At precisely 4.20am on Sunday 2nd September 2018, I found myself back in the English Channel again – once more swimming alongside the boat Sea Satin, having 8 months earlier signed up to do a 4-way relay with my Big Rick’s team mates. This was 2 years after we had become the fastest mixed British team to complete a 2-way Channel swim. We were now attempting to swim twice the distance with the same number of swimmers.
And as I started my swim I was already thinking to myself, “What on earth am I doing?”. I’d stupidly committed the schoolboy error of wearing the wrong kind of goggles for a night swim – not only that, but they kept bloody steaming up too. I certainly didn’t remember this happening on my night swim 2 years ago. I didn’t remember the boat being so hard to sight either (even without steamed up goggles).
Inwardly, I was panicking. This wasn’t meant to happen, I felt completely disorientated, the water was choppy and I just couldn’t get a grip on where the boat was in relation to me; well not without having to lift up my goggles every few minutes to check. Added to this annoyance, every time I put my goggles back over my eyes again, they leaked because my cap got caught between my goggles and my face. I also couldn’t hear my team mates shouting at me to swim closer to the boat, as my hat was covering my ears. It all just felt like a big blur.
It was at this moment I thought to myself “This isn’t easy”. You can never be blasé about any Channel swim. This was the reality of a four-way Channel swim though – it was never going to be easy.
Paul trying to wind up Mel…And Paul swimming against the sunriseBig Rick’s had decided to take on this challenge purely for that reason. We’re all strong swimmers and we like to challenge ourselves. Everyone has a reason for swimming. We, as a team, aim to push ourselves at each opportunity. We’d already done a 2-way, so it had to be a 3-way or 4-way otherwise it wouldn’t be worth doing. That’s no disrespect to anyone who does 1- or 2-way relays! It’s just the way we function as a team, how we motivate ourselves, and more importantly it helps to raise more money for the charities we support, rather than doing a similar swim to one we’ve done before.
In my head, there was only one reason we would fail the swim, and that would be due to weather conditions beyond our control. I knew the tides could play havoc too, but I also knew that we were strong enough swimmers to battle through them if necessary.
In the days and weeks leading up to the swim, I didn’t pay a blind bit of attention to the weather reports, or the wind-speed apps that you can download onto your phone. Quite simply, I didn’t want to know! There was nothing I could do about it anyway, but I was more nervous that the weather would put a stop to the swim even starting. We had booked a whole tide window to ourselves, but we still needed 2 clear days of decent weather conditions within that window to even give it a shot, so the stakes were high. Five or six days before our window opened, our pilot got in touch with us to let us know that the first two days of our tide window (2nd and 3rd September) were looking the best conditions for our swim; the remaining days of the tide were not looking good at all.
From the moment we received that news, I was petrified that the weather forecast would change and that it would all be called off. I SO wanted us to have this chance. Fortunately, the weather Gods listened to our prayers and we set off as scheduled – at 3.20am on Sunday 2nd September with Ryan leading us off.
Whilst the weather Gods let us swim, they did not make the swim easy for us one bit. Rarely did we have anything near calm waters, with lumpy, choppy – and at times rough – waters throughout. My 3rd swim, which was on the 2nd lap swimming back from France to Dover for the first time – was the most challenging from that perspective. We could see that Ryan was literally being flipped over onto his back and I was due in the water again after him. Sarah, our crew, said that it was important that I was watched the whole time I was in the water, given the rough conditions. I prepared myself mentally for a tough and challenging swim, which it certainly was! However, it was actually quite a fun swim too. Sometimes you just have to crack on with it, embrace the rough waters, and swim.
Silliness on boardTalking of Sarah our crew, we couldn’t have wished for better support. Sarah worked tirelessly across the whole challenge, running around after us, cooking us food and making us drinks, and watching us as we swam, giving us encouragement. She was simply awesome and an essential part of the team. As a trained masseur she even gave massages to Ryan and me to help loosen our shoulders – as the below pictures demonstrate!
On the plus side, the unsmooth and choppy waters throughout the majority of the swim meant that most of the time the jellyfish stayed below of the surface out of harm’s way – so out of 4 lengths of the English Channel, and 6 swimmers, we only suffered 1 proper jellyfish sting the entire time! (poor Mel). My penultimate swim, where I was swimming through the separation zone, was where I saw the most jellies, and where I came in very close proximity to a few of them. But miraculously no stings. My team mates flashing at me and mooning at me took my mind off the jellyfish anyway!
Big Stu ploughing through the waterMel hoping she won’t get stung on her next swim…At reaching the half-way point, with Ross swimming us into Dover, I felt a bit emotional. It was starting to feel like we could do this… For the majority of the 2nd lap I’d been concerned about the conditions, praying they wouldn’t get any worse than they already were. But we’d broken the back of the swim now. We braced ourselves for another ‘trip’ to France and back.
Me embracing the waves…I think it was on lap 3 that I finally managed to get a bit sleep… When I say ‘a bit’, I mean about 40 minutes! We had pushed some boxes of our food to one side at the front of the boat inside the cabin, and had made it into a semi bed area. It certainly wasn’t comfortable, but at that point I could have slept anywhere!
My unsuccessful attempt at trying to sleep earlier on in the challenge. My eyes are closed but I’m wide awake!The conditions were not as bad as they had been on the 2nd way fortunately. That said, the rough conditions on the 2nd lap had actually played in our favour, as it had helped us to get back from France in 9 and a half hours – which ultimately proved to be our fastest lap of the 4-way.
Some were more successful at sleeping than others…But the tides were not playing ball at all on laps 3 and 4, as due to the timings landing back in Dover the first time, we didn’t catch them in the way we would have liked. After a long slog, Ross finally swam us into France after lap 3 and we thought, “That’s it, a quick sub-10 hour swim back to England and we might still have a chance of beating the world record!”. Sadly, we soon realised that was not to be – and if you look at the track of our 4th lap you will see why! We had to swim out wide from the Cap before the tide finally picked us up to take us in the direction we needed to be going in. I’d counted on only having to do 1 more swim, but it soon became apparent I’d need to do an extra one, making it 8 hours swimming for me in total.
Darkness had fallen again – Dover was well in sight but seemingly not getting much closer, we were fighting strong tides and were being pushed much further away down the coast from Dover than we would have liked. I got in the water again and swam my heart out for another hour, got out again and it looked like we’d barely moved! We were definitely in for the long haul…
At this point, we would have kept swimming for another day if we’d had to – nothing was going to stop us getting back to England, no matter how many more times we had to get back in and swim.
So close to finishing, yet so far!Everyone on the boat had nevertheless become very delirious! We knew we were going to do it now and didn’t care how long it was going to take. Finishing it was all that mattered now. We had the music blasting off the boat, we were dancing around to Frank Sinatra and the Venga Boys (yes, an eclectic mix of tunes) while Mel streamed live Facebook videos! The support from everyone supporting us via social media was completely overwhelming.
At 1.33am we finally arrived back in England, with Stu swimming us in – not into Dover but way beyond Folkestone! It was nice to be greeted by some friendly faces on the beech too, our swimming friends Sal and Tony who’d made the effort to come and see us in, even at that time of night!
Our crazy swim trackIt was about 4.30am on Tuesday 4th September before we finally made it to bed, following a near 2-hour boat trip back to Dover after we’d finished the swim so far away from where we’d started. We hadn’t slept properly since waking up on the Saturday morning to drive down to Dover. So it’s fair to say, the rest of that week we all felt shattered! I was randomly falling asleep during the day, as well as feeling dizzy and light-head for a good week after finishing the swim. It’s amazing how a challenge like that really takes it out of you for several days afterwards. It’s one thing being awake for nearly 3 days continuously, but it’s another thing to do 8 hours of swimming in rough and choppy waters in between as well.
We hadn’t broken the world record, but we’d become the first team on the continent to complete a 4-way English Channel relay swim. And only the 3rd team in the world to do so too.
Our place on the wall in the new Channel pub ‘Les Fleurs’More importantly, we raised nearly £6,500 for British Heart Foundation and Marine Conservation Society, and approximatey £90,000 for a range of charities since the team formed 10 years ago. This is the reason why we swim, and if we can change things for the better whilst pushing ourselves to the limit, then it’s all worth the time and effort in the end.
The question is – what can Big Rick’s Swim Team do next that is bigger than an English Channel 4-way? You’ll have to wait and see. But for the time being, we’re having a well-deserved rest!
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