naramata-blend

All for this 10 Minutes of Magic

This is why I’m doing this. This moment captured in Al’s photo. I’m swimming in the English Channel with three other tough women and this right here, right now, is the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. I breath on my right and I see husband Al standing guard on the boat. I notice for the first time Anastasia’s happy face on her side. I breath to my left and I see an infinite horizon, ocean waves and intense orange.

Just as teammate Dionne said, “It will get better when the sun comes up.” It sure did.

It was no waiting “Dovercoaster” for team Crazy Canucks III. One of the biggest hurdles for a successful Channel crossing is getting to swim at all. Our 10-day tide window began August 26, 2026 at midnight. The boat pilot, Rob, has to make the call if the weather will be good enough for a crossing. This endeavour was three years in the making as that’s how long ahead you need to secure your boat which costs roughly $6,000. It’s relay teams have more latitude to swim in more challenging conditions than solo swimmers can tackle and we got challenging. In fact, we were the only boat that went out at all in our 10 day window. (If we hadn’t gone that night in these pretty awful conditions we would have gone home without dipping a toe in the Channel at all.) Rob decided to assemble us two hours before our midnight window for our attempt as the forecast for the next 10 days was impossibly high winds.

Me and my support guys Al and brother-in-law Stirling had to get an emergency tire replacement on our rental car and drive all day from Yorkshire to Dover making it with hours to spare. Deb was still in Canada when Rob phoned Monday to tell us we were a go Wednesday at 10 p.m. Tina and her sister Janet were freshly arrived in the jet lag fog and Dionne had just made it to Dover. The stars aligned imperfectly but we assembled at the harbour for the traditional nervous smiles photo as we pooled our 1,500 british pounds in cash to hand over to Rob and double-checked our passports. “Stick with me,” triple crown swimmer Deb says. “I have gone at the beginning of my window every Channel swim I’ve done.”

Elaine, Dionne, Deb and Tina

Dionne joked that we were meeting in the dark to make a drug deal. We did have drugs, seasick medications, but more on that later.

“My memories are not glamorous and I don’t think recounting them expresses the emotion quite right 😂,” says Dionne. “The swimming was what I expected; I’m pretty comfy in rough water and I love a bit of a bouncy challenge in the water. But I did learn that I don’t love a bouncy challenge on a boat!!!”

Dionne put in a fast first leg in relatively calm seas. Then… she got back on the boat and became very seasick. A pattern that persisted for all but the last two or three hours of the 13 hour and 39 minute Crazy Canucks III relay. Dionne and Tina were both affected to various degrees despite various seasick meds as was poor Janet, who came along as support. “I love my sister, but never again,” she says.

“It was such an odd mix of emotions, because I was SO sick, but I was also terrified of having to quit the swim (first because of how sick I was, and then later because of the weather) and deal with the disappointment of that. It was a funny pull of emotions, and really, it all just gets filed under the “type II” fun folder, and is a pretty hilarious story in the end! I loved our team, and I REALLY liked our training swims last fall. I remember going into work after our qualifier and telling my students what I had done that morning and they didn’t quite know how to respond! There was just so much fun stuff around it all! Thank you Elaine for organizing us (that was WONDERFUL), and Tina and Deb for being such amazing teammates as well. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience that I won’t forget anytime soon :)”

This yellow bucket had a lot of use. Sometimes by multiple people simultaneously. Seasickness is one of the biggest and most miserable challenges of an English Channel relay swim, caused by hours of waiting on a slow, bouncy support boat.The conditions of our swim were particularly challenging as the disorganized waves were bouncing the boat both sideways and front to back. Even our observer (there from the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation to verify we followed all the rules to make our swim official) succumbed for the first time on a crossing. Luckily Dionne and Tina felt better in the water. It’s often what ends a relay. In our case, these brave women simply toughed it out. On one of Dionne’s turns she had to pause the observer’s countdown to the relay changeover a few seconds to visit the yellow bucket.

Tina, up next had a tough first shift trying to stay with the boat in the pitch dark and the increasingly bumpy conditions.

“The whole experience was more than I thought it would be,” says Tina. “Not that I hadn’t thought it through but the swimming was harder than I thought (at times) and being on the boat was harder than I thought.”

Tina says, “My first swim was especially hard. It was at night, very dark. I didn’t realize until my second swim that the hull of the boat was white and once the sun came up on my second shift quite easy to see even with only a slight amount of light. In my first swim, I struggled to keep my line next to the boat. I could see the lights on the boat, but would have to stop or sight to see the angle that the boat was headed. It took more effort than I thought it would and I should have bought new goggles.”

She goes on to say that it was rougher than she had imagined in the Channel. “After my first swim, when I could sort of see the boat, the rough water didn’t bother me. I got tossed around, but as long as I was on top of the water, being tossed was fine. Each of my legs of swimming felt stronger. I was just hitting my stride when it was over.”

Like Dionne, Tina said the toughest part was the boat hours. “I knew seasickness was a possibility but I hadn’t accounted for the fatigue of staying up through the night, plus taking care of myself to not get sick and to sleep until it was my turn again. And the swimming, it just kept getting better throughout the event.”

Green lights ready to go. Watching Tina I’m seeing her discomfort out there and am thinking to myself, “I’ll be alright. I’ve done this before lots.” I quickly realized keeping in close contact with the boat was going to be tough and I was struggling. When the Anastasia keeled over drastically in the waves it took the spotlight trained on me with it. At one point the co-captain Gary blew a whistle to get my attention as I was heading off to Belgium. Deb on her turn figured out to just breath on one side to always keep the boat in sight. I did my usual pattern and got swept off regularly. The waves were disorganized and unusually for me, I swallowed some pretty good gulps of seawater. On the bright side, the concentration involved made the hour seem fairly short. Once on the ladder at the end of my turn I said, “Well that was pretty rough.” Rob, from far inside the cockpit replied gruffly, “There is nothing wrong with these conditions.” Ok then this requires some sucking it up I guess and no negative comments.

Once back on board I took in a scene like Armageddon. Bodies strewn all over the deck trying to recover and others making use of the yellow bucket. I told the team there was no shame in quitting if it was all too much. I rather over-dramatically declared no one needs to die. I earned some ribbing for this in the debrief. Fair enough.

There were no takers on my out and we carried on and no-one came close to dying.

Stalwart Deb, who has swum the Channel solo along with Catalina and New York making her one of only 400 in the world to do so, handled her turn and every subsequent turn with equanimity. She did remark that it was some of the toughest conditions she had swum in which oddly helped my morale. (Look for a three-part docu series coming out about her remarkable achievements called I Am An Athlete.)

“We had everything short of snow,” says Deb. “We had wind, rain, lightning, sun, jellyfish (wait that’s not weather, but there were SO MANY jellies. I was a little skeptical when we left just before midnight and it was a rough ROUGH night. I’m super proud of my teammates for toughing it out through the conditions. Three out of three crossings I’ve done have all been ahead of the planned window, so if you want to swim early just bring me along.”

At one point the sky was lit up with lightning strikes in the distance. We all kept a careful eye out. If they had come much closer Rob would have had to call off the swim. We watched and whispered to each other hoping for the best. By this point we had suffered too much to give it all up.

Dionne had a second swim in the dark in the worsening conditions and came out talking about it. “In my head I’m like I’m never doing this again. I’m never even swimming again,” she said.

Tina got the beginning of the sunrise and I had the 10 minutes of magic I will never forget as long as I live. We carried on and the light brought the jellies to the surface. Absolute swarms of them.

On my third hour the sky grew darker and opened up and everyone onboard headed into the galley and even worse seasickness. In their rush every stitch of my dry clothing and all the towels I had bought for the team lay strewn about on the deck and were waiting for me… soaked. All understandable, it was an each woman for herself situation. Al, understanding his brief, stood valiantly at the boat deck keeping his eye on me, dripping with rain the whole time.

Tina later remarked that she was surprised to see me wearing the fancy clothes that I had brought along optimistically for an after swim pub celebration.

The tide turned. Literally and figuratively. (Tina swam 5 k in her last hour as she was swept onto the coast.) We heard a French accent on Rob’s radio, the seas calmed, we spotted France, Dionne, Tina and Janet started eating…a lot, we flew our flag, the jellies got bigger, the sun came out and Tina touched the rocks on the French shore. Crazy Canucks III came through the dark and we celebrated in the sun.

“The event was also more rewarding than I thought,” says Tina. “Of course, getting through those hurdles made it that way, but also it is a pretty amazing piece of water, rich with SO much history. It was impossible to travel over it and not think about all the things that had happened in the English Channel.”

Couldn’t agree more. Thought of my dad, WWII pilot of Lancaster bombers as he made his perilous trips across it. So much respect too to all the soloists who tried and made this journey.

Couldn’t have picked a better 70th birthday gift. Thanks Al as always for being such an important part of these crazy adventures, Stirling too for coming on the most fantastic holiday before and after, to the team and Janet… respect, admiration and love and cheers to all those who supported us from home watching the tracker!

Who knows what’s next but this August 26/27 English Channel Relay will be hard to top.