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Crazy Canucks add new Channel record: Dog paddle, one-way crossing

English_channel_do_2942158bAlthough there is no possibility that the Crazy Canucks English Channel relay team will break any records, lots of other Canadians have. Maybe we are the polar bears of the swimming world.

12637318_1030370130355949_1326344304_oI ran by this cool monument to Marilyn Bell in Victoria on the Dallas Road footpath east of Finlayson Point not long ago and it gave me goosebumps, probably not a common occurrence among other who take the time to read it.

It states: This cairn commemorates the feat of Miss Marilyn Bell who landed in this bay 23rd August, 1956 to become the first woman and first Canadian to swim Juan de Fuca Strait from Port Angeles, U.S.A. to Victoria, Canada.

Bell, the first person to swim across Lake Ontario in 1954, became the youngest person to swim the English Channel in 1955.

Cindy Nicholas has spent lots and lots of time in the English Channel. With her 19 crossings and five two-way crossings she earned the title of Queen of the Channel, until the record was broken by Alison Streeter with over 43 crossings. Cindy was the first woman to complete a two-way crossing and for awhile held a two-way world record time of 18:51. She still holds the record for most two-way crossings at five.

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Vicki Keith has the record for the first crossing of the Channel doing the butterfly for her feat In July of 1989.

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Much more recently, Wayne Strach of Leduc at 60 became the oldest Canadian to swim the Channel with his 17-hour and 15 minute trip from England to France in 2015.

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Strach told the CBC News that the tidal currents were at the top of his list of challenges. Strach toughed it out saying he didn’t go there “to swim partway to France”.

The Crazy Canucks’ oldest relay team member, Janet, will be 63 on our crossing. The English Channel Swimming Association Limited doesn’t track this type of age-related record for relay teams so we won’t know how we stack up that way if we finish. Our team also has two others that will be 60 this year.

All team members have faced fear of some sort in their swimming career’s leading up to our new challenge. Janet’s came in her first triathlon in a mass start. “All of a sudden all I could see were white heels coming up through the green water…for some reason it reminded me of the bodies in the movie Titanic and I couldn’t breathe.” Despite her panic attack she finished the race, albeit embarrassed and humiliated at being one of the last swimmers to exit the lake.

That race is so much water under the bridge. Janet is training hard with a Penticton Master’s group and has completed our two local races in style, bagging a first in her age group at the 7-kilometre Rattlesnake Island Swim. “I’ve never had another panic attack although there has been some deep breathing when I’ve started a new challenge.

“Now I’m on the final leg of training for the Channel and I’m looking forward to it with trepidation and a bit of excitement.”

 

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The creature from the black lagoon

 

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“Wow, your face is super dirty,” my swim pal Maureen says as we staggered out of the Hudson River. “About as dirty as your’s,” I reply. We had the most enormous white-toothed grins in those dirty faces as we had just completed the coolest open water swim in our careers.

New York Swim‘s Little Red Lighthouse Swim is a 10.2 kilometre journey up the Hudson River that begins at the 79 St. Boat Basin, passes under the George Washington Bridge with the tiny lighthouse almost hidden under its Manhattan stanchion and finishes up at the marina at Dyckman St. near the northern tip of the island.

It was like a swimming equivalent of Tom Hanks’ “I made fire!”. We just swam in the Hudson River alongside one of the most incredible cities in the world. We just swam in the frigging Hudson, runway of US Airways Flight 1549.

The elation wasn’t really about the actual swim feat. We had both braved much tougher conditions that summer at our home race of Rattlesnake Island where kayaks guiding swimmers tipped. We even donned wetsuits as the water temperature was so cool that NY Swim made it a legal wetsuit swim. Both well trained for cold water swimming in just bathing suits, the wetsuits seemed like better protection against the “things” in the water. It was more about the sentiment expressed by our New York cab driver. “You are going to do what? You are swimming in the Hudson? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Assured the water quality was OK we focus on other important things. “There can be a substantial amount of chop in the water from wind and tide action,” NY Swim warned us. “The waterways are salt-water and there is shipping traffic. There may be random jetsam and flotsam in the waterways.”

We also listened attentively about swimming hard by the Sewage Treatment plant and about sighting well at the end of the race and keeping in toward shore to avoid getting sucked down the river.

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The early morning view as we arrived at the Boat Basin

I’ve never swum 10 kilometres so fast in my life (2:05). The tide comes in and you fly along in a strong current. Despite not being able to see your hands as you stroke along in the murky water it felt pretty comfortable out there. Pretty comfortable but amazing all at the same time as you catch glimpses of the Manhattan skyline, Grant’s Tomb and that incredible big grey bridge with traffic zooming over your head. Pretty comfortable until my hand touches some of that flotsam. It was some soft feeling substantial “thing” invisible in the murk. I tried hard not to think of it as someone’s cement boots finally coming off as they drifted along in the current. Clearly I’ve watched to many crime movies about New York…

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And we are off

Despite the flotsam encounter, we felt safe out there in the river. Me and Maureen and 217 others were helped along by about 30 kayakers, 10 larger boats, some NYPD (cool even to write that) zodiacs and some blue-capped “swim angles” who joined the race to look out for anyone in trouble. I think only one of us got hauled out with hypothermia issues and we all made the against-the-current exit with no problems.

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“I swam in the Hudson River!” It was well-organized had ultra cool scenery and we swam in in one of the most famous stretches of river in the world that we didn’t even realize that you could swim in.

Here is a youtube of the 2012 race.

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Dropped on our heads and into the ocean

IMG_2057International Space Station image of the English Channel courtesy of the European Space Agency.

After Captain Matthew Webb swam the English Channel in 1875 the Mayor of Dover said, “I make bold as to say that I do not believe that in the future history of the world any such feat will be preformed by anybody else.”

We all make mistakes but he wasn’t far wrong. It’s remains a pretty daunting challenge. About 1,500 people have completed solo swims of the Channel, far fewer than have climbed Mount Everest. The first six-person relay swam the Channel in 1954. There have been about 6,000 relay team members who have successfully made the crossing since…still not a lot in my books. And every member of our team is older than the average age of 33…some double that.

We will make our attempt to swim the 32 kilometres, with each swimmer taking one-hour turns in rotation until we walk up a beach in France, in late July of this year. If we make it, it will be because of a mixture of good luck (the weather and everyone’s health), good preparation and support from friends and family.

We all have something in common, according to the owner of Dover’s Churchill Guest House where we will be staying when Team Crazy Canucks makes its bid. “One correlation we have noticed between you all is that at some stage during your childhoods you were all dropped on your heads which made you all crazy enough to attempt such a mind-boggling challenge.”

 

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Step one: Find five other people who were dropped on their heads as children and like to swim in cold water, in the ocean, in only a bathing suit (no wetsuits allowed and there are stringent Channel Swimming Association rules about the type of suit you can wear too), and don’t mind a jaunt to England.

This proved easier than I thought which I guess says something about me and my pals.

The first to sign up was Jaime. We met training for a marathon during which we had this conversation. “Hey, we should do Ironman in three years,” I say. “Sure, but I will have to learn to swim first,” Jaime says. She did and we finished Ironman Canada in 2005. Her home town at that time, Sundre put a “congratulations Jaime” message on a billboard. I think a parade would be in order this time.

A friendship developed over hours of running and cycling is something pretty special.  There are no secrets left to tell after four hours sweating it out and no one you would rather tell them to. When we ran out of secrets we talked about what we were going to eat when we stopped, in great detail, as in the actual recipes.

If all goes our way, Jaime says, “Next year Ella (daughter) will be able to take me to school for show and tell and say my mom swam in the English Channel. How cool will that be?”

She says her feeling about the Channel is summed up by this quote by Bob Proctor: “Set a goal to achieve something that is so big, so exhilarating that it excites you and scares you at the same time.”

“I am so looking forward to it but at the same time it sometimes makes me cringe just thinking about it.” That sounds like excitement and fear at the same time for sure. I’m glad she was dropped on her head.

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Don’t wait for your ship to come in…swim out to it

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This one is good too…

IMG_1656I’m leaping ahead to the end of a story more than three years in the making. If all goes well (there are a fair number of elements to the “all”), in six months time, me and five mates will be making our own graffiti on the walls of the White Horse in Dover, England.

IMG_1654Successful solo and relay team swimmers of the English Channel come to celebrate their achievement with a pint and pen at this landmark pub. Team Crazy Canucks hopes to swim from Dover to Point Gris Nez in France and spend the next day or maybe a few days celebrating. With more than 135 years of history since Captain Webb made the first crossing, the basic elements of the challenge remain precisely the same. “Whatever the era, a Channel swim is and always will be a battle of one small lone swimmer against the sometimes savage vastness of the open sea,” says former Channel Swimming Association President Cmdr. Gerald Forsberg.

IMG_1652Forsberg goes on to say, “It is quite possible to be ten miles from shore on a pitch-black, cold night, with a cresting sea, a three-knot tidal stream, and thirty metres of depth underneath…In such conditions, the Channel is no place for a physical weakling.” We laugh at cresting seas and three-knot tidal streams…IMG_1655Looks like our biggest challenge will finding some real estate to make our mark at the White Horse.

IMG_1662In the background is the names of a team from a city at the other end of our lake in Kelowna. Well done guys. Can’t wait to join you on the walls.

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