swimming the English Channel
Sam Penny's journey to conquer the Everest of swimming
I'm always up for an adventure! The video down below shows how much an adventure we were up to! In hindsight is was so much fun! I knew I had Trent Grimsey's Cold Water Camp coming up in a few weeks so I wanted to be fit for it and give it a good crack. I decided that this was the fortnight to go longer than I have ever done before. I still can't believe that I only started my long endurance stuff in December. Before that I was purely a sprinter. I somehow feel like I may have missed my calling! I planted the seed in some fellow swimmers that I'd like to swim to Coolum from Mooloolaba Spit. I thought, why the hell not? It's beautiful coastline and I'm sure there would be very few people on the planet who have done it. It's about 18km so quite achievable at this stage for me. The others coming along for the trip were a couple of girls, Tanya and Janelle, who were doing a relay for the Island Charity Swim in May. Darren Brinkman had the boat, Helen paddled so we were all set! For the week before, the conditions were terrible. Massive swell from a cyclone and a wind chop that filled the sea with white horses. But in true style, I sold it to the rest that we will have the wind chop behind us so that will make it faster and the swell won't be an issue as we will be out in the ocean. Yeah... I got that wrong. The swell was about 2.5m and the wind was above 30km/h. When I got to the mouth of the Maroochy River I got stung by the first blue bottle. Straight across my chest and stomach. Bloody hell! All I could do was yell. The pain was intense for about 20mins. And then I got stung again, and again, and again. Each time I would yell under the water and swim fast in the hope that the tentacles would come off. At one stage I recall my entire body from my neck to my ankles absolutely stinging! By the time we got to Point Arkright, I was getting stung about once every 2minutes. Now I wasn't having fun. Even though Helen was paddling right beside me, there was nothing she could do. I think she also started to find it amusing. With my face down in the water, I didn't really notice just how bad the conditions were. At one stage near Old Woman Island, I stopped for a drink, looked around and neither of us could see the boat or the other guys and paddler. The swell was that big. As we got closer to Point Arkright the swell intensified as did the blue bottle stings so I decided to call it a day. I was sick of getting stung so much. Check out this video of the conditions. On the home front, the boys started rugby for the season. Tom is in his first season and was Man of the Match in his second game and has turned out to be a try scoring machine. Max is apparently a kicker! I did not know.
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AuthorSam Penny is attempting to swim the English Channel in August 2018. Follow his journey here. Archives
August 2018
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