After nearly 2 years of discussions, lots of cold water training and copious amounts of pictures of us wearing skimpy swimwear on social media, we are delighted to announce that we completed the Channel Swim in a respectable time of 13 hours and 32 minutes.
We were expecting a time of 13-14 hours on a small neap tide, but we ended up swimming on a big spring tide. When we set off at about 1.20am on Thursday morning we therefore thought that our time would be closer to 16-17 hours with the potential for us to be pulled out of the water by the pilot if the tides were too strong, preventing us from landing in France.
It has been a tough 2 weeks for the team with uncertainly around when we would get to swim due to the poor weather. Conditions improved this week but the confirmation call on Wednesday evening didn't bring us the news we were hoping for, as the pilot was concerned about the tidal conditions and offered us the option of postponing the swim until next year. We had a discussion and took inspiration from Captain Webb (the first recorded Channel Swimmer) who said "nothing great is easy" and decided that we would take on the tide.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout our training, the last few weeks, and during our swim on social media that certainly helped us get through the day.
