Why I swam the English Channel… again – Sam Steers C’14

Why I swam the Channel… again

After about 9 months of physical training and 9 years of mentally preparing, I was a few miles off the coast of France which had been quite visible for the previous four hours, in darkness, swimming on cramped limbs, thinking to myself “why the flip am I doing this”. It all started in 2012 when a group of Year 13s were giving a short presentation to the fresh Year 12s of which I was one. They put forward a challenge that had become a tradition at Worth; get a team of 6 together and relay swim your way across the English Channel to France, easy peasy! There was a large crowd of fellow Lower

After about 7 hours, only about half way across, I started to get really tired.

Sixth Formers who stayed behind to put their names forward. Fast forward 8 months and that large crowd boiled down to 4; Hugh Murphy B’14, David Corr B’14, Ashley Thomas StB’14 and myself. With a date booked for a registered boat of the Channel Swim and Pilots Federation we were short by 2 members. Luckily for us ex-Worth student Ben Barham R’10, who was in the first cohort of swimmers and very keen to have another go at a relay, stepped up along with Max Hodgkinson who we met at the weekly Dover training session.

16 hours and 53 minutes later, on the 7th July 2013, we made it to France. The day itself was pretty miserable, although the sun was out and the sea calm I suffered very bad sea sickness. After completion and returning to Dover Harbour my parents asked if I’d do it again, and I think I said something along the lines of “F*** off”. But, as the weeks went by and the memory of the stress on my body was forgotten, the idea slowly formed that maybe one day I would do it all again by myself.

Back to January 2022 and I booked the boat to cross the Channel. My parents were shocked but supportive and my brother Stevie Steers C’17 (who also completed a Worth Channel Swim relay in 2016) were to make up my support team. For training, a lot of swimming was required and when the temperature of the sea got above 10ºc I was in the water every week. Moving to Belfast the previous August to be with my girlfriend (now fiancée) put me in an ideal spot for cold water training as the water doesn’t get much above 16ºc at its peak.

Training did not go all that well. For starters I hadn’t put on enough weight by the start of the season (May to September) to stay in longer than an hour. My first time at Dover I managed 2 hours in 15.5ºc but I was in a bad way when I got out. Secondly, whilst pool training is great for fitness it doesn’t simulate the choppiness of the sea and, as it was too cold in Northern Ireland to go in the sea for long periods, my training stagnated until the start of May. Additionally, to participate in the swim there is a qualify of 6 hours continuously in water temp under 16ºc, and this had to be done before the end of July. I cut it close on the 30th July as my poor fianceé sat on the beach at Cushendun (an idyllic spot from which on a clear day you can see Scotland) whilst I did laps up and down the bay in 14ºc. Up until that moment I wasn’t sure if what I had signed up to was possible at all, but, luckily, I made it through. The week of the swim I flew back from Ireland and the waiting game began. When booking a swim you get a slot which can be anytime during a week period depending on the tides. Conditions weren’t great and there were multiple times when I thought it might not go ahead. My eyes were glued to windy.com for the weather and swell forecast and the CS&PF website which has a live tracker of the channel swim boats.

After waiting a week, on the 22nd September 2022 I found myself standing on Shakespeare Beach at 7am facing a boat waiting for a siren to go off to signal the

Sam raised over £4,000 for Barts Charity

Why I swam the Channel… again continued “Nothing great is easy” - Captain Matthew Webb, first channel swimmer

start of my Channel swim attempt. When it went off I dived into the much warmer than usual 18ºc water and swam up alongside the boat, to be my place for the next however many hours. After about 7 hours, only about half way across, I started to get really tired. My father noticed a slackening in my stroke and the hourly ‘feeds’ were getting harder and harder to consume, e.g. a sports drink, Ribena, tea and in the end just warm water, and something to eat like jelly babies or a banana. We dodged shipping containers and I just tried to settle in accepting that this was going to be long.

At 12 hours I was getting to the end of what I could take, I had mentally prepared for that length of time and I was getting snappy with my parents on the boat. I wanted to know how far I was away but they wouldn’t divulge that information. At one point when I got particularly rude at one feed the pilot, Lance, a burly man shouted out from the captain’s seat something to the effect of Captain Webb’s quote (above) which put me in my place.

As I approached the bay where I would land in Wissant, there was an overpowering smell of garlic. I thought to myself that this was ridiculous but it was in fact the crew in the boat cooking, but I thought it was a funny coincidence on my approach to France!

I completed the swim in 14 hours 35 minutes landing on the beach in Wissant, so cold and tired that I barely had time to realise I was standing on sand before Lance whisked me back onto the boat heading home to England.

In the following days it didn’t really occur to me what I had done, I wasn’t overcome with emotion, I just kind of accepted that I had made it and that was the goal I wanted

A quick snap on arrival at Wissant

to achieve. After a short sleep and a bit of pain in my knees, and weirdly my wrists, I felt fine. I kept saying it was like a hangover without the headache. I ended up going to London the next day to see the remaining bits of the funeral for the Queen and shop around my favourite city, overall pretty happy with myself that I’d completed my challenge.

I’d like to finish by saying thank you to everyone who donated to my Justgiving page for Bart’s Charity, an organisation close to home for my family. The amount raised was far beyond what I ever envisaged so I am very grateful. I’d like to thank my mother Pip, my father Nigel, my brother and support swimmer Stevie for being absolutely fantastic on the day and throughout the entire time, and finally to my fiancée Rebecca McAleese for putting up with this stupid idea for far too long.

Sam Steers C’14