05th June 2008
Vanilla Gorilla Me and Mark
After several cancelled swims due to bad weather and tides, I finally completed my six hour swim on 5th June 2008, which then qualified me to swim the channel. Present that day were Pat Taylor, Mark Thomson, Tony Wakefield, Kay, and Gavin Sweetman. We were all aboard Tony's boat the "Vanilla Gorilla" except me of course.
We left Eastbourne Marina in the 10am lock and headed towards Hastings Pier where we were due to start. At 10:45 I entered the water and the plan was to head in the Direction of Eastbourne pier until either we hit it or the Six hours were up. Realistically for those of you who know the distance we were never going to get all the way in the 6 hours anyway.
A Few Final Adjustments
This was a completely new experience for me. Although I had done some long swims in the past, none of them had ever lasted 6 hours. My plan was to keep a slow but steady pace and see it out all the way to the end with as little drama as possible.
Another 20 second feed
After the first couple of hours, my arms began to hurt and my head felt as though it was full up with salt. But apart from a couple of severe bouts of projectile vomiting and an amusing incident involving a runaway sausage roll, all went smoothly. I some how managed to lay back and watch a whole day go by without getting out of the water which seemed strange at the time, but was an event I knew that I would be seeing more and more on the lead up to September. I did feel for the boats crew that day as it was particularly rough especially at the start of the swim.
Kay Pat, Tony and Mark
Finally at 5:45pm Mark blew the whistle to signify that the time was up. With that my arms found a whole new lease of life and took me to the boat at a rate of knotts, before pulling me up clear of the water and on to the deck.
Pat and Mark
The crew did a fantastic job as usual, and were so caring and helpful throughout, they know I couldn't have done it without their encouragement and support.
I felt so proud that I had managed to hit the target, but wasn't really able to show it as I normally would have done. At the back of my mind I was all to aware that I needed to set off at 7am the next morning for the long drive to Nottingham for my Grandads funeral. I was given the honour of being asked to say a few words for him on that day at the service and knew that nothing that happened on the day of the swim would have ever stopped me from being there to say goodbye.