UL swim

Just back from another lovely training session in UL and we were joined by Clare Morrisey today. For those of you who don't know our friend Clare she is an excellent open water swimmer and herself a channel swim success!!! Clare along with 5 other ladies made up the Stiletto Swimmers relay team of 2010 who made it across and to say we picked her brain today is an understatement!!! Thanks Clare, invaluable to get 1st hand info, nothing like it.
Most of the relay teams are made up of groups of four, five or six and even on the channel swim Facebook page we hadn't seen another team of two like ourselves that's until today!! While in the pool in UL we got chatting to a group in the lane beside us (on a break between drills Natalie!!!). These were from Galway and one of the ladies Annette and a friend are attempting the swim in September. So good to know we're not the only duo crackpots!!! All the best to them with their training.
We are having a few days off as one of the team is heading for Cheltenham and hopefully she'll be swimming in champagne celebrating loads of success, giddy up!!! Until next time thanks so much for all the encouragement and support, really appreciated. Jellyfish duo

Pilot Boat

Reality is definitely setting in these days as registration forms, memberships and medicals are in order before the end of the month!! Filling these out is confirming there's no turning back so better do it soon in case one of the duo gets cold feet (pardon the pun)!! Speaking of cold feet we are still grounded and the more we get impatient to get out in the sea the colder it seems to be getting!! Fingers crossed we'll be out in month or we'll have pool fever ( equivalent of cabin fever to swimmers)! The most important part of organising the swim is to book our pilot boat which we did last May. It's not possible to get across the channel without these registered boats. The channel swimming association gives us the list and we organise the day rest. We choose our boat for the name "Connemara" and our skipper is a very nice  gentleman by the name of Kevin Sherman who will get us safely across the channel to our destination Calais. These pilot boat skippers know the channel better than anyone on the planet and know the tides and how to get us across safely. The attempts to swim the channel are done during neap tides of which there are approximately 10 during the season. The skipper knows the tides and currents and will guide us through them hopefully with ease as the best we can keep with them the better our chance of success. The Dover strait is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and some of these ships are 350 meters in length and 300,000 tonnes in weight and believe it or not but they have right of way!!!! Hopefully we won't meet too many of them on the 3rd of July!!
Thanks for all the good wishes and support, greatly appreciated