Andrew Jacobs entered my life when he came to view our house. Sadly, instead of me selling the house to him, HE sold ME the idea of swimming the channel as part of a 3 man team.

Our third member is Pat Healy, who also loves a sporting challenge and has a fantastic beard (which I'm envious of). We are a dream team.

Fast forward 18 months, and we are weeks away from taking the plunge; hoping our many hours of floating around in the freezing Hastings sea, wearing only our trusty speedos, will have prepared us enough to complete this Channel Relay Swim from Dover to Calais.  

For the uninitiated, the shortest distance we can swim is 21 miles/34KM,  however this is very weather dependent. Only 59  three-man teams have ever completed the Channel relay, and our target is 15 hours, which will mean each of us completing 5 x 1 hour swims. We have learnt that swimming is the easy part; the real challenge will be handling sea sickness, jelly fish stings and our own thoughts whilst we keep turning our arms over.

An extra incentive is to know that our efforts will result in making a difference for the local community, and we will be raising money for 'Charity for Kids'. This charity raises money to supply children with disabilities equipment that enables them to have a better quality of life.

The charity was set up by our very patient swimming coach Paul, and we would like to raise money to thank him for his efforts in trying to improve our very shoddy technique!

Any donation would be gratefully received!

Thanks

Mark & Pat