Dear Team, I have decided to make this a 4-part story. I just have too much to write about. This is the third part! Part 3 of 4: Anyone keen to make a donation – please give: https://mydonate.bt/fundraisers/jackson So my two tips on feeding when swimming the channel are to a). feed as quickly as possible, and b). avoid eating peaches! Some swimmers recommend tinned sliced peaches as it is possible to drink them quickly from a cup. About 9 hours into my swim I had some peaches. If I did swallow them, then I only kept them down for about 10 seconds. Pretty soon I was throwing the peaches back up along with the last few hours of food and energy drinks. Maybe I am too critical of the peaches. Potentially I was sick because of the 8 or 9 hours of swimming in choppy water with only sugary foods. In any event, I may never have tinned peaches again in my life and I definitely will not have them when swimming. To be honest, being sick when swimming was a positive experience. I felt a lot better afterwards and could swim immediately. It is probably quite concerning for the crew of a sick swimmer because it is impossible to throw up in the water without making a sound like a dying giraffe. Anyway, I was feeling good and swum on through to 10 hours. It helps a swimmer to keep some positive ideas in their head as they swim the channel. I kept thinking about my young niece back in Australia, who had used my swim as part of a show-and-tell presentation to her class a week earlier. I am looking forward to seeing her at Christmas and given that I had already swum for close to 10 hours, there was no way that I was going to let her down now! Soon my crew informed me that I was in the French inshore. This meant that I was out of the northeast shipping lane. The cliff in front of me was getting quite large now. Although the width of the French inshore is much shorter than the width of the English inshore, it is not uncommon for a swimmer to take a much more time to cover the distance of the French inshore. The angles of the channel mean that there is a lot more water whipping around Cap Gris Nez and this water flow results in much stronger currents. The north and south currents and the shape of the French shoreline can give the appearance of the land receding. At this point, once I had reached the French inshore, my crew’s story and my recollection diverge. When I was about 5km from France my support boat was directly between Dover and Cap Gris Nez. Cap Gris Nez is the closest part of France to the UK, so it is therefore the target for any swimmer. Given that I was 5km away for the cap, and that the tide was pushing me southwest, then there was no way that I was getting to France until the tide changed in 2 hours. The speed of the tide pushing me southwest meant that the land would appear to recede at a speed faster than anyone can swim. Not even Michael Phelps could get to France from that point before the tide changed. Once the tide changed, about 12½ hours into my swim, I was now geographically further from my intended landing spot than I was 2½ hours before. But I now had the tide on my side! One of my crew leant over the boat to tell me that I needed to give “one hour of power”. For me that just meant a slightly faster stroke rate and the inclusion of a kick in my swim. One quick feed after 30 minutes and by 13½ hours I was swimming in slack water, with no tide, only about 50m from shore. At least that is what my crew saw! To be continued…
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 20:08:31 +0000
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