Just a little swim
Rich elected not to dive this time, to allow time for his flooded undersuit to dry out.
Ash and I set off into the cave with a plan to go straight to the end of the 2017 and start laying new line in sump 2 beginning at a depth of 42 metres.
Cave passage on the approach to sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey
Arriving at the sump pool, I was having difficulty adding oxygen to the loop. The faulty MAV had been plaguing me for a while and despite repairs, was still intermittent. The oxygen injection was now not even working at all.
This was a no brainer. The unit was faulty and I could not dive. Ash was already geared up in the sump pool so, after a brief discussion he asked if he could 'go for just a little swim'.
I told him to stop mucking about and to go to the end of the line and see what happened - or this cave wouldn't get pushed out at all!
Ash sets off into sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey
Ash quickly reached the end of line, picking up a bailout stage en-route, and tied on the reel. After approximately 2 minutes of laying line, a stage was dropped.
In 3-4m visibility he got very excited about a ramp which went from -46m up to -25m but this quickly dropped back down.
In 17mins 207m of line was laid, approximately half at -40m average and half at -30m average, on a 101min dive.
He surveyed the line on the way home and we were relieved that the cave seemed to be trending shallower, although it still hadn't done the honourable thing and surfaced.
The gauntlet was now laid down for Rich and myself to get back on the horse, rebreather seemingly fixed and try to make more progress on our last day.
Chris tows gear across the lakes in the Halcyon Life raft. Image: Mark Burkey
"Puddles up to me knees..."
Rich explains why he's all wet...Video grab, Mark Burkey.
Licanke project 2018 - Day 3
The plan for the first day was for Rich and Christine to go straight to the end of their line from 2017 and push it out as far as possible.
The cave depth from the bottom of the shaft was averaging about 45m and the maximum depth was 50m. So, the exploration dive plan was to put in enough bailout bottles of trimix, suitable for 75m depth, along the line at the correct distances based on swimming speed - to allow a push dive of up to 250m distance.
Robbie helps Chris kit up in her KISS rebreather. Image: Mark Burkey
It's hard planning an exploration dive as there is literally no way of knowing what the cave is going to do. Christine and Rich had over a decade of experience each in cave systems and Chris has a geological background so it's possible to get a 'feel' for what a cave might do - but you'll never know for certain.
The team were pretty sure that they were in the 'Master Cave' or 'confluence' for the whole region - essentially this is the collection of all the water in the surrounding mountains and catchment - all coming out of the resurgence we were diving into.
The size of the cave passage and the flood marks on the walls told us that this cave takes a phenomenal amount of water in flood conditions and taking into account the other cave systems in the region, had every possibility of going deeper.
The deeper the cave, the more decompression the divers would accrue and this is far from fun in 7 degree water. Despite using dry gloves and thick undersuits beneath their drysuits, the cold was always an issue in this cave.
Rich in sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey
Rich got into the sump pool which was beautifully lit up by Mark's various video lights. Chris prepared her rebreather and was ready to go when Rich muttered something about a leak in his drysuit. After a bit of conversation, he opted to dive as it didn't seem to be getting in any worse. Chris and Rich dived down the shaft and the gravel slope, fixing some line as they went and Chris had an enjoyable dive behind Rich, using her bright video lights and Paralenz camera to light the way and film proceedings.
Chris sets off down the gravel slope, sump 2 Izvor Licanke.
The visibility wasn't great but it was Ok to progress. neither diver could see the roof or the opposite wall.
Once they approached Christine's 2017 last tie-off (she was very pleased this was still secure!) she pulled her wetnotes and compass out of her pocket ready to begin surveying - and Rich did the unthinkable.
He gave a very positive and non-negotiable thumbs up.
This should never be questioned in the water - but really?!!
He did it again and Christine, furious, turned around and refused to speak to him all the way back to dive base.
Chris, wetsuited, takes her rebreather through sump 1 and into the cave. Image: Jess Burkey
It transpired, when a shivering Rich got out of the water, that his suit had flooded almost completely.
He had puddles up to his knees!
The suit inflation bottle, usually full of air, seemed to be full of water. Salt water!
Someone had obviously handed a flooded suit bottle back into the dive centre after a sea dive and not told them. The gauge of course still read 200 bar, so we were none the wiser until Rich began injecting water into his drysuit rather than air!
There was no way Rich could dry out a salty undersuit in time so a plan was hatched for Chris and Ash to attempt a push dive the next day.
The rebreathers stayed in the cave and only the small oxygen and diluent bottles came out for a refill - as well as the dodgy suit bottle!
Back at the house, gear was dried out, 'stuff' got unpacked and re-packed, pongy wetsuits hung desperately on the line and everyone headed off to a nearby pizza place which produced the most amazing food and beer in gargantuan volumes.
Chris uses her Paralenz for a 'selfie'.
Chain Gang
Izvor Licanke project 2018 - Day 2
Ash in sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey
After the usual "what shall we eat today" faff of breakfast and cave food, all the divers went through sump one and carried the remainder of the gear including a dry tube with camera gear and food.
The divers on CCR (rebreathers) Richard, Ash and Christine dived their units through sump one and pushed their twinsets and open circuit gear through ahead of them for daily ferrying trips, with the plan to leave the rebreathers at sump 2. Only the small rebreather bottles and suit inflation bottles would come out of the cave each day, along with any spent sodalime. This was easy to do as the dry tubes were reliable.
We all carried our own rebreathers to sump 2 which wasn't as horrific as I envisaged. I had two guys balancing me over the boulders as a slip or fall would not only damage me but damage my unit. The rest of the way it was fine. The team chained all the gear to the sump and began setting it up for the push dive. A makeshift kitchen and 'clean' area was created and bailout bottles were tested and some niggles sorted out and repaired.
The boulder chamber in Izvor Licanke. Image: Mark Burkey.
One SPG had got smashed in the carry and a few hoses had developed leaks but in the grand scheme of things, that is the best we could have hoped for after taking the fragile kit through such hostile conditions. Nobody complained and just switched the parts out for new ones.
Ash and Christine did a quick foray into sump 2 to pull out the nasty old thin line that had caused Rich and Christine some aggravation last year and a thick caving rope was put in its place. This was much stronger, easier to see and easier to feel in the poor visibility shaft. Ash also retrieved Rich's search reel which he'd be moaning about for the last 12 months.
Mark set up his video station, having bought several expensive video lights for the project and set about lining up various shots for the film Christine planned to create.
Rick Van Dijk in Licanke. Image: Mark Burkey.
The priority this year was video footage, both in the 'dry' cave and underwater. We were fortunate to have got hold of some Paralenz dive cameras. Rated to 200 metres depth and small enough to fit in your pocket, they were an obvious choice to take with us. With neat video lights from Light Motion, we hoped to get some decent footage of the underwater passages.
Mark Burkey waves to his Mum after he promised her he would never go cave diving….
Can I come?
Licanke project 2018. Image: Mark Burkey
Licanke project 2018 - Day 1
It was that time again.
Izvor Licanke lay quietly in wait for the usual suspects to return and uncover the secrets that lay in this huge, water filled cave. The same team returned for the 2018 assault on the end of our line in sump 2, this time using closed circuit rebreathers.
This made a lot more logistical sense. It meant we could do multiple dives while only transporting the same number of cylinders as last year. The plan was to only use those cylinders in an emergency, in the case of rebreather failure and each diver took their own full set of 'bailout'.
Robbie Varesko, our Croatian interpreter and minder was a triathlete. He had been doing the equivalent of iron mans in Croatia and he was itching to get into the cave this year.
Robbie Varesko - an incredible asset to the expedition.
So, Rich Walker gave him his old Fourth Element proteus wetsuit (it has a gaping hole in the arse but Robbie seemed not to care - until he got into the 6 degree water!), Rick Van Dijk donated a helmet and diving/caving light and I loaned him some knee pads. He sourced his own wellies.
Mark Burkey returned with his camera and the promise to shoot more footage for the film about this cave. Ash Hiscock drove down again bringing dry tubes and gas banks. We headed up to Fuzine and settled into our accommodation. Same place as usual with lots of stuffed things on the walls.
Robbie and I didn't mess about and got straight into the sump, ferrying through the bailout bottles and the drytube and we were ready for the next days diving.
Can't ride, won't ride.
I think the last time I rode a bike, honestly, was probably age 9. I had a boys black BMX that was indestructible and I would fly up and down the hill beside my Dad's house with no fear at all.
Then he left the country and that was the last time I saw him – and the last time I ever rode a bike.
They say you never forget. I’d like to offer definitive and conclusive evidence to the contrary!
Most people give me a funny look when I tell them I used to be a jockey. Definitive and conclusive evidence below in case you still need convincing.
It was my dream career and whilst I didn’t win the Grand National (but am super delighted that Rachael Blackmore has!) I was, for a short time, a professional sportswoman.
Roll on 20 years and the ability to spend the same on a bottle of wine as I did once on my weekly food shop, has piled on not just pounds, but stones.
I was heading for a car crash. Without burning thousands of calories every single day, riding up to 5 racehorses a morning and all the hard physical graft looking after them entailed, I couldn’t maintain my weight nor my figure.
My second ride over fences, on board Clashbridane
Buying a house, a long term relationship and everything that comes with being ‘comfortable’ led to the point where I would avoid certain caving trips I once loved and dreaded black tie events as I no longer owned any nice clothes that fitted me.
I spiralled into further self-destruction – the more I hated myself the more I harmed myself by eating and drinking.
I continued to run, sometimes doing 5ks every other week. I continued to cave, sometimes carrying my KISS rebreather through boulder hopping caves. My back hurt, my knees hurt, my stiff necks and migraines became the norm.
But I was getting away with it all on experience and I knew soon, it would catch up with me.
The diving support vessel Boka Atlantis is my second home these days. The gym is not the best and most of the gym bunnies on board struggle with it.
I’ve used the treadmill and done circuits but exercising on a moving boat is always awkward. The food is amazing so the excuses just kept on coming.
I did eat carefully on one trip and managed to lose a stone. But I was still dangerously overweight and as soon as I got home, it went straight back on.
In the early spring I was contacted by a tv company to be filmed exploring a cave abroad. I wasn’t overly keen as it looked a bit gimmicky, but after some research I decided I could probably move some things around and make it work. It seemed the only thing I needed to do was get an HSE diving medical.
Panic set in. My BMI was ridiculous. Even as a jockey it hovered around 27 owing to the muscle I was carrying. You need to be strong to ride racehorses and I had never been a waif.
I was talking to one of our saturation divers one day and, feeling beaten, moaned that I had to choose which leg to cut off in order to pass my HSE medical as there was no way I could meet the BMI standard in just under 7 weeks.
He said; “I’ll help you”.
I had already decided I was beyond help. I had given up and everyone had also given up on me. Besides nobody was brave enough – nor stupid enough – to tell me I needed to sort myself out.
“You need to trust me”.
I figured anyone brainless enough to tell me to look in the mirror and tell myself that ‘that’ was no longer acceptable was on some sort of suicide mission anyway and I let him talk me into the most ridiculous eating and exercise regime ever. I more than halved my calorie intake and hit the watt bike every damn day.
I lost 7 lbs in the first week.
I kept going and the weight just kept falling off. I was getting stronger, I had a spring in my step and a smile on my face and everyone on board were confused and perplexed.
What was happening to the medic? And where had the rest of her gone?
I had bought a cheap, crappy second hand mountain bike to get me going at home. I spent the grey, mizzly winter lockdown days re-learning to ride it.
I couldn’t get up the short hill at the back of our village without stopping at least three times. Then it was two.
I came back from my six week trip on Atlantis and bossed my HSE medical – right at the point the tv company pulled the plug, blaming covid, quarantine, you name it…
But I didn’t care. I’d done it. But I still had a long way to go and still do.
I went straight up the hill at the back of our village without stopping and just couldn’t believe it!
Buying bikes, even new ones, is fraught after the lockdown boom. Added to the fact that factories were struggling anyway, never mind with the increased demand and I was having difficulty getting anything suitable in my size.
£2000 later and one Orro gravel bike had joined the family. It was lightweight, small and twitchy but I fell in love with it and even braved Burrington Combe – twice!
It’s funny how you only know what you know. I can ride a racehorse but could barely ride a bike. I can build and service a rebreather but couldn’t change a bike tyre.
I had been riding on my own pretty much to save myself from inevitable humiliation. I still make a hash of junctions and I cannot do roundabouts. Traffic scares me and quarry lorries are just assholes. Despite all that, I lost another stone.
My new steed
So, it is with this lack of knowledge and no benefit of experience at all, that I did something really stupid.
I entered the Great Weston ride on 18th July. 57 miles.
The furthest I have cycled is 30 miles and I ached for days afterwards.
I’m going to raise money for the official charity of the event, Prostate Cancer UK and use my skills as a trustee for another UK charity to raise some funds.
Those of you who know me know that I am a determined little madam – but this is a big stretch for me. I’ve only been riding a bike for 6 months and have no clue what I am doing.
The Great Weston
Knightstone, the evening before the Great Weston Ride
We did it!!
Trust me to do my first ever Sportive on the hottest day of the year!
What an incredible, amazing event and SO well organised. A big hats off must go to Darren who seems to monitor social media and his emails in his sleep. Seriously great service!
Between you, you all raised £681 for Prostate Cancer UK.
I chose this charity over my own because it was the official charity of the event, plus I spend all of my working life offshore surrounded by men. And they are rubbish at talking about this sort of thing.
I was so grateful to my friend Jayme, a serious cyclist who was more than happy to join me all the way. I love riding with Jayme. There is no competition, no macho, no ego...she rides with me for fun and we chit chat the whole way. She encourages me and is kind to me even when I'm not doing so well. I'm so glad she was there.
Great Weston Ride route
Our first stop was at the bottom of Burrington but...the queue for water was huge and actually, we had plenty so we kept going. I was devastated that there was no ice cream van at the top of Burrington Combe so we stopped a little further on for a diet coke break.
I was gutted not to have finished in under 4 hours, but given it was the furthest I had ever ridden by about 17 miles...and the first time I had ever ridden in any heat, I was just pleased to have finished at all. Thank you once again to everyone who sponsored me!
"I don't want one of your stupid plant pots!"
Ally Mitchell is a deep sea saturation diver come ocean advocate. He was on a salvage job in Scotland when he became involved with a stricken vessel full of millions of plastic pieces. He pocketed a few and took them home, wondering if he could create a way of turning them into something more useful, profitable and keep them out of landfill.
When he heard about a whale that had been found washed up with a huge amount of plastic in its stomach, he was compelled to do something on a much larger scale.
By sheer luck, I met Ally as he was a saturation diver on the offshore Dive Support Vessel, Boka Atlantis, where I work as a dive medic.
Ally was desperate to get out of the 'bin' and have his medical as he was excited about his new venture, Ocean Plastic Pots. He knew I was involved in recovering lost fishing nets or 'ghost gear' and we got our heads together to try and work together.
Ally was keen to come and learn to be a Ghost Fishing UK diver himself and after some head scratching over diaries, we found some dates that worked in the North.
Boka Atlantis
We based the course at St Abbs, where fortuitously another diver medic and ex commercial diver, Danny Wright, had just bought a house and dive boat operation.
It seemed a perfect location to run the 3 day Ghost Fishing UK course.
Also joining us was a well know figure in the world of technical diving; Garry Dallas. Affectionately known in the industry as 'Sidemount Bob' Garry had a good reputation and is a thoroughly nice bloke too. He had been knocking on the door of Ghost Fishing UK for years, keen to do something proactive for the ocean and we let him in.
The third student was a lovely chap called Alan Paice who lived locally in Dunbar.
A tidy diver with a strong safety and team diving ethos, he was a doddle to train and a pleasure to have along.
His local knowledge and spare kit also came in extremely handy!
Ally, Christine, Danny, Garry, Alan.
Day 1 and the North east weather was sending brown waves over the harbour wall. This wasn't good. My bailout plan for the course was always Capernwray quarry in Lancashire but that was a real nuisance for everyone to up sticks and move. Plus, we had a smashing B&B in St Abbs with Danny and his wife Sally at St Abbs Charters.
Alan knew of a quarry somewhat closer that was deep enough for what we needed and had little enough visibility to provide a challenge!
Each diver had their own challenges to overcome. Ally had done hundreds of dives to silly depths in excess of 100 metres, but in a completely different style which was alien to how we do things. He had to analyse his own gas, plan his own dives and obtain neutral buoyancy pretty quickly.
Fortunately, he is a very fast learner and by the final day was hungry to learn how to flipper backwards and was doing out of gas, neutrally buoyant ascents on an SMB and a long hose. I was chuffed with him.
Garry was a senior instructor in several disciplines so his biggest challenge was to become part of a team again - something he appeared to enjoy.
Alan had not done that much 'working' underwater so he got stuck in with cutting, lifting and managing ghost gear for the first time.
The team progressed rapidly and it was a pleasure to invite Ally to deliver a talk on plastic recycling and the hurdles he had to overcome from pollutants to red tape.
Ally hunts for treasure in the harbour bins…
A visit to St Abbs harbour part way through the course seemed apt and it wasn't long before Glaswegian Ally had his face in a rubbish bin, picking out old fishing gear scraps and telling us all about their properties, recyclability (or not) and what he could do with them.
To learn more about Ocean Plastic Pots, check out a recent blog from Ghost Fishing UK. You can also grab your Christmas gifts now from the website.
Follow Garry Dallas on his first mission with the northern team at Ghost Fishing UK HERE
Alan, Ally, Christine, Garry
Our favourite things: Ocean Plastic Pot; Paralenz dive camera; Halcyon Dive Systems SMB.
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.
Beautiful Brighton
Brighton isn't a diving region that I'm familiar with.
It's a bit of a drive from Somerset and the currents and visibility can be even worse than the more westerly reaches of the English Channel.
I knew there was good diving to be had there, I had just never felt motivated to visit.
All that changed when Ghost Fishing UK received dozens of reports from keen and active divers in the region. Furthermore, we were approached by Sussex Wildlife Trust to partake in their 'Wild Coat Sussex' project which centred around Brighton.
Ghost Fishing UK ran several missions over the summer surveying and recovering mostly lost nets but also plenty of lost crab pots as well. Immensely supportive of the project was Steve Johnson of Channel Diver. Before the team had even arrived, he'd made up some banners for his boat in support of Ghost Fishing UK and Sussex Wildlife Trust. We were truly humbled.
It is so important to support the diving industry who we rely on to keep divers diving and reporting this lost ghost gear.
To date, Ghost Fishing UK has chartered 26 different dive boats around the UK across 142 survey, recovery and training dives.
Even more exciting was that a local fishing trawler heard we were in the area and offered to come and help pull in the lost gear, something we were extremely grateful for.
Ghost Fishing UK has always wanted to work WITH the fishermen on the issue of lost gear. We have never believed that they want to lose it and therefore, pointing the finger of blame in their direction is, well, pointless.
I was on camera duty again and thoroughly enjoyed getting some underwater images of the action. It was a pleasure to dive with Kerry and James as they set about cutting up and removing some nasty, snaggy nets on a wreck in about 20 metres of water.
It was a long day and as I drove up to Aberdeen the very next day for work, I parked up in my van and sat up until midnight bashing out a press release for the next morning. It was time and effort well spent as almost every news outlet in the South East picked it up and we were invited for further interviews, news pieces and every journalist in Brighton wanted to come out on the boat with us!
It was great to get out of the admin/trustee/dogsbody chair and get into the water with my camera, doing what I love.
“Just like a parrot”
Osama and Christine set off into sump 2.
Oz and I quietly trudged up and down the passage between sump 2 and sump 3.
It was mostly walking, with an awkward boulder choke soon after sump 2.
There was a convenient hole to pass through but it was better not to touch anything above you and not look up. The sizeable hanging death was best out of sight and out of mind. We hadn’t managed to find a suitable way around it.
Christine carries her rebreather from sump 2 to sump 3.
Mauro didn’t get the memo and I bumped into him just after he’d passed through the boulder choke stating; “f****ck man if that stuff decided to come down now…..” .
He shuddered and carried on moving our bailout bottles.
Rich and Mauro saw us off into sump 3 which is a short and pleasant dive, before surfacing in the extremely irritating bit of passage before sump 4.
Only 8 metres long, this passage is extremely sharp and the entrance and exit at sump 4 has a needle-like layer of rock, perfect for tearing drysuits, stabbing knees despite knee pads and ripping hoses. This slab of rock on the entry to sump 4 (best done by giant stride in, levitation out…) was responsible for ripping Anton’s hose off his bailout in 2021.
Oz and I got away relatively lightly. His oxygen regulator unraveled itself in the pool, so we had an odd 5 minutes with me trying to fix it while Oz circumnavigated the pool doing doggy paddle. “Stay still for god’s sake!” was the best advice I could offer.
Reg fixed, I unclipped my mask from the safe place I had put it on the washing line, immediately dropping it into the sump that eats gear. Oz went down to rescue it, recovering the line reel I had dropped in the very same spot last year, at the same time….
Sump 4 goes on a bit, for several hundred metres and touches 30m depth at one point. It has an annoying vertical ascent with hardly any belays about 2/3 of the way through, then takes off again at 11m depth. I came across my tie off from 2021 and the line was still in good order for the final ascent.
The passage between sumps 4 and 5 was just as nice as I remembered it but of course, shorter.
Sump 5 was waiting, right where I left it.
Oz and I became a bit more chatty now that we had made it to the start of exploration. It was something of a relief to tie the line reel off and set off underwater into virgin territory.
I was hungry. The cold water and significant exertion of caving with a rebreather (forgetting we’d just done a 50m deep, 600m long tech dive…) meant hunger and thirst were real issues.
I ignored it and set off laying line into sump 5. The visibility started out murky from where we had trodden up the gravel while kitting up. It soon went instantly clear and in typical Licanke fashion, did not offer up any suitable belays in any suitable places.
I ran the line reel down to about 15m depth and marveled at the big, blue expanse ahead of me. The cave looked to be going ahead and off to my right, but it soon closed down. Scratching my head, I heard Oz calling for me (he was a little way behind, sorting the Mnemo surveying device). Divers can talk quite well on rebreathers, so I tied off my reel and swam back to see what the problem was.
Christine laying line into the brand new sump 5.
Oz was surprised to see me but swore he hadn’t called out for me. Clear as day I’d heard someone shout my name. Freaky.
I shrugged and went back to my line reel, casting around for ongoing passage. Half of me hoped for a continuation but the other half prayed that this would be the end of the cave and we could stop this 7-year nonsense and go home, carrying on with our lives, having fun elsewhere.
I had tipped literally thousands of pounds into this project, as had my team, and we did start to wonder just how much more we could take.
Oz caught up with me and pointed upwards.
Oh no.
Going up on rebreathers while laying line is stressful and it didn’t help that I was low on oxygen. I had a spare bottle back at sump 2 but I had to get back there first. All these ups and downs burn through oxygen on rebreathers and I wasn’t up for another ascent, which might be futile in any case. I started up the smooth wall and with only 50 bar of oxygen left, thought ‘stuff this’ and came back down, giving the line reel to Oz.
I picked up his Mnemo on the way back and started moving my bottles and rebreather back to sump 4, getting some of the work done for when Oz returned. At least I’d managed to film the dive on my Paralenz dive camera.
Another half an hour or so later he surfaced. The cave had continued very shallow, at about 2m with the occasional air bell. This is a nightmare on a rebreather so I had no regrets about not continuing.
Meanwhile, back between sump 2 and sump 3, Rich, a self-proclaimed introvert was spending hours at the mercy of an extremely excitable and talkative Italian.
He had worked out though that if you turned the helmet lights off, Mauro went silent.
Rich quickly exploited this tactic of ‘saving batteries’ by turning the lights off to get some peace and quiet. Explaining to us later he said he was a bit like a parrot – they go quiet when you throw a blanket over their cage!
To keep themselves occupied, I’d requested that they get some nice images and video from the decorated side passage in between sumps 2 and 3.
Of course, with no check list and the Italian method of ‘winging it’ the go pro didn’t make it through sump 2.
So, the guys had nothing to do the entire time we were gone.
Check lists. They are the future.
Christine has help kitting up from Mitch in sump 2.
During one of these pitch black siestas, Rich and Mauro both jumped up and turned their lights on as they both heard Oz and I returning. They made their way to sump 3 to greet us, only to be faced with nothing. There was nobody there...
They looked at each other, confused and slightly rattled...and spent another couple of awkward hours waiting for us.
Back at sump 5, Oz and I were making our way back home. I was now very hungry and feeling energy sapped. Food was available at sump 2, but we hadn’t brought any further in. Oz donated one of his baby food gel energy pouch things. It was utterly revolting but it gave me a short boost to get me back through to sump 2.
Rich went and got me some food when he realised his life was possibly in danger due to my hunger and I soon got ‘back in the room’ having eaten a tuna pasta tin of cat food.
Nutrition. We put that on the list for next time….
Due to excellent planning and timing, shortly after surfacing from Sump 2, the four of us could hear voices. The support team of Mark, Lou, Luke and Mitch had arrived and we were extremely grateful to see them.
We had been underground about 15 hours and discovered a couple of hundred metres of new underwater passage, which was still going. In addition, we completed the dry survey between sumps 4 and 5 and the remainder of sump 4. We left forward pushing bailout bottles at sump 5 as well.
We even got some video. That was a seriously productive day out.
Chris and Rich beyond sump 1. Image: Mark Burkey
This expedition has received generous assistance from several organisations and businesses listed below. We are grateful to our Croatian friends for their help and support over the last 7 years.
Izvor Licanke Expedition Team 2022: Mark Burkey, Louise McMahon, Luke Brock, Mitchell Parry, Richard Walker
Push divers: Christine Grosart, Osama Gobara, Mauro Bordignon.
The expedition reports, funded by Mount Everest Foundation, are available to read here:
Funding and support:
Santi Drysuits, Halcyon Dive Systems, Mount Everest Foundation, Ghar Parau Foundation,
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”.
“You have no idea how much sh!t we are in….”
Fuzine, Croatia
Osama Gobara, fondly known as ‘Oz’ watched despairingly as his cave diving buddy Mauro ‘faffed’ in only a way that Italians can faff.
“It’ll be fine” was the reply in a slightly high-pitched, laid-back Italian accent, dismissing Osama’s worries as he threw bits of diving and caving gear in the car.
Oz, gripped with dread, knowing what it meant to be late and disorganised for any expedition of mine, tried to warn Mauro…especially as they were already a day late.
“You have no idea how much sh!t we are in!” he told Mauro. He knows me too well.
All assembled for the pre-trip final briefing
Despite over 6 months of meticulous planning on the part of the British contingent (except Mitch Parry, who apart from occasionally using a computer once a week, had also got the flight dates completely wrong…) Oz and Mauro decided that it would all come together in the last 48 hours before the expedition.
Wrong clothing, wrong gas and wrong equipment was quickly put to bed by a few sharply worded Whatsapp messages from myself and they rocked up a day late, having never met any of my team before.
This didn’t look good. I could feel undertones of doubt about my choices of extra push divers and I started to feel uneasy.
I knew Oz would pull it out of the bag but Mauro was a complete unknown to me and my team – they would both have to pull their socks up.
After all, everyone was here to carry their kit. All 25 bags of it, plus 5 scooters and 4 rebreathers…
Osama Gobara in sump 2
After the 2021 expedition where I discovered yet another sump, sump 5 and some really nice but far too short walking passage, we re-evaluated the Licanke expedition. Now in it’s 7th year, it was just no longer safe to keep ending up with one diver pushing alone so far into the system. We decided to bring in reinforcements.
Finding push divers for your expedition is hard.
First, they need to be CCR and scooter capable in a 50m deep, 7 degree sump; they need to be happy carrying their rebreathers and all their bailouts in a drysuit in dry cave; they need to be team players and be prepared to join the ‘big carry’ in and out of the cave; they need to be able to lay line well and survey, both underwater and above water; they need to be able to solve any problem either above or below water but most of all – they must not be a dickhead.
We don’t want dickheads on our expedition, especially if I’m at some stage to hand the end of my line over to them. I’ll only do that for people I like, who pull their weight and earn it.
Mauro Bordignon
Rich Walker had religiously come on every exped since 2015 at quite some personal expense and discomfort. He dislikes caving anyway, so doing it in a drysuit and rebreather really doesn’t appeal to him. By his own admission, being beyond a deep, reasonably long sump like sump 2 in Licanke, made him uneasy. His expertise is in the water; he's just not a fan of getting out. I needed someone who didn’t mind this level of exposure and was prepared to push further.
So, while Rich was happy in deep support mode, Oz and Mauro were brought in to leapfrog the exploration. The exped was now 2 weeks long with rest days factored in, as the cave was getting longer – and harder.
Once they had got their pile of half-built KISS Sidewinder rebreather bits into some sort of machine that could support life, we had a briefing. Using a combination of huge printed out survey and the laptop hooked up to the telly, it was quite comprehensive. We then had the worlds biggest whiteboard and magnets to move people and gear across the cave to finalise the plan.
Chaining large amounts of equipment over the huge boulder chamber is the most efficient way of keeping things moving.
The next morning the ‘big carry’ ensued. It was pretty slick. Scooters, rebreathers, bailout cylinders, deco bottles, bags with drums full of regulators all made their way to sump 2.
Regs were tested, rebreathers built and checked and scooters checked for batteries and damage.
Owing to several items being forgotten last time, we made use of A4 wetnotes and pens at the start of sump 2. These were for check lists to make sure no divers set off into the blue yonder minus a camera, food, tackle bags, suit gas bottle, spare oxygen etc. Once you had set off, there was no turning back. The plan to cross sump 2 has always been to go hard and fast on the scooter trigger to avoid decompression. It is a committing dive.
After a day off and some mandatory last minute faffing, the plan was for me and Osama to go straight to sump 5 and dive it. We also needed to survey the remainder of sump 4 and the dry passage between sumps 4 and 5. I had been alone the previous year so a proper survey had taken a back seat.
Osama and I set off a few minutes ahead of Rich and Mauro. I towed the spare scooter and Oz the forward pushing bailout bottles. Rich and Mauro followed on with 'safeties' staged through the sump at key points and decompression bottles for the 'home' side of sump 2.
I also took a bunch of polyprop ‘washing line’ to help protect the thin exploration line at the exits of the sumps and set about rigging this on the far side of sump 2 before the others appeared.
Everyone had made it past sump 2. The game was on.
This expedition has received generous assistance from several organisations and businesses listed below. We are grateful to our Croatian friends for their help and support over the last 7 years.
The expedition reports, funded by Mount Everest Foundation, are available to read here:
Funding and support:
Santi Drysuits, Halcyon Dive Systems, Mount Everest Foundation, Ghar Parau Foundation, Suex Scooters Warmbac
Izvor Licanke Expedition Team 2022: Mark Burkey, Louise McMahon, Luke Brock, Mitchell Parry, Richard Walker
Push divers: Christine Grosart, Osama Gobara, Mauro Bordignon.
Wild World
Osama and Mauro at sump 2. Image: Mark Burkey
I was well and truly broken after that 15 hour day. I didn’t ache so much, but mentally I was wrung out.
I asked Oz how many days off he though he’d need before going back. He gestured “two” with his fingers while inhaling a mouth full of Mauro’s incredible mushroom risotto.
That was me out. I needed at least 3 days off and even then, wondered if a trip in excess of 15 hours wearing my rebreather was something I wanted to do that week. Again.
Mauro was super fired up at this point. Having seen the carry between sumps 2 and 3, Rich had no interest in going there with his JJ.
We agreed that there also wasn’t much value in having people sitting between sumps getting cold all day and as Osama and I had already moved the push bottles forward to sump 5, there was no point in Rich and I crossing sump 2. Each time a diver passes that sump there is elevated risk. Rich’s JJ had broken in numerous ways in any case so he had carried it out the cave. I left mine in and rebuilt it, so there would always be one standby diver with a fully functioning rebreather, quick access to a drysuit and fully charged scooter ready to help beyond sump 2 in case of an emergency.
Chris and Mitch in Izvor Licanke. Image: Mark Burkey
Osama managed to flood his KISS sidewinder when he carried it to sump 2. I always carried my rebreather fully built and waterproofed but for some reason the guys decided to do it their way. Some faffing ensued and after some stolen sofnolime, the unit was back working again.
Oz and Mauro set off while Mark snapped away with his camera and Lou rounded up rather less than enthusiastic volunteers to help her complete the survey.
Lou had done an incredible job or resurveying all the dry cave between sumps 1 and 2 as we could not access the old data. This is the beauty of this expedition; everyone gets to learn lots of different caving and cave diving expedition skills in a relatively comfy environment. A short 7 degree cave dive between you and daylight being ‘comfy’…
Rich, Mitch and myself posed in various positions throughout the cave while Mark Burkey tried to take pictures he hadn’t managed to before and he came out with some stunners.
Chris and Mitch in Licanke. Image: Mark Burkey
The next job was to go back to the houses and cook for the guys when they came out. The accommodation this year was 2 houses close to each other with excellent and comfortable facilities. We had tried to get a ‘camp boss’ – someone to take care of the cooking, cleaning, shopping and general domestic duties while we faffed and fixed broken things and recuperated.
Unfortunately, she got injured and wasn’t able to make it, so we put our best cooks to work to batch cook for everybody and re-heat stuff for the divers who came out late.
Back in the cave, Oz and Mauro were making good progress to sump 5 and continued laying line in irritatingly shallow cave. It surfaced, then sumped, surfaced, then sumped again…it carried on like this, with intermittent sandy air bells until they finally crossed what was now sump 8.
Not believing there wouldn’t be another sump just around the corner, Mauro set off walking in his diving gear.
The cave got bigger as he walked down a clean washed stream way, a canyon, which got higher and echoed more as he went. He went back to Oz and they shed their diving gear and set off into new, galloping size passageway.
Screen grab of 'Wild World' beyond Sump 8.
Getting bigger all the time, they filmed with the go pro and tried to estimate the size and distance they were travelling. Soon, the canyon broke out into a huge boulder chamber. There were precariously balanced boulders the size of cars everywhere and some stalagmites close to the walls. The big breakdown chamber reminded me of a smaller version of the Salle de la Verna.
Trudging up and down the big boulders, Mauro was non-stop singing “OOOOH Baby baby it’s a wild world……doo do do dooo do do….”
Oz is deaf to him, so carried on trying to measure things mentally.
They came across another sump. Sump 9.
Neither of them had a mask or diving gear, understandably, but as with the others it was blue, clear and inviting.
Filming with the go pro as they walked back, they made their way back to sump 2 where they took a 15 minute break and a short snooze before heading back through the deep sump.
Some of the team went back into the cave to meet them and get the news. They had been underground about the same time (15 hours) plus a bit of faff at the start.
There was still a lot of work to do. All their discoveries needed to be surveyed and they wanted to do a bit more filming.
Owing to Mauro’s incessant singing, we decided to call the new, gargantuan chamber; “Wild World”.
Izvor Licanke had not done what she had promised. We were sure the cave would close down.
Instead, she opened an enormous, 30 metre high can of worms...
Survey Izvor Licanke 2023
This expedition has received generous assistance from several organisations and businesses listed below. We are grateful to our Croatian friends for their help and support over the last 7 years.
The expedition reports, funded by Mount Everest Foundation, are available to read here:
https://www.mef.org.uk/uploads/uploads/MEF_22-36_FullReport.pdf
Izvor Licanke Expedition Team 2022: Mark Burkey, Louise McMahon, Luke Brock, Mitchell Parry, Richard Walker
Push divers: Christine Grosart, Osama Gobara, Mauro Bordignon.
Funding and support:
Santi Drysuits, Halcyon Dive Systems, Mount Everest Foundation, Ghar Parau Foundation,
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
“You need to stop doing that”
Christine diving her KISS rebreather
Some of the best, if a little uncomfortable advice I was given when I was a Cave Diving Group trainee, came from none other than Rick Stanton.
As a diligent and conscientious trainee, I would spend hours poring over cave surveys before I went diving. I would work out the gas I needed, what size cylinders to take, whether there would be any decompression and the depth profiles.
It wasn’t a bad thing to be learning, but of course I was diving in caves where others had been previously and lines were in situ. They had been surveyed and, in many cases, photographed and filmed (less so in the UK, I hasten to add).
The CDG refers to these dives as ‘Tourist and Training dives’ in its newsletter, which is the bible for finding out about submerged caves not just in the UK, but around the world.
Anything where nobody had ever been before; a new discovery, was referred to as ‘Exploration’.
You can see then why it irritates genuine cave explorers to hear the latest cohort of cave divers saying they have explored this cave and that cave - and then being immediately disappointed to find they just dived a tourist route. The word is getting muddied by those who think that because it is their first dive in the cave, it counts as ‘exploration’.
The term in the cave diving world is very clear cut, to distinguish between new discoveries and ‘tourist’ dives along existing line. If you are not the first person to go there, it is not exploration.
Chris practises line laying on her KISS rebreather, using a Santi drysuit and Halcyon wing, backplate and torch.
“You need to stop doing that” Rick said, bursting my bubble. “I know you’ve been taught to study cave surveys but that won’t help you when you go into new cave”.
I was 26 years old and about to undergo my qualifying test in the CDG.
I didn’t dawn on me then that Rick was already looking at my future in being a cave explorer and I shrugged off his comments as something only he did - and carried on studying the survey in front of me.
He was right though. If nobody has ever been there, not only will there be no line in place to follow but you will have no idea of what the cave will do.
You get a hunch of course, from years of caving and cave diving experience and having dived other caves in the region.
I have an unfinished geology degree so have an inkling of what a cave might do.
But Licanke was acutely unhelpful.
Christine prepares for one of her early exploration dives, extending the end of the Garrel, France, 2012.
Caves in Croatia had a habit of plummeting super deep, 100 metres + and when we hit 50m in Licanke, we feared the worst. Decompressing in 7 degrees was miserable. Given the cave already had a dry section, we figured it would do one of two things; Go to surface, or plummet deeper.
Really, really unhelpful.
All we could really do was plan for how deep we were prepared to dive and how much deco we were prepared to do on any given dive. That would determine the limit of exploration.
I’m not in the habit of winging it and sorting it out at the the deco stop. That’s silly.
To plan for virgin exploration, we simply look at our logistics, capabilities, gas available and time available. Put simply, based on what we did last time, we make a personal decision on what we are prepared to do this time.
I was very fortunate to learn from the best. Supporting divers such as Rick Stanton, Jon Volanthen in their explorations and learning to cave dive with Clive Westlake.
It really is that simple. Conversations go along the lines of “I really don’t want to do more than 3 hours deco in there tomorrow” or “We’ve only got two bottles for pushing….so how far will that get us if the average depth is 30m, 40m or 50m?”
You need to know your swimming speed, scootering speed given the conditions, plan for various average depths and decompression contingencies.
Thermal factors need to be considered and lots of ‘what ifs’.
What if we lose a stage bottle? What if we lose a scooter? What if the rebreather malfunctions?
We try to mitigate all of the ‘what ifs’ and inevitably, the cave will throw something at us that we hadn’t bargained for. That’s exploration.
I kitted up into my KISS rebreather and performed my final checks.
Chris prepares her KISS rebreather
Rich was unable to dive, which meant several things:
- I would only be able to carry enough bailout gas* to get me home from sump 3, thus I would not be able to undertake exploration alone on this dive.
- I was also towing a back-up scooter which limited the amount of extra bailout I could take.
- I would need to carry all my equipment through the dry sections without help and this would be extremely time consuming.
- There was nobody able to rescue me if I got trapped beyond sump 2.
I set off, disappointed that this was only to be a recce dive, but I already had a wild and cunning plan in my mind to salvage the expedition - I just needed one phone call.
*Bailout gas is contained in open circuit scuba cylinders, which are used as a safety factor to get a diver home in the event or rebreather malfunction or failure. Rebreather divers should always carry enough bailout gas to get them home from the furthest and deepest point in the event of rebreather failure.
Rich packs tackle bags
Funding and support:
Santi Drysuits, Halcyon Dive Systems, Mount Everest Foundation, Ghar Parau Foundation, Suex Scooters Warmbac
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.
Moody Mull.
Mull, Scotland
“Is anyone here a geologist?” our rather chilled out kayak leader asked.
“Me, me, meeeeeee!” I said, rather excited …and putting my hand up….seriously….
Well, not really. I did study geosciences for several years with the Open University and loved it…but never finished the degree because I had another medic degree going on….I digress.
We were on the Isle of Mull. Looking to cheer myself up after a rather stressful, fraught and astonishingly horrible start to the year, I clicked ‘going’ on a Facebook kayaking trip run by Ali Othen Mountains and paddles.
Packing boats, ready for the off.
It was 7 days kayaking, circumnavigating Mull with 6 nights wild camping. We would be completely self-sufficient, taking all our camping and cooking gear with us and I was really looking forward to seeing places only accessible by kayak and wildlife spotting.
I flew home from work, threw the kayak up onto the roof and packed the car, before the long drive up to Oban. From there I jumped on the Craignure ferry and set up camp at the pricey but very smart Craignure campsite. I had a pint and a chippy tea with Ali and my diving buddy Darren who has lived on Mull for quite some time now.
Darren’s wife is part of the Otter fancying society on Mull and they build the otter crossings around the island. They also occasionally end up with run-over otters in their freezer for autopsies...nestled in between the oven chips and on top the peas, apparently...
After a cosy night in my van we met up with the other two random paddlers who were on the trip. I think it is safe to say neither of them were my type of person, but there was nothing I could do about it. My plan was to learn how much stuff I could get into my kayak, how it would ride fully laden, what worked and what didn’t work, so I could plan my own adventures going forward.
Lunch break
We set off in glassy, stunning conditions from Craignure and paddled along the south coast, wild camping along the way. We stopped off at gorgeous, white sandy beaches but as ever, they were blighted with piles of rubbish and I spied one large green fishing net.
Mostly buried and too big to even think about taking with me, I had no choice but to leave it.
I did spy a smaller piece which looked in good enough condition to do something with. I took pictures and logged the location on my phone. We found a comfy-ish spot for the night having paddled 16 miles.
On the second day, we arrived at Fidden Farm after a 25 mile paddle, familiar to me from last year’s adventure in Scotland.
After a night here, we crossed to Iona which was my first decent open water crossing. It was lumpy but prepared me well for what was to come.
From the northern tip of Iona we headed straight for Staffa, a 13 mile open crossing, to the famous Fingal’s cave.
The crossing had a reasonable swell but was perfectly manageable – until the tourist boats came thundering past and created huge wakes. Initially terrified, I settled down and began enjoying surfing them as we made the last strides towards the cave entrance which was fortunately in good enough condition to enter.
Balancing my phone on my lap, I shot some images and video and managed to choreograph Ali into position for that classic ‘kayak in a cave’ shot. The cathedral like cave entrance, made up of volcanic basalt columns was seriously impressive.
Not keen on getting tangled up with tourists, we had a quick bite to eat then headed on another open crossing to Treshnish and stopped on Lunga.
Puffin takeover on Lunga, Treshnich, Scotland. Images: Christine Grosart
The weather started to come in and rain and wind meant I got very good at putting my tent up quickly.
In the morning the waves were still a bit necky for crossing over to Calgary bay, so I took the opportunity in the sunshine to enjoy the colony of puffins who were busy building nests in the cliff edge.
They weren’t shy at all and I was pleased that I’d taken my DSLR and 300mm lens to capture their antics. I could have spent more than a few hours in the sunshine among the primroses and bluebells watching them.
Once the weather settled a bit we made a very bum-clenching 8 mile trip around to Calgary Bay. Normally beautiful, yet again on my second ever visit, it was overcast, windy and raining.
We hunkered down in our tents and despite Ali dutifully checking the waves every few hours, they wouldn’t calm so we had to spend another night in the rain, stuck fast.
It wasn’t looking hopeful to get around the corner to Tobermory.
Stunning south Mull, Scotland
As another night passed, this time with no sleep and some weird antics going on outside my tent, I decided to call it a day. We had to head back by bus to Craignure to pick up the cars to drive the kayaks around the corner in any case. I decided that this was a good time to bail. The Sound of Mull would keep.
I was grateful to get back to my cosy van and my own company and decided to make the most of my free time and head back to the beach where I had seen the lost fishing net.
This was easier said than done.
We had arrived on the beach by kayak and with a bit of advice, google maps and a helpful dog walker, I strode off confidently in completely the wrong direction to the wrong sandy beach!
It too had plenty of lost fishing gear washed up along the shoreline, but it was the wrong rubbish and the wrong beach.
Off I set on what should have been a half an hour walk…turning into a 2 hour epic!
Scaling cliffs, dodging sheep and landing thigh deep in a bog…I finally made my way to the correct beach..which I could have easily walked to down a perfectly good track from the car had I not set off in the wrong direction…
Hey ho. The sun was out, it was absolutely stunning on that southern side of Mull and I bagged up the net while another group of paddlers took a break nearby and the sea sparkled continuously.
It was possibly one of the most beautiful views I’d ever witnessed in the UK and I enjoyed it before heading back to the campsite and then Oban for the next crazy couple of days.
Ali keeps the lost art of writing post cards alive.
"You scared the sh!t out of me!"
I made a hasty exit from the 7 degree sump, wondering why I couldn’t have chosen a different hobby…
Izvor Licanke - class of 2021.
It was an early start in the Licanke house.
Anton and I didn’t mess about getting changed and heading into the cave, arriving in plenty of time to dive sump 2.
Anton elected to follow me as he had never dived this sump and it was milky visibility. Fortunately one of my back up lights has a mind of its own and often decides to turn itself on at depth. This gave Anton a welcome ‘lighthouse’ to follow in the gloom as we crossed the sump and we soon met our scooter drop, somewhat prematurely, and swam to the surface to de-kit.
As I surfaced, the dive line felt a bit flimsy in my hand. I grabbed onto it so as not to de-rig Anton and at that moment, it snapped just above the water’s edge.
That was lucky.
I waited for Anton to get out of his gear. He could see what had happened and in silence I repaired the line and we started moving our gear through the dry cave.
After a few journeys to sump 3, we had a brief chat before setting off through the sump. It only takes 4 minutes to cross sump 3. Anton was on a mission and had got all his gear to sump 4 before I had even exited the water.
He got into sump 4 first and reached up for his bailout bottle, which was lying on a ledge just above the water. The bottle seemed to catch on something and as he pulled it towards him, it nose-dived violently straight onto a sharp flake of rock. A loud hiss and puff of gas was followed by silence.
Oh shit.
The rock had taken a chunk out of Anton’s regulator hose.
I stared at it in disbelief. This cave had bitten just about everyone in one way or another and now even Anton had not escaped its clutches.
Bugger.
Anton declared he could fix the hose back at sump 2, but could not dive any further into the cave.
It was down to me now.
As before, there was nobody who could come and get me in the event of a problem.
I got into sump 4, clipped off my line reel ready for deployment and set off. I knew that the line went about 100 metres distance, dipping to 28m depth, before it ended at about 10m. After that, who knew what it would do?
It took a while to get to the end of the well-laid line. I was taking it steady and trying to get a feel for this sump. It was much like the other sumps; sandy, undulating floor with the occasional jagged rock here and there. I found the end of line with some of it bundled neatly under a big rock. It was safe and secure, so I tied into it, feeling huge relief that finally we were getting somewhere.
The cave gradually undulated shallower and I was laying line at about 10m depth through easy going, large passage when I suddenly hit a huge, vertical wall. Looking left and right, I could see no ongoing passage - the only way was up.
Laying line up a sheer wall on a manual rebreather is tricky. I took my time, making small tie offs wherever the opportunity arose and there weren’t many of them. As I got to about 4m depth I started looking up and sure enough, there was the glistening ripples of air surface. I bobbed to the surface only to crack my helmet on a roof projection.
Arse.
Moving away slightly to the side, I was now floating in a perfectly round, turquoise pool.
Where the hell was the way on?
Just across the pool was a large flake of rock slicing across my view of the otherwise circular sump pool. That must be it.
Swimming carefully on the surface over to the rock flake, I stuck my nose around the corner.
There lay a perfect de-kitting ramp, a flat stream passage with cream, orange and black walls and a ledge which looked like a perfect de-kitting bench!
Brilliant!
I de-kitted, turned off all my bottles and wandered down the brand new stream passage. The roof was about 30 metres high, the passage was a couple of metres wide, bigger in places and the stream flowed gently towards me under my feet.
It was beautiful and for that moment, it was all mine. My own piece of planet earth that nobody else had ever seen. It had never seen light, never been walked on and I had no clue how long this would last.
As I walked down the easy going passage, stopping to have a good look up into the tall roof, I let out a “Woo Hoooooo!!” of delight. At this point, I realised I had left my Paralenz dive camera clipped off to the nose cone of my scooter in sump 2.
I didn’t actually mind at this stage and concentrated on not tripping over and hurting myself, or putting a hole in my drysuit.
It was far too soon but some 70 metres later, I came across another perfectly round pool of turquoise water.
I walked straight into it to check if it was a lake, a duck or a sump.
It was a sump.
This was the cave that kept on giving. I had found sump 5.
Izvor Licanke survey 2021
With only one bailout bottle (again) I didn’t chance it. I wouldn’t have enough gas to make any meaningful progress and bail out if I needed to.
I took a compass bearing of the passage, counted my paces back to sump 4 and kitted up to dive back to a waiting Anton.
As I surfaced, excited to tell him the news, my BOV (bailout valve) started to free-flow and we had quite a job turning it off. I lost quite a lot of diluent gas and this was a concern as I still had two sumps to dive home.
As we were sorting out the problem, I felt something strange by my right hip. I reached behind to locate my line reel and found it had unclipped itself and rolled back down the slope, underwater.
With a lack of diluent I figured it would have to stay there, it was not worth diving back into the sump to find it.
Anton and I dived back through sump 3 and embarked on the painstaking carry back and forth to sump 2. Once all our gear was safely stashed, we unpacked the mini dry tube and began a grade 5 survey of the passage between sump 2 and sump 3. This was a relaxing affair and felt like a serious achievement to finally get this done and dusted.
It was finally time to dive home. I dispatched Anton into the sump first as there wasn’t much kitting up space for two people. As I turned on my rebreather, I realised I barely had 10 bar of diluent left. This was not good. Scratching my head, I worked out a way of plumbing in my bailout bottle to my rebreather and this worked remarkably well. The partial pressure of oxygen was easy to manage and it was a surprisingly comfortable dive home.
I surfaced to a very concerned team. Mark was particularly upset.
Anton did not know that I had needed to rectify a rebreather problem and of course, this took time. When he surfaced, he told the team I was a few minutes behind. In fact, I was an hour or so behind.
I had not even started kitting up when he’d left and the team were getting more and more concerned.
Anton did not have enough battery remaining on his scooter to come back looking for me easily, so they waited and waited, getting more and more worried as time passed.
They were pleased to see me, but much like when a child runs out into the road, you greet them with a bollocking.
Lou, doing her favourite thing
It was dark when we finally surfaced from sump 1. The guys had sorted pizza for us and beer. I was almost too tired to eat it.
We had been underground for 14 hours and underwater for 124 minutes. Sump 4 had been passed, new cave discovered and sump 5 was there, just waiting to be dived.
After a day off and an evening at our favourite ‘Bear’ restaurant, we headed back into the cave to recover all the equipment. Possibly due to familiarity or maybe just motivation to get the job done, the gear all came out in half the time it took to go in.
As usual, I was bringing up the rear and did a final ‘idiot check’ beyond sump one to make su
re all items had been taken out of the cave. I kitted up into my twinset to dive home.
“Where’s my hood?”
Vaguely remembering that I had packed a hood for safe keeping in a pot - which had doubtless headed out of the cave in someone’s bag - I looked dejectedly at the Santi woollen beanie that was lying on a slab of rock.
That would have to do.
I made a hasty exit from the 7 degree sump, wondering why I couldn’t have chosen a different hobby.
From left to right: Richard Walker, Christine Grosart, Mark Burkey, Louise McMahon, Anton Van Rosmalen, front: Fred Nunn.
I cannot thank the team enough for all their hard work and support on this project, members both past and present. Also, we must thank the staff and friends from Krnica dive centre; those who arranged permits to dive the cave, loaned us cylinders and sorted our gas.
We also wish to thank various diving and caving outfits who have assisted in some way, along the way:
We must also express our gratitude to the Ghar Parau Foundation for yet again giving us a grant and likewise, the Mount Everest Foundation for again selecting our project for an award.
We also wish to thank various diving and caving outfits who have assisted in some way, along the way:
Santi Diving; Halcyon Dive Systems; Suex Scooters; Fourth Element; Little Monkey Caving; Narkedat90