Christine Grosart 26/10/2023 Christine Grosart 26/10/2023

Grotte Banquier

Rich and I had the opportunity to have an early morning 60m deep dive yesterday, at a discreet location. We did lunch and chilled out the rest of the day, whilst sorting out directions for the Grotte Banquier.

Thanks to Elaine Hill and Clive Westlake, we got it together and after driving up some lengthy forestry track, we parked up and did a bit of casting around before finding the right path to the entrance. A short fixed ladder leads to some well travelled and well decorated passage, which heads down to the lake and then the sump. This would be an easy half an hour carry with dive gear, but quite hot! The sump then leads to 1,600m of apparently quite fine passage beyond.

Definitely one to come back to with dive kit.

Christine Grosart 21/10/2023 Christine Grosart 21/10/2023

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:

BBC Women's Hour - Christine Grosart

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.

Grotte Banquier

Manic Media

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