Swim the English Channel solo
You smear yourself in lanolin and grease before dawn, not for warmth but to stop your own arms rubbing you raw over the next twelve hours. The Channel is about 33 kilometres wide as a gull would fly it, but the tide pulls you sideways in slow arcs, and most swimmers cover closer to 45. No wetsuit is allowed, and an official observer sits in the boat specifically to disqualify you if you touch it. You booked this slot two years ago. What you remember afterwards isn't France. It's the moment, somewhere around hour nine, when your hands stopped feeling like your hands.
Practical
- Cost
- $4,000–6,000
- Best time
- June to September, when Channel water is warmest
- Difficulty
- Hard
- Time it takes
- 10–20 hours in the water, within a week-long tide window
- What people get wrong
- People train mostly in heated pools and are undone by the disorientation of cold, dark open water; they also book a pilot boat late, missing the narrow tide windows that only open a few times a summer.
- With
- Alone