bike!!
For the love of God!
At about half way (home!) we stopped for coffee. This seems to be a thing with cyclists. Coffee and cake.
We didn't stay long enough for cake and we were off again. Once back at the bike shop I had another coffee then cycled the 8 miles back to the hotel for a dip in the (very cold) pool.
After a day off, I cycled back to Freemotion to repeat the exercise, though this time with a larger group. We set off on the Cercados Espino tour, taking in a stunning old river valley.
The rock formations were stunning and the blue sky exhilarating. It was a gentle 1% incline for several miles and the road surface was like velvet. We stopped for lunch and coffee and cold cola at a cafe just before the valley begins to get stupidly steep. I had lunch with a german cyclist - which is not something I ever thought I'd say - and we sped back down the valley in half the time, enjoying the gentle downwards incline.
Delighted that I just about managed to keep up with the group on a hot and busy hill back into town, plus managed to navigate a huge roundabout by myself when all Betty's ducklings got across together and left me stranded, I handed Expensive Specialized back in.
I was a few hundred quid lighter, but had really enjoyed cycling in the heat on superb roads, considerate traffic (I don't think I even noticed a car, other than the one who waved me across the roundabout, despite it being his right of way) and I have now found my favourite winter haunt.
