28/09/2025
Long post alert…
Wow, what a day!
It started well, when the team met the ‘King of the Channel’, Kevin Murphy before the start. We were like fangirls (Kim “I touched him!”) 😂
We met up with our pilots Rob and Phil and our CS&PF observer, Joel and we were ready to go.
From the harbour, we headed out and round the coast to Samphire Hoe, where we would start our swim. With absolutely no faffing, Liz jumped in and swam to the beach, cleared the water and raised her hands to indicate that she was ready. After a flash of the lights she was back in to start off the swim. The sky was pitch black and the water was decidedly lumpy…
Conditions were the same for the whole of the first swim rotation (Liz, Kim, Dawn, Michelle and June) although Michelle and June swam through a beautiful sunrise.
By the time the second rotation started, lights were no longer needed and the waves were decidedly bigger. Liz likened it to swimming in a washing machine. With jellyfish. It was really tough going; impossible to get into a rhythm, waves throwing us around and slapping us in the face. However, we made decent progress and pushed on past halfway.
We had been hoping to reach France during our third rotation but the tides had other ideas. A strong tide was pushing us towards the no landing area in Calais and at one point the pilot told us it was 50:50 whether we would have to abandon. Heads down and full focus for the swims then… We managed to (just) get past a marker buoy on the right side and finally France was getting closer.
After a mammoth swim from June, a fourth swim was needed by Liz, but thankfully just a short one. Kim, Dawn and Michelle followed behind to join her at the landing point - a small beach at Cap Blanc Nez - for a victory dance and dodgy selfie, while June recovered on board.
Back on board, the pilots quickly turned for home, about a 2 1/2 hour return trip, while we basked in the glow of what we had achieved and a glorious sunset.
On our day’s journey, we spotted tuna leaping in front of the boat, porpoises breaching the waves, a massive seal and lots and lots of jellyfish. As the busiest shipping channel in the world, we obviously saw plenty of boat traffic; ferries (big!), shipping containers, sail boats and other channel swim pilot boats as well as a group of microlights above us in the middle section.
I won’t lie, this swim was tough! But we came together as a group of strong women and we did it! 🥳
P.s. Apt that the Rugby World Cup was won the same day by another such group of women. 👏🏻👏🏻🌹🌹
