Yesterday...We swam it...!

Wow what a day yesterday...we covered 21.3km in 6 hours and 43 minutes.

The day started off at 3am with lots of apprehension about what was ahead. I knew this was a big event but it was not until i reached Cottlesloe Beach that i realised its enormity here in WA. Live TV, politicians, celebrities, it was huge and a real buzz to be part of. There was 268 solo swimmers and 1800 team swimmers.

The first thing for the morning was to get the sunscreen on and the grease applied. With all the team out on the water Jen, had that terrible job. I am happy to say there was not one chafe mark on my body...awesome job Jen.

After a quick warmup we were off at 6am. The premier of WA fired the gun and away me and about 100 other swimmers went in the solo male's seeded wave. The start was very gentle compared to the trash-and-dash swims and in no time i was past the 500m mark where Andrew could join me in as the support paddler. We were soon at the 1000m mark where the support boat join us without incident. This was a great effort by all the team and immediately took away my fears of not finding everyone before the 1500m (this is where you have to wait if you are not joined up).

From there I started to settle into a nice breathing rhythm and by the vibrations on my watch i knew i was moving at a pace of about 3.5km/hr. At about the 3km mark i was told to slow down, which at the point felt terrible but as the k's rolled on felt better and better.

After practising for months and months the food was going down a treat. A bottle attached to a rope flew out in front of me every 20 minutes, then it was 15 seconds to put it down and away we went again. The only tough part was getting the sea sickness pills down, we had awful trouble with that and i really felt for the support team who were trying their best but the waves kept on washing them out of our hands. This also contributed to the paddlers capsizing..of which i felt terrible that i could not help them (we were just lucky we had a boat of very accomplished swimmers onboard who could look after themselves).

hundreds of these stinger welts

At about the 7km mark we got the 'bloody' jelly fish. I must have been stung 100 times in about 10 minutes. They are not ovally painful just very very uncomfortable, although the one that got in my nostril did hurt...and still hurts! Here is a photo of the result the next morning...

After passing the stingers we got into a rough patch of water where the messages of support were well received. It was just hard work and it seems like it went on forever. I was told later that this is the tough part of the race because its shallower here which results in increased waves.

Toward the mid to end it started to get congested with boats, kayaks and swimmers; remember every swimmer/team has a boat and a paddler, thats a lot of boats. After getting through that area the sea floor started to rise, the coral appeared and i knew we were home then!

So I now go into the record books as the 1559th swimmer to cross that 20km stretch of water.

Thanks for all the messages of support along the way, they were all gratefully received!

I could not have done this by myself; here is the TEAM..!

Christian (middle man who has all the contacts), Jenny (chief WA organiser, host), Phil (skipper and owner of the boat), Craig (navigation, photographer, spotter), Pauline (paddler, spotter), Dave (paddler, spotter), Andrew (coach, spotter and paddler) and my wonderful wife (logistics on the boat, social media).