English Channel attempt in July

G'day,
To those of you I know, I've set this up to document some of the stuff you might like to keep track of as I attempt to swim the English Channel in July this year (2011). To all others - welcome to my mid life crisis.
My tide window is 7th July to 18th July.
Pop back from time to time and come July I hope we can keep you up to date during the swim. On the right is a link to my Twitter feed which we expect to be able to update during the swim. If you also sign up to Twitter it's probably the best way to send messages on the big day. I'd sure love to get a few!
I will also post some blogs in the lead up to keep you all informed on likely swim day and time.
I've trained hard and met some fantastic people on the journey - I cant believe how generous everyone has been with time, advice and support - my plan is to make you all proud.
Most of all thanks to Caren (I adore you), T and Lucy for putting up with a mostly absent husband and father for the last year. Big expensive make up holiday in France and Spain coming soon. Lucky I know how to save on the ferry ticket!

Thanks everyone, AV.

Tuesday, 5 July 2011

The Dover wait

Have been in Dover for 5 days now....doing what all past channel swimmers know about..waiting! Although my tide window doesn't officially start till tomorrow...it's now all about waiting for a good weather window. The irony is the last few days have been perfect - but very big spring tides. And now that the neap tide is due to start a windy weather low has moved in for a few days.

I still suspect a Sunday or monday (uk time) swim.

To follow the swim the best option will be to follow the Twitter feed (on the right of this blog) or sign up yourself on Twitter and watch swimavswim

Also, if you're interested in tracking the boat you should be able to go to this AIS site http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ and select Dover uk as the port and look for seafarer ii as the vessel. The boat will only come up once underway. Once you know the swim has started, the other option is to just move your cursor over the boats going across the channel and the boat details will come up. It's a fun site, just have a play, you will work it out. It's also interesting to see just how many vessels use the channel at any one time. It works best on a computer, not iPad or iPhone.

I'm keeping loose, did another 5km yesterday, will do the same today. Water is not too cold for me..although I might revise that statement after 15 hours in it!

Thanks for all your well wishes.
AV
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2 comments:

  1. markmunro_au7 July 2011 at 16:40

    Good Luck Andrew! Have just spent 30 mins looking at the marine traffic site, which is great - I feel like a real trainspotter now. Hope you get the good tides on the weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kevin7 July 2011 at 23:24

    All best wishes being beamed your way from Melbourne. Good luck, Kevin Cassidy

    ReplyDelete

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