Friday 15th August 201 – You Can Do This

Some of you may remember that my channel journey’s been going for a while. It’s the B&B who really made the start of the journey possible for me, having started training in 2011 when swimming a Manly-Shelley return was a big deal! Bolderdash followed, and soon the 6km and 10km badges were established and I still wear these proudly! I was due to swim in 2012 but was thwarted by bad weather in England. The Bold & Beautiful gave me one of the most remarkable and emotional experiences of that whole campaign that year, with a magical two-ring surround / send off.

Post disappointment in 2012 when it was too windy in the UK to even have a crack at the Channel the return to swimming was a real challenge. I almost had to grieve the loss of the opportunity, rather than have success or failure to deal with. It was the support of my wife, coaches, and swimming community (by now we’d formed the Frosty Nuts) that reminded me that I love swimming and encouraged me to get back in the water again. When Cae, Michael and Miles all decided to swim too that was great (slightly mental and lemming-like on their parts) as being able to support and encourage each other was tremendously powerful for each of us. Individually we all had our share of injuries, illness, work demands, and other issues to manage, but having others to share the burden with was a blessing. Without re-hashing what others have said, we had a good, fairly relaxed time in St Margarets (near Dover) waiting for the weather to clear. Some of us had more fun than others and insisted on regular and plentiful tasting of English warm beer in large quantities. All in the name of relaxation…..

You could never really be prepared for the feeling you get when the pilot calls and says “we’re on tomorrow”! The call came (whilst I was at the pub), and all that followed was surreal. Checking all feeds and gear prepared. Trying to sleep, getting up at 1am, on the boat for 2, in the water at 3…….its’ through these segments of time that the swimmer’s like a robot and completely dependent on their team (handlers). I was blessed in this respect that my chief handler was Alex P (otherwise known as the Pirate), supported by my wonderful wife and long term swimming widow Sascha. Between them they got me up, provided light breakfast, bundled me in the car and I drove us down to the marina to get on the boat. Up until this point there is still a part of you that says “don’t worry, it might get called off still…….” No luck, all good and off we go. Jovial crew and friendly observer. Loads of questions, then before you know it the Pilot (Andy King) said – “right Ben, better get ready as we’ll want to get cracking soon”. Robot-like, trying not to think about the wind and chop, quietly thinking the conditions don’t look good (i.e. it was choppy), I contemplate getting undressed…….

I had the pleasure (!?) of Alex greasing me up, something I know he relished as a strapping Alpha male with a soft-spot for heroically fat channel swimmers, then there was no ceremony it’s just a matter of jumping in then swimming ashore. It’s a bit perverse really – you swim ashore then get out, briefly contemplate the magnitude and stupidity of what you’re about to undertake, but there’s no going back. I waded in and started swimming. “Wow – the time is now! This is my chance………” Swimming in the dark, when it’s properly black is cool. However, swimming in chop, trying to work out how to swim next to a fishing boat that has a bunch of big “day-maker” halogen lights on it was weird. Couldn’t acclimatise to the dark, and this combined with the chop meant that the first 2 hours were horrible. Frankly I always hate the first two hours of any long swim. Tight body, no rhythm, lots to come………I knew I’d be rescued by the sunrise and I was not disappointed it was amazing. Feeding every 30 minutes, and having deliberately mixed feeds in a specific measured quantity and order allowed me to feed very quickly (5 seconds or so), but this was just long enough to have a good look around and appreciate the magnitude of the experience. Being in the middle of a large body of water at first light is vaguely ethereal and I felt blessed to be there and have the opportunity to swim.

My spirits were high, and I had great motivation to swim hard. I swam the same day as Cae, and had started an hour later than him and the rest of the fleet. Having trained so much with Cae, I had developed a vision of the two of us standing at the Cap together and this spurred me to swim hard. It’s a classic channel risk to go out too hard and not have enough left when it counts, but the counter-balance to this was that I felt fit and had never run out of steam on any swim to-date. Swimming “with” the big tide gives you a sense of almost skiing across the water, so I felt like an olympian and probably had the best swim of my life for about 9 hours.

I had overtaken several of the fleet, was swimming well, then I mis-read a conversation between Alex and Sascha as being concern. I also thought we had run out of feeds for me which would have meant I’d been out there 15 or more hours which would have been a worry given how “close” France was. Mentally these two things started seeding me with doubt. The crew and pilot stuck to the classic channel training regime of no information, which didn’t help. I needed to be told “you can do this” and given some info……….. As it turned out they were concerned as we were entering the “slack” tide window we wanted for me to dash over the last bit to France. Slack tide can be anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, and sadly for me we had less than 10 minutes. I didn’t quite get there in time (I got swept by the Cap about 150m offshore). As the tide turned, it pushed me away from where we needed to go. There’s a fixed buoy off the Cap and with the tide rushing over it it was like it was being dragged behind Jaws. The water goes white around it like rapids. I kid you not, anyone who’s never seen a flooding tide in the channel cannot imaging this. It’s hectic and impossible to swim against. Arrrrgggggghhhhhhh.

I had memories of others swims I’d watched like Wyatt who spent 4 hours or more going along the coast towards Calais before getting another opportunity, and given I thought I’d already been going for more than 15 hours I panicked. In classic Ben style I stopped, called a big “Time Out”, made sure everyone was listening, then announced “I am done”! I swam towards the dinghy behind the boat (not I didn’t touch the big boat which was in arm’s reach, I swam towards the dinghy 50m away), fully intending on touching it and being pulled out! About 5m from getting there I head this terrifying yell from Alex, who bellowed some very sensible words to me (some rude), which stopped me in my tracks. I started swimming again, and started saying to myself the very simple mantra of “you can do this” over and over again. Just goes to show how important a good crew who care can be.

Ninety minutes after the tide change and dummy spit I landed on French soil in a time of 13 hours 17 minutes which I was very very pleased with! Typically, instead of landing on the 5 kilometre long sandy beach the crew on the dinghy with the go-pro directed me to a pile of rocks to save me 50m swimming (yay). I crawled up (standing is very hard after a prolonged period swimming), stood up, stepped to a rock clear of the water and waved my arms. Swim done – awesome! No time for relief or a sit down as some do as I realised there was absolutely no way I would be able to make it down from the slippery rocks…….immediately slipping on my arse and falling into the crevice between two large boulders where I got pummelled by the surf for a few minutes whilst wondering what to do! I was completely out of sight of the crew at this point who were all going bananas thinking I’d banged my head! Anyway I managed to swim back to the dinghy and transfer to the boat where we saw that I was gushing blood from my foot. Not uncommon for me as I have a rock at Balmoral named after a similar incident in training………

The boat ride home was surreal but I wasn’t tired in the conventional sense. I drove us to the White Horse for a pint on the way home and wrote my name on the ceiling (a 4 year aspiration). We went for dinner and celebrated with the rest of the gang, and it was all very civilised (wine added to the highly caffeinated state but no proper sleep for days!). So, how does it feel being done after all this time you ask? I don’t feel the elation you might expect. It was amazing and fantastic seeing the interest and support from friends. People who I had not had contact with for more than 30 years felt moved to write. The human element has been amazing, and it’s great to have the monkey off the back.

Overall we raised more than $50k for Opportunity International Australia which is great and will help more than 1,000 families get out of poverty permanently. However, life’s life and keeps moving apace. It’s great to spend more time with my family and work’s moving at a million miles an hour. Pretty sure there will be another swim booked in soon as I need motivation to get up at 5am and get rid of the heroic fatness!

Thanks for all your support over the years!

Ben Hutt

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Stats
Swimmers: 98 approx
Temp: 16.5