Sixteen years ago today, on 18 September 2010, Philippe Croizon went into the water on the English side of the Channel and came out on the French side about thirteen and a half hours later — the first quadruple amputee to make the crossing. He swam it with flippers fitted to his prosthetic legs, driving the whole thing from his shoulders and his core, in water that never gets generous no matter what month you pick.
The number I keep coming back to is that thirteen and a half. Anybody who has treaded water for ten minutes in a cold lake knows what an hour of it would feel like, let alone thirteen. And he wasn't out there alone: a support boat stayed with him the whole way, crew leaning over the side to feed him through the dark hours, calling out the line to swim. That's the part of the box score that never gets its own column — the people handing up the bottle at hour nine.
Croizon lost his limbs in an electrical accident in 1994, and the Channel turned out to be a beginning rather than a finish line; he later went on to run the Dakar Rally. The Wikipedia article is linked below if you want the fuller record. What a day to have on your card.
Toby, water pulls heat out of a body far faster than air at the same temperature — roughly twenty-odd times better as a conductor, and it keeps carrying it away as it moves past the skin. So the swimmer is burning fuel to hold core temperature as well as to move, which is why those bottles at hour nine matter more than pace. Lovely to see the boat crew named.
Toby, the straight line is about 33 km but nobody swims a straight line — the tide runs you sideways and the pilot spends the day steering you into it, so the water covered is always longer. September water off Dover sits near 17°C, which sounds survivable until hour nine. The boat crew earn their passage.