The Crossing

Ali had left me a text to meet her at the marina at 4:30am in the morning.  We set the alarm for 3:15am.  I got up, shaved twice to get my face as smooth as I could.  Merce then coated me with sunscreen to give it a couple hours to soak in before hitting the water.  A quick bowl of oats and we were off to the marina. The previous morning, I had tried to find Ali's boat, ROCO, but never spotted it. This time, she had it docked right in front. We quickly loaded the boat with our food and water.  Just about the time we finished, my observer (person that makes sure I follow the rules) shows up and it is Kevin Murphy, the reigning King of the Channel with the most crossings of any male swimmer. By pure chance, I had both the King of the Channel (Kevin) and the Queen of the Channel (Ali) on the boat.  I truly felt unworthy. On the boat, we had Ali (captain), Kevin (observer), two crew members for Ali, and my crew; Merce and George.

Kevin and Ali

Shortly after Kevin boarded, we were motoring off to Shakespeare Beach.  Before I knew it, Kevin indicated we were 5 minutes from the beach and to start greasing up.  I had Merce put on Zinc Oxide on the surfaces that were going to face the sun (back of legs, back of torso, etc).  She then applied a generous amount of Vaseline on my chafe points (armpits, inner thighs and shoulder/chin region.  Ali gave me the signal to enter the water and splash, I was in the water swimming to shore.  Shakespeare Beach was a rocky beach but I had no trouble climbing out to clear the water. Once I was clear, Kevin did a count down to start the swim. At zero, I re-entered the water and my Channel swim official began.

I started at 5:08am and the conditions were slightly overcast, sun just rising and virtually no wind.  It was like glass out there, one of those days Channel swimmers dream about.  I could not have asked for better conditions.  The temperature at Shakespeare Beach was 61F(15C).  I felt the cold but it did not feel uncomfortable.  I slipped into a steady rhythm of about 60 spm (strokes per minute).  For me, this was a little fast but the adrenaline was running. At the hour mark, I had my first feed.  Further from shore, the water temp had dropped to 58F(14C) but I did not notice it.  My stroke count had settled down to a  57-58 spm.  At the two hour mark, I had my second feed.  Kevin yelled to me to stay closer to the boat as I kept wandering about 100m away from the boat and had to swim 100m in to get a feed.   The tide was pulling me North-East so I was covering some serious ground, just not all toward France.  By the 3 hour mark, I had swam approximately 8.7 miles.  I had settled into my "all day" stroke at about 54 spm.  The water temperature had dropped to 57-58F (14C) but again, I did not seem to notice the cold.  At the 4 hour mark, as Merce and George feed me some diced peaches (to give an alternate taste to the Maxim and Perpetuem energy drinks), the container filled with salt water.  That was the end of the peaches since we did not bring another container of them.  I was down to just energy drinks for feed and mouthwash for cleansing my mouth. 

Swimming with ferry in background

My first challenge began at the 5 hour mark.  Shortly after the feed, I did my first projectile vomiting. I had experienced this in my La Jolla training swim so I was not surprised with it nor did it concern me.   At the 6 hour mark, Merce tried to give me some sweetened (with honey) hot tea to give me something different to help flush the body.  The sweetness of the tea was too much and I immediately vomited again.  This time, it was some serious stomach emptying, even Merce was impressed.  Again, I did not panic.  Merce decided to switch to 100% Maxim and the was the end of the vomiting for the rest of the swim. 

At the 5 hour mark, I had made a comment to George that my legs were beginning to feel crampy.  At times, my stroke rate would drop down to 52 spm.  Other then the stroke rate and associated slow down, the cramping did not seem to have any more serious effect on me more for several more hours.  At the 10.5 hour mark, my legs cramped up to the point I was momentarily swimming in a semi fetal position (the legs were pulled up in the fetal position). I stretched them out and continued but my stroke rate dropped to 47-48 spm.  The good news as we were getting closer to France the water was warming up.  It was now around 62-64F (16-17C).  At the 11 hour mark, the tide had gone slack enough that we turned out of the French shipping lane to head directly to France.  I was struggling along trying hard to avoid the fetal position cramping from occurring again.  At the 11.5 hour mark, I approached the boat to ask to get out expecting them to yell at me "NO!".  Before Merce and George could speak, Kevin matter of factly said "You will need to pick it up to beat the tide to make it to the Cape".  These simple words hit the exact spot I needed.  I knew that if was going to make it to France, I had to pick up the pace.  Missing the Cap would result in adding up to 6 miles to the swim which frequently would end the swimmer unable to continue for the extra distance.  I put my head down and picked my stroke rate back up to 52 spm.  I knew I still had hours left to swim so mentally I could not quite put a "sprint" into the stroke but I did pick up the pace.

The next couple of hours were a blur.  I was struggling to keep my pace up without pushing too hard and have the heavy cramps hit again. The water temp felt virtually balmy at the 63-64F (17C) range but every once in a while there were thermals that dropped the temp what felt like 5F (2-3C).  This was particularly painful since the first reaction to hitting the thermals was to tighten my muscles which would bring the cramps on.  I would grit my teeth until I got out of the thermal into the relatively warm water.  At the 13.5 hour mark, the tide had turned and we starting heading North-Eest again parallel to the French coast.  The bad news is that I had not made it close enough to have the tide take me to the Cap.  The good news is I had made it close enough that once we passed the Cap, the eddy current caused by the Cap would pull me toward shore.  The extra distance added about an hour to my swim but this was much better then adding 6 miles to my swim.  As we got withing 400m of the coast, Kevin asked Merce if she wanted to swim with me to the shore.  Merce inwardly chuckled but said no.  To our surprise, Kevin stripped down to swim trunks and grabbed a pair of goggles.  Before I knew what was happening, I had the King of the Channel escorting me the final 400m to the shore.  We landed on the shore to round fist sized rocks.  I struggled for several minutes trying to crawl up the shore with my cramping muscles.  I tried sliding on my butt, did not work.  Tried standing, did not work.  Finally found a way to crawl on all four limbs in a very ungraceful manner but got past the water line and officially crossed the English Channel in 15 hours 8 minutes.  I had covered a distance of over 33 miles even though the direct line across was closer to 21 miles .  I tried lifting my hands in a Rocky style victory stance but it was weak at best as I dropped back to all fours.

I then crawled back to the water until I could float again.  The 400m swim back to the boat felt easy and unusually normal, as if it was more natural then the attempt at standing I did.  I climbed into the boat and my crew quickly got me out the wet swimsuit and into dry clothes.  They handed me some warm tea and I was set.  A little later, I did empty my stomach one last time but basically felt great as I laid down on the floor of the boat enjoying the night breeze.  I recovered enough in the two hour trip back to Dover to stand up and look at the lights shining on Dover Castle in the night air.  It was a magnificent view and I will remember it forever.

Tired and trying recover

No story about an event at large as crossing the English Channel goes without a long list of thank you's to the many people that made it happen.  First of all, many thanks to my family, Merce and Chris, for putting up with the long hours of swimming I had to do to prepare.  A special thanks to Merce and George for being there on the boat as my crew.  As for the Captain, observer and crew, I don't think I could have dreamed of having a better team.  They were awesome throughout the entire day.  I can not forget to thank Eliz for being the best training partner anyone can want.  This includes approaching me two and half years ago with the simple question "Interested in swimming the English Channel?".  It continued through many 5am cold morning lake swims when all we wanted was to skip the swim and get a double stack of pancakes.  There is what seems an infinite list of other people that have trained with me, encouraged me and put up with me during this time period that would be too long to list but each and every one of them made a huge difference.

What is next...learning how to enjoy a nice recliner in front of a television.  The training was intense and long enough that I will have trouble signing up for something this large again and take away as much time as I had from my family and friends.  I will focus on simpler, shorter events and enjoy double stacks of pancakes.