Al’s Swimming

The moment of truth arrived for Steve this week. He’d based himself down in Dover for the past couple of weeks and got the call that he’d start his swim on Monday morning at about 4am. I flew down to Gatwick, where he met me and his other boat supporter, Mike. I was meant to keep this quiet, but I’ll put it down to nerves. He lost his car in the car park for about an hour, but it was later found safe and sound - at the other terminal. Sorry mate. Aside from that he seemed very calm and we made our way back to Dover to catch a kip for the next couple of hours.

We metthe other support crew member, Rob, early that morning and got to ROCO in good time. Ali (the pilot) was her usual cheerful self and we also met Steve’s observer, Jenny, who was also very pleasant. We noted that most of the other boats were preparing to go to sea, so that was encouraging for all of us. We decided to get going first and headed to Shakespeare Beach (which was where we had started for the relay).

After we had greased Steve up and given him words of encouragement, he set off to the beach and was greeted by some onlookers (what they were doing awake and walking on the beach is anyone’s guess!) and I’m sure that gave him a boost. He got the hooter was soon in the water swimming past the boat. I recommended that he swim with long gliding strokes because the sea was a bit choppy and I was glad to see he followed this advice.

One of his aims was to improve his technique when he was down in Dover and I found this had been achieved significantly since I had last swum with him. Apart from the small hiccup when he feeding bottle landed on his head(!), he maintained his technique for the first 4 hours easily (at 64 strokes a minute), with his feeds also being completed quickly and efficiently. He started out feeding on every hour and then we increased it to every half hour.

One of the bonuses of starting early in the morning is getting the sunrise. It is one of the most uplifting feelings you can get, because even though the change in temperature is barely perceivable, the boast it gives you is immense. It also allows you to see the boats, rather than blocks of lights everywhere! And first on the menu was this beauty! The photo doesn’t do it justice, but it looked magnificent.

Both Rob and I had separate hour swims with Steve to keep him company and give a bit of reinforcement that we could go through what he was for a small amount of time. But boy, did it feel horrible getting back onto the boat. Having your body prone for even and hour and then rocking all over the place when on board. I’ll spare you the details, but the previous night’s dinner didn’t hang around long. Bedtime for me thanks.

<Steve probably carried on swimming>

I’m awake. Next up, was the middle of the channel. Steve continued to make good time and his feeds remained quick and accurate. It also produced, what I believe was, a hilarious example of European versus English weather. I love the contrast with dark enormous clouds and almost nothing. On the mid-point. I kid you not. Reminds me a lot of the English-Scottish border.

The tide that Steve was swimming on, happened to be one of the weakest of the year - meaning that he was not pushed too far up the Channel. It made an interesting comparison, looking where the various ferries passed us. You may remember (or even look to see) that the ferries passed us on starboard side of the vessel during the relay, yet here are seen on our port side. A Capt’n tis I! Arrrrl.

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When he got to the French side of the channel shipping lanes, the first signs of concern started to emerge on the boat. Steve’s stroke rate had slowed by 10 per minute and he was not consuming enough of his feeds. We tried to encourage him to have more, but he was drinking more seawater than the feeds. To combat this we tried to tell him to turn around and use his head to block the waves, but he wasn’t understanding.

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With the lack of fuel in his body and the deteriorating stroke rate, things were not looking good. The next thing that was going to set in was the cold and once it gets in you there’s not a lot you can do about it. We started mixing his feeds even stronger, to the extent that is was almost a gel. We also tried different flavours. When hypothermia is suspected, apart from counting the stroke rate, you can ask questions, firstly to see if you get a response and hopefully a coherant one at that. We asked him his dog’s name. “I have three!”. Alright matey. We decided to let him carry on.

We continued to monitor both his stroke rate, technique and general wellbeing throughout the next hour. We were also visited by the French coastguard and I’m pleased to say it wasn’t my fault this time! They were doing a recon trip to a cargo vessel close to us and decided to take our phot. I obliged and did the same.

There were now anxious times on the boat. Every time Steve stopped for a feed he was losing about 10 minutes of the swimming distance he had previously covered. In effect, going backwards. His stroke rate deteriorated further as did his technique. We opted to put ‘whinging’ Rob in to try and get him focussed and hopefully a bit more aware of what was going on.

You can see in the photo that Rob is doing breaststroke beside Steve, when they normally swim at about the same speed front crawl. When we tried to communicate with him, we were answered with a grunt, apart from when he was offered jellybabies, which was enthusically answered with ‘JELLYBABIES… JELLYBABIES!!’. With his strokerate now down to 42 strokes a minute, we took the decision to have Rob handle Steve and have the swim end.

It was a little soul destroying watching Steve react to this and then realising what was happening. Rob helped him over to the boat and then we somehow got him up onto the deck and lay him there after smothering him in blankets. I’m not sure if he remembers saying this, but he was definitely pretty happy to be out of the water. I later found out that he didn’t remember the last hour or so of the swim, so the helped us all justify the decision.

Interestingly enough, although the tide had been weak, the wind had blown us about 10km up the coast. All in all he spent about 14 hours in the water and fell less than 2 miles short of French soil. However, at the rate Steve was swimming it would have taken him an additional 4-5 hours to get there. He slept pretty much the whole way back to Dover, but talk about the powers of recovery, he was up again ready for some dinner and then up before me the next morning fresh like he’d not done anything! Amazing!

Although he didn’t quite make it, I’m extremely proud that he swam for as long as he did and that he’s already talking about coming back and having a crack at it next year.

And in other news… the weather forecast

“… again the nearer you get to France the lighter the wind for both days; and for the weekend into next week.

good luck Al, almost there