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Sea swimming training
The relay required that you swim an hour of
unassisted and legal butterfly. To qualify to swim the
channel the team of six had to complete a two-hour
butterfly swim at sub 16ºC. The next challenge was
sea swimming – again another first for me. Training
at Dover in 10ºC with rain beating down and metre
high waves was fairly frightening. Over time we built
1-2 hour sea swims as training with the support of
the Dover channel training crew. This mentoring and
support from a phenomenal group of team mates; all
channel swimmers in their own rights helped me
develop strength, stamina, technique and self belief
that I was capable of being on the team.
There is a fine line between genius and insanity; and
Kevin Blick’s vision and ‘damn mindedness’ erased
this line when he formed a team of six swimmers to
cross the channel in a butterfly relay team. The
stakes were high; a world first requiring legal strokes
throughout in under 20 hours.
The butterfly stroke must consist of simultaneous
movement of the arms with wrists and elbows above
water level each stroke and legs together providing
an undulating kick. Two adjudicators watched the
entire crossing to verify the challenge with no more
than three stroke infringements allowed.
The Strait of Dover, is at its shortest is 20.6 miles but
with weather and tides it is longer for swimmers.
Each swimmer would have to swim for an hour of
continuous butterfly with no assistance allowed. To
exchange the relay, the next swimmer must overtake
to ensure every metre of the channel is swum.
The team was Kevin Blick, Rob Ouldcott, Mark
Johansen, Boris Mavra, Sam Mould and Robert Fisher
all of whom learnt to butterfly for the record attempt.
Inspiration was drawn from film footage of Sylvain
Estadieu who recently solo butterflied the Channel.
Our boat ‘Suva’ was piloted by Neil Streeter and
Adrian Piddick with Kate Roberts and Zoe Sadler
observing.
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The swim began from Shakespeare Beach, Dover with
a beautiful dawn at 04.50 hours, aiming for the Cap
Gris Nez. With a honk of Suva's horn and a lumpy sea;
Kevin began. The sea quickly settled into a silveryblue sheen and as Rob took over the first of many
pods of dolphins showed off their acrobatics.
The iconic white cliffs faded away as we entered the
north-shipping channel. Our journey was hampered
by jellyfish stings, profuse seasickness, not to
mention tides and heightening winds. By the time we
entered the south-shipping lane the conditions were
Force 3-4, with 1-1.5m waves and 8-12 knots winds
with scattered whitecaps. We battled on.
Minke Whale
The conditions made it difficult to sustain a regular
and continuous butterfly rhythm and our progress
slowed. A Minke Whale surfaced close to the support
boat giving us much needed encouragement and
strength. As the daylight faded we attached lights
to the swimmers. The beautiful pink sunset offered
no rest-bite with prevailing south-south westerly
rising to a Force 5. We now faced 2.5m waves and a
wind speed of 18-19knots with white caps and
spray. It was dark and we had been swimming for
17 hours!
The tide and winds had pushed us towards Zeebrugge
making it doubtful we would succeed. The pilot
turned Suva avoiding Calais Harbour requiring Sam to
swim against the tide to hold position for Kevin to
cross the ferry lane into Calais. On his second
attempt Kevin, weakened by seasickness, led the
team out of the ferry lane leaving Rob to swim to
shore at around midnight.
We had done it, made history, as the first ever
Butterfly relay team swimming the channel in 19
hours and 15 minutes. That day Chloë McCardle also
became the first woman in 25 years to swim a threeway channel solo.