MUSWELL HILL PEOPLE |
Surfing underwater on the African
coast
WHEN sea divers Charlotte Grahame and partner Mark Durham encounter sharks and dolphins off the African coast the world will he able to watch. Their 18,000-mile, year-long trip from South Africa to Egypt is being billed as the world's first underwater cyber-safari. Video images will be broadcast on the Internet site set up by Ms Grahame, allowing friends and her family hack home in Queen's Avenue, Muswell Hill, to share in her amazing experience. The couple, both aged 27, will independently dive their way up Africa's East coast, starting in September, 1999 at Cape Town. By the time they leave the Gulf of Aqaba a year later, they will have sampled some of the world's most beautiful sites over land and sea.
They plan to dive with great white sharks off Cape Town, enter Mozambique in time for the whale shark season, explore the vast freshwater lakes of Malawi and the national safari parks of Tanzania and Kenya, before returning to the coast, to the Red Sea in June. That will coincide with tile schooling season for hammer-head sharks and exotic fish. They will assess the political situation in north-east Africa before tracking their precise journey and have arranged to meet up with convoys periodically for security purposes. As well as feeding their website - www.divethedream.com they will conduct a survey of sea life for the Marine Conservation Society.
“I had the madcap idea to go to
Mozambique in a London pub and it grew from there. Our plans just wouldn't go
away amid the hangover the next morning," said Ms Grahame, a West End
advertising executive. Like her partner, who
used to run a London diving shop, she is an experienced diver. Three years ago she worked as a chef on a dive boat on
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The
couple have spent months saving and organizing the adventure, which they
estimate will cost £20,000. They
have also used their spare time to learn about website technology.
Two sponsors, who will advertise on their website, have agreed to supply
the diving gear and ship over a converted former army Land Rover, which they
bought especially for the trip. They
are currently seeking more sponsorship for their largely self-financed journey.
Ms Grahame said “We’ll take the laptop and camera equipment and will
hook up to the Internet whenever we can. People
will be able to follow our progress and see what we will see without getting
their feet wet. "There will be
video clips and information about the dive sites we visit. The site will be
tailored towards divers as well as the general public.”