Edit: sorry I didn’t update this earlier, I figured all those interested would know but a lot of people are still checking. Stephen was pulled out after 12 hours on his second attempt due to being stuck in an adverse current. Those of you who have read the blog for a long time will know…
I put it together with a selection of photographs from many of Stephen’s swims and maps of the different Channels and some Stephen’s family and crews. Enjoy it before it gets a takedown notice. Photos from Stephen and Noel Browne. I’ll update it at some point with more pictures, especially Cook Strait and Molokai and…
It’s been a stressful two days for Stephen (and his supporters). A question was raised over the completion of his Molokai swim, which Stephen addresses below. The assertion was that Stephen might not have cleared the water and hence might not have completed the Molokai Channel swim. I could write a whole post on this…
Another week, another swim and another swim report from Stephen, to whom, as always, I am indebted for sharing this with me and therefore you. Untouched as last week, (Stephen writes this stuff on his phone always). I still can’t get over Stephen doing both these swims only 8 days apart. If you don’t have…
(I accidentally sent out a brief version of this post yesterday to subscribers, sorry about that). Some of you will have already seen Stephen’s own post-Cook swim report. He emailed me on Saturday night so I can put it up here. He titled it a “Widowmaker swim”. Stephen is not prone to exaggeration so for him…
There are swimming legends around the world. Little known outside our sport. Some past, some current. In a country with a very small population of only four million, Ireland is only occasionally successful in International Sport, and we celebrate our sporting heroes as a consequence. But in Open Water Marathon swimming, we excel. World Open…
He had a tough swim apparently, (those who know of Stephen know those words seem unusual together). Stephen is the first (and only) person to solo Fastnet Lighthouse. Fastnet might mean nothing to you, unless you are a sailor or Irish, but it’s some of the most fearsome open water in Atlantic coastal waters due…
This is astonishing. – Donal *** Tsugarui Channel FEAR AND LOATHING JAPANESE STYLE Saturday 14/7/12 in Tapi Japan 4.00. I am going blind from checking the weather on my phone. Every one of the weather apps tell me today is going to flat calm with light north-westerly winds, hard to believe after the gales of…
I find a lot of similarity between Stephen Redmond’s fantastic Molokai Channel and Lisa Cummins’s two-way English Channel. Waiting for news and updates all through a Sunday afternoon and night. The trackers working intermittently or not at all, and hoping for more updates from the boat through third parties. The agonising last 10 hours, wondering where they…
I started this Open Water Swimming Year series in 2017, and did not think I would complete it all in a year. I anticipated July and August would to be the most difficult to write, because everyone understands summer, and I would struggle to say anything interesting. All writing holds this truth to be self-evident:…
The tenth of November, 2018 sees the launch of the new North Channel Swimming Association, with a public announcement by Channel Swimmer and inaugural Chairperson Antonio Argules in San Francisco (and here on Loneswimmer). Since before Tom Blower’s first successful North Channel solo in 1947 (previously covered on Loneswimmer here), North Channel swim attempts have been…
I joined the boarding queue, just as a vaguely familiar chap joined the queue just in front of me. My suspicion from earlier that I knew him was correct. We chatted, he’d been there on urgent family business. He’d guessed I’d been on early holiday in the popular location, but during the conversation I responded (or as…
Apart from some of the How To articles this index includes many of the site’s most popular articles, particularly the long swim reports covering my friends Trent Grimsey, Sylvain Estadieu, Stephen Redmond and Finbarr Hedderman. Thanks once again to those people for allowing me to provide such fascinating first-hand accounts of the largely hidden world of marathon swimming. There are…
This post arises from the blog’s fifth anniversary in January. Such milestones tend to make one consider various things. One that I have been ruminating on without any conclusions is the history and evolution of the blog and its place in open water swimming. I have recently come to (hesitatingly) accept that LoneSwimmer.com is probably the world’s most…
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 No precept is more sacred to marathon swimmers than the forbidding of a deliberate touch between swimmer and anything else; boats, people or equipment other than feed supplies. That is the way we disqualify ourselves or how we signify that a swim is over. Until you have been there, until it…
The previous two posts dealt with the physiological and environmental limiting factors of marathon swimming. As noted in Part One, non-swimmers and those unfamiliar with the sport tend to see the physiological factors as the greatest hurdles for swimming further distance, often imagining that marathon swimmer’s have some physical capability beyond the average person whereas…
In 2011 I spent a week in Dover at the end of the season with Lisa Cummins and Kevin Williams, waiting to crew for Kevin William’s Solo. Unfortunately the weather was rubbish, Kevin got weathered out, and we spent a significant portion of the week in The White Horse, the pub where successful Channel swimmers…
The voting for the inaugural Global Marathon Swimming Awards closed at the New Year and early last week the winners were announced. There were three categories of award for the first year, 2012: Female Performance of the Year Male Performance of the Year The Barra Award for the most Impressive Overall Body of Work for…
The chief inadequacy amongst my many photographic skills is the portrait. In fact I don’t think of them as portraits, but the more prosaic “pictures of people”. I really struggle with them, with imposing on people, especially when I know that it’ll usually be a waste of their time. So I try to grab snapshots…
Marathonswimmers.org. The only open dedicated forum for marathon swimmers worldwide. Nyad Fact Check site. Dan Slosberg’s comprehensive meta-analysis of the extensive lies Diana Nyad has told over her long duration connected with marathon swimming. Swim Information AIS Dover Dover Harbour Webcam Garrettstown Tide Times (Old Head of Kinsale). Hook Head Lighthouse Webcam facing West. Irish Marine…
I’m writing this because Diana Nyad asked me on Twitter to comment on her blog, after I’d previously commented on Twitter regarding the unveiling of the Heat Drip device being considered for her Cuba to Florida swim. (To be clear, other than that, I have had no contact with Diana Nyad and don’t know her).…
MIMS 2012 – Part 1 – Three Rivers (loneswimmer.com) MIMS 2012 – Part 2 – Race Day (loneswimmer.com) MIMS 2012 – Part 3 – The start and the first hour (loneswimmer.com) For the three people who asked for this, sorry for the delay, it’s been a busy few weeks, Stephen Redmond and Channel swimmers are far more important.…
Stephen Redmond today made swimming history by becoming the first person to complete the Ocean’s 7 swim challenge after 12 hours 45 minutes. Around the world thousands were following Steve’s fourth Tsugaru Channel swim to complete the challenge, including a bunch of tense Sandycove swimmers at Communications Central in Sandycove-on-Sea (aka Dover). And along with…
Evan did a great 4-part series on open water marathon feeding and nutrition. I’ve covered the possible use of Choline supplementation and I’ve a long-standing request in with a friend for a guest post on the subject of further supplementation. Given some questions that have arisen though, it seems we haven’t covered enough of the…
California-based Channel swimmer and sports psychologist Jen Schumacher has previously visited Sandycove and will be returning in 2012 to the Cork Distance Week as part of an aggressive swimming attack on the English Channel and Gibraltar. In 2011 Jen did the astonishing feat of climbing Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the Continental US, on…
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