Part I. Starting a little late, the swimmers entered the water about 9.30am on the beach just outside the small harbour. At the time, not recognising it as the start of my current burn-out and long dark night, I’d been injured and disinterested during the previous week, so I decided to go out really easy for…
The origin of the Champion of Champions (CoC) format swimming race and it’s rather hyperbolically overblown title lies with the British Long Distance Swimming Association (BLDSA) who have run it as an annual event for many years often in Dover, the home of Channel swimming. The CoC is a three-part (“Two and a Bit“) race and given…
After repeated poor wet cold summers, 2013 was pretty decent by Irish standards. Or at least mid-May to mid-July were good. After that it reverted to recent type but did allow me to run a Copper Coast Distance Week swim which had been blown out in 2012 by a ridiculous summer storm which stopped swimming everywhere that day.…
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. With the sickness, the changes in feeds, how the crew felt, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Sylvain was still swimming strongly. That despite everything, he was very much the star and focus of our private show, and our entire concern. The earlier change of…
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. I wasn’t sure when I started this how long this series would be. Previous long series have run to five posts. This will take six. Given his achievement, I think it’s fair to say that Sylvain deserves a six-part series! As I wrote in the previous post, almost immediately…
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. I closed last part with a question: Did Lisa, Zoe or I really consider Sylvain’s thoughts as he passed into the south-west shipping zone? Not really. There was no-one on Gallivant that day who wasn’t intimately familiar with Channel swimming, with four Channel Soloists aboard, one as Observer, the…
Part 1. Part 2. That Sunday morning of late September was overcast and dull as Sylvain undulated away from Shakespeare beach almost parallel to the kilometre-long Admiralty Pier. There was a light Force Two breeze ruffling the water surface, which was a slightly cooler than hoped for 15.1 degrees Celsius. It is always important, vital even,…
Part 1. We arose in Varne Ridge early on Sunday morning, but much better than the more usual middle of the night for a typical Channel swim. Sylvain’s favourite breakfast is brioche, and he didn’t start the morning with a typical Channel swimmer’s huge breakfast, instead restraining himself and just having brioche and coffee, while…
LoneSwimmer 