Long-distance swimmer John has some unfinished business!

By Jackie Keogh Saturday September 15th, 2007 for the Southern Star

John Kearney of Baltimore, who was forced to abandon his attempt to swim the English Channel last week after over 14 hours in the water, but he plans another attempt this time next year.
John Kearney says he has some unfinished business …

Shortly after 4am on Wednesday, September 5 last, John dived into the sea at Shakespeare Beach in Dover, ready to embark on a forty-kilometre swim to France. He was determined to reach the other side, but four and a half hours later he became aware of an unusually sharp pain in his right shoulder, which continued for the next ten hours before the cross-channel swim was cut short. “I was gutted when the skipper of the support boat decided to call it off. I was determined to keep going, because I was confident I could do it. The independent observer from the Channel Swimming Federation was happy for me to continue, and so were my crew, but the skipper didn’t believe I would make it because I had missed the tide.

“He was right about the tide. I was at that stage being carried further up the channel towards the Belgium coast, but I knew – the pain in my shoulder non-withstanding – that I had the stamina to continue until the tide turned once again in my favour.

“It would have meant another seven hours in the water – a true marathon, considering that the shortest crossing ever was seven hours – but I was determined to land in France. I was doing an hourly check on myself: I would check to see if I was dehydrated, cold, hungry or in too much pain, but I was satisfied that none of the above applied.

“Having never swum more than six hours before, I was surprised at how comfortable I felt” – even the independent observer from the Channel Swimming Federation said he’d never met anyone so cheerful and uncomplaining".

IN DARK John didn’t wear a watch, but could calculate the time by the number of hourly feeds. Describing the first leg of the journey, John said, “I decided to start while it was still dark, so I would have the psychological advantage of arriving in France in daylight.

“I was used to the dark because I had so many early morning starts in Lough Ine and I felt good starting off because the air temperature was cold, but the water was warm and inviting.”

For the first two hours, John said his thoughts were with another swimmer, Alan, from South Africa who had started out twenty minutes before him. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I was wondering if I would catch up with him, or be able to keep pace with him so we could meet together at the other side.”

Instead of thinking about France, or other imponderables, all the time, John said, “You spend your time thinking about your feeds. It’s a way of breaking down the swim into manageable units. On the hour, every hour, for the first four hours, John said he would consume hot Ribena and honey, warm apple juice, or an approved lemon power drink and a banana, or watery soup. The number of feeds were stepped up to every forty-five minutes for the remaining time, but were limited to thirty and sixty second stops while John treaded water.

John said he believes the injury happened when he picked up his pace four hours into the swim. He said he cannot account for the injury, other than it was a type of muscle strain which reduced the range of his normal swimming pattern. The injury caused him to rely more on his left arm and ultimately led to an imbalance in his stroke. That meant he was losing time and it was only at the six-hour mark that he and his support crew noticed that his pace was after slowing down. John informed the crew about his shoulder difficulty but said he was keen to continue at a slightly slower pace.

“Even though I was injured, I was happy to go on because,” he joked, “I knew that as long as there was enough food to get us to France we’d be alright.” John said it was “a great feeling to get to the halfway mark”. He described it as like being halfway across a busy road because instead of looking out for large cargo vessels travelling from left to right, he was now looking out for tankers travelling from right to left.

The next ‘highlight’ for John was when he unceremoniously returned his feed bottle to the boat by sending it whistling through the air in the direction of his support crew, J.J. Cotter and Robbie Green, who made the mistake of serving him cold soup for his tenth hour feed. He said: “The look of surprise on their face kept me chuckling for a while.”

At the fourteen-hour mark, John said he told his support crew to prepare his night goggles and light stick for his next feed because it was now around 7pm and it would be dark by 8pm. “I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but the skipper asked J.J. and Robbie to ask me to stop. They, and the independent observer, were of the opinion that I was able to continue, but the skipper was insisting on calling a halt. His crew told the skipper that if he wanted to call it off he would have to talk to John himself, which he duly did, only to be met with disbelief.

“We started to have a disagreement,” said John, “I was clear about what I needed to do to get in, but I believe the timescale was an issue for him.” The disagreement ended the second time with the skipper walking away and John swimming away towards the French coast, but when the boat did not follow, John realised he would have to accept the skipper’s decision as final no matter how much it rankled. John described the atmosphere on the boat journey back to Dover as being “extremely tense,” but the pain in his shoulder kept him distracted.

The disappointment about what happened didn’t last long. The following morning, John said, “I felt happy about my performance and I was confident that I would be easily able to cross the channel given the right circumstances.”

NEXT YEAR After talking to his wife, Vivienne, John booked another support boat for September 2008, but this time he will be joined by five more members of the West Cork Triathlon Club – an organisation he helped to establish. John said, “This is a challenge I don’t want to walk away from. I now know I am well able to do it. As far as I am concerned, it is unfinished business.

While John did not reach France, he is still determined to help raise ?10,000 for the five local charities – Marymount Hospice, CoAction, Rathmore National School, Baltimore RNLI and the Skibbereen Youth Café Project. On Saturday, September 15 next, John and his crew, including Anna Moynihan, will be hosting a fund-raising evening in the Oldcourt Inn from eight until late. Everyone is welcome to attend.

channel cut short

After 14 hours of swimming the English Channel, John Kearney's quest was cut short. He had pulled a muscle earlier in the day and battled on regardless. However the Skipper of the boat decided that it was unsafe for John to continue as the tides were pulling him off course.

John is now recovering on the boat. His fans are disappointed for him but also very proud of his accomplishment. We look forward to having him back to celebrate his efforts.

Are we there yet??

Over 12 hours into the journey and reports are that John is still as determined as ever. God bless the West Cork Teaspaigh!!!

Halfway to France

John is just after feeding on 700ml of iso and a gel pack, his stroke has increased slightly as he passes the half way mark. Weather has started to brighten up. Sea temperature is 16 degrees and the air temperature is also 16 degrees. Sea state has increased to one metre swell. Wind SW force 2 to 3. Robbie and JJ say that they are just starting to smell the garlic!!!

lunch time!!

JJ and Robbie are busy preparing the next feed for John. 8 hours down but not necessarily half way yet as the tide is against him. JJ gave a report of John's progress on County Sound 103FM and all is well with John and the team. JJ explained that the sea conditions are good for John.

doing good

battling on at 9.30am

looking out for traffic.

Total gridlock on the English Channel!!!

the Big Dipper!!

John started his swim this morning at 4.26am.

This photo was taken of him at 7am eating a banana and taking an isotonic drink.

Robbie has reported in that John is doing really well, he is averaging 56 strokes a minute.

the water temperature is 16 degrees and at that time the air temperature was 12 degrees so as Robbie says "feel sorry for us, we're colder!!"

the eve of the big dip!!

Final preparations are under way as we speak. John and his crew are currently polishing the swimming shorts and hat and de-fogging the goggles before they tuck themselves into bed at 7pm!!! This will be their last sleep before John throws himself into a cold sea for a gruelling swim to France.

The photo above is Shakespeare's Beach where John will be leaving in the early hours of tomorrow morning. John will need to get into the water around 3am in order to work with the tides. This means that the first few hours of the swim will be in darkness with the boat guiding him. However the majority of the swim will be done in daylight and this will help John motivate himself through the tough hours.

The starting point of the swim is Shakespeare's Beach but he will have to take the boat from the marina in Dover in order to get to the beach. He will then have to swim from the boat to the shore and then start the official swim! He will have to cover his whole body in lanolin on the boat before he leaves for the shore.

This blog will be updated on an hourly basis tomorrow to let you know how John is doing. Robbie and JJ will be recording the event from the boat and his fans in West Cork will be wishing him well from a distance.

From Baltimore to Dover

John and JJ left Baltimore in the early hours of friday morning and travelled on the ferry to Wales. There they picked up the other team member, Robbie, and drove to Dover to camp down for the remainder of the week. There was a great sense of tension and excitement( as well as a bit of tiredness as the three men were up at the crack of dawn to get here!). with John doing the driving, i'm sure they made it in quick time!

During the journey John received sereral texts and calls from people wishing him well, including Red FM, County Sound(103FM) and Seascapes on Radio one. Each station interviewed him and gave John great confidence to continue his journey. We are hoping that as he is now a minor celebrity, his ego won't get the better of him (I wonder is he secretly practicing his autograph yet or has he started his biography???)

After a good nights sleep( and a few beers for the boys- not John though, he'll have to wait til France!!), the three men went on the ferry to France for a quick reccy of the journey involved. The weather was good and John is still happy to continue his madness. they met with the Skipper of the boat that will support John on the swim. The Skipper advised that it would be better to leave for France on Wednesday morning 5th September, based on the weather conditions. The skipper reckons that John will complete the swim in 12 hours, John told him that he is hoping for 16 hours so they agreed that they'll split the difference and get there in 14!!

The Final Week for John

30th August, 2007

The past week has been very hectic for John. He has been putting in his last few training sessions in Lough Ine both in the evenings and at unearthly hours of the morning when most sane people are all tucked up in their beds or ambling home from a good party!!

He has also had to continue with his other work, such as chartering his boat for dives on the weekend and finishing construction work on his dive centre.

He also managed to give the Lord Almighty a look in on Sunday and say a few prayers and ask a few favours from the big Man himself!!

The posters are up in the bars, shops and any place that will take them. John is looking for as much financial support as possible as all of it goes to very good causes.

There is also going to be a party in John's honor in the Oldcourt Inn on Saturday the 15th September from 8pm til late. Everybody is welcome.

John is getting the ferry to England early this Friday morning and will be doing his swim this Sunday or Monday, depending on the conditions. We wish him the very best of luck.

Southern Star Newspaper Article

Baltimore man hoping to attempt swim across the English Channel
By By Jackie Keogh Saturday August 11th, 2007
MORE people have climbed Everest than have swum across the English channel, but in September Baltimore man John Kearney will attempt to do just that. But first, the thirty-seven year-old property developer and owner of the Baltimore Diving and Watersports Centre will continue a gruelling training session that will include a twenty-four kilometre swim from Baltimore Pier to Castletownshend Pier on Friday, August 17, and a sixteen kilometre swim from Baltimore Pier to Schull the following day. In the process, John will be hoping to raise §10,000 for four charities, namely the Marymount Hospice in Cork, CoAction in West Cork, the RNLI and two youth projects – Rathmore National School and the Youth Café Project in Skibbereen. The origins of this ‘Five Hundred Mile Challenge’ are in John’s original and historic swim to Cape Clear Island in the summer of 1995, ten days after a rather long session in the island clubhouse and a rash decision to be the first man to attempt the nine-kilometre crossing. John said: “I saw it as a challenge. I thought I could achieve it. I believe possibilities are endless with a bit of determination.” Despite the hours and days John spends in the water as a diving instructor, he had never actually swum a straight kilometre before, so he promptly set about a ten-day training schedule, which was minimal to say the least. On the morning of Saturday, July 15, 1995, John stood on the pier in Baltimore and got ready for the off. Just before he dived, he said one salty old sea dog – who shall remain nameless – approached him and whispered in his ear: “Christ, you’ll never make it.” Thrown by the comment, John said his entry into the water was less than gracious, and the journey, which had been delayed by an hour, began with a belly flop and left him struggling somewhat with less-than-favourable tidal conditions. “There’s a very tight margin in a crossing like that,” said John, “even when the tide is with you, you have to get it right.” He had some difficulties along the notorious Gascanane Sound, where the tide was taking him away from Cape Clear, but he persevered. “It meant extra swimming and it took me five hours and thirty five minutes to reach dry land on the south side of the island. As it turned out, the same old seafarer was on the pier and was the first to congratulate John, saying: “Christ, I knew you’d do it!” EUPHORIA Despite feeling tired, dehydrated, sunburned, badly stung by jellyfish and sick of drinking salt water, John said there was a feeling of euphoria and it ended up with another all night session back at the clubhouse where he had been ten days earlier. The islanders presented John with a plaque to mark his marathon swim and the funds he raised for the football field on Cape Clear. John didn’t do much swimming after that until he started doing triathlons about two years ago. So far, he’s done twelve and he has even helped establish the West Cork Triathlon Club with Dr. Pat Bailey and Stephen Redmond. More than one hundred people turned up for their inaugural event on July 7 last and the course – which includes a 1,500 kilometre swim, a 45-kilometre cycle (including Lough Ine hill) and a 10 kilometre run – has already been rated as one of the toughest in the country. The year before, John decided to do an anniversary swim to Cape Clear with two of his friends, Kevin O’Brien, who is also a work colleague, and Norman Kelly, from Tragumna. On July 14, 2005 – two days after his thirty-fifth birthday – John, Kevin and Norman set off from Baltimore. It took John just three and a half hours to make the crossing, with Kevin arriving a short time later, and Norman – who had only learned to swim the year before – shaving an hour off John’s 1995 time. As is the case with all of John’s swims, he completed it without a wetsuit. He said there is a tradition among established distance swimmers to do it the old-fashioned way in swimming trunks, and the same will apply to his attempt to swim the English Channel in September. INSPIRED John said he was inspired to take on the challenge after he read Lynn Cox’s book “Swimming to Antarctica.” He was further encouraged, last year, when he was bringing a boat back from Holland to Dublin and he heard the coastguard issue a warning as they passed the south coast of England and the Dover Strait that there were swimmers in the water. “It was a glorious day and I decided to do the crossing myself. When I came home, I made enquiries about how to go about it and discovered there’s a whole procedure you have to follow. I had to join the federation governing channel crossings, book a time slot and arrange to hire a support boat.” In the process, John made a lot of new friends. He even joined some of them on the Alcatraz swim in San Francisco last September. The swim from Alcatraz to the mainland is not far, but the annual swim is carried out in difficult tidal conditions, which is why it attracts so many distance swimmers. On that trip, John said he met a lot of people who succeeded in crossing the English Channel – including Alison Streeter, who has swum it more than forty times and earned herself the title “Queen of the Channel” – and that made him even more determined. “The swim from Alcatraz was wonderful,” said John, “eight-hundred swimmers got up at 5 am and were led, in darkness, by a piper to the fishermen’s wharf, where we registered and were then marched to the boat. “On the way over to the island,” John said, “I kept hearing different stories: For most people the biggest fear was a shark attack, but others laughed it off saying ‘it only hurts if you survive’”.When he returned, John said he began his winter training by swimming one or two hours a day, five or six days a week, in the pool at the Baltimore Harbour Hotel. “I had to learn how to swim again,” he said, “I had to learn new techniques, such as dual breathing, and I found the Lynch brothers – Tom and Bernard – from Cork very helpful.” He said the techniques they taught him changed his whole pattern of swimming and allowed him to change and adapt his swimming style depending on sea conditions. POSSIBLE John admits that his ability has improved dramatically in the last six months and now believes it is possible for him to swim the channel. On May 1 last, John said he began swimming in the sea. The temperature at thirteen degrees was just one degree warmer than winter, but John said he’s hardened to it at this stage, especially after a trip to Scotland, where the water temperature was just eight degrees. They had been diving off a couple of abandoned islands when they got weather bound. John decided to use the downtime to get in some distance swimming along the shoreline. The Scottish crew thought he was mad and were willing to send ashore for a straight jacket, because they knew how cold it was and John wasn’t even using a wetsuit. “When I came back to Irish waters in June it was, by comparison, like jumping into a hot bath,” said John. “Yes, it was still cool, but it was easy for a while.” Since then, John has been constantly swimming in the sea for two hours a day, five or six days a week. He said he is averaging about forty kilometres a week, but sometimes – usually once a week – he will do a five or six-hour swim. He recently re-visited Cape Clear. On Saturday, July 14 last, he made the island in record time – two hours and thirty minutes using his new improved swim technique and better judgement of the tide. Forty-eight hours later, John was back in the water. This time, his crew dropped him off at the Fastnet Lighthouse at 2pm on Monday, July 16 and he set off, through one-metre waves, via Cape Clear, to Baltimore. The twenty-one kilometre trip took just over six hours, but it was not without incident: “My back-up boat failed to tell me that I was not alone in the water … a set of fins following me for about a mile off Cape Clear.” It is hard to imagine that his crew didn’t tell him, but John said they reasoned that if they told him, it would have one of two reactions: “I’d speed up, or get out of the water, so they decided to monitor the situation rather than tell me. “All joking aside, I reviewed my crew after that and we now have a few new rules, including one about sharks, even though there is no recorded shark attack in Irish waters!” Intent on the swim, John said he didn’t see anything, but he later found out that the shark – possibly a blue shark, which is considered ‘okay’ – lingered behind him from Cape Clear in towards Baltimore for about an hour. “All I saw was the boat I was following go into reverse, but they waved me on while they went to investigate.” John said the sea conditions were only rough in patches, but he had to do battle with strong tidal flows around Cape Clear. “When you are doing a long distance swim you will get over the pain, but you will not get over hunger or dehydration,” he said. “You cannot touch the lead boat, or the support boat, they have to pass food and drink out to you every thirty minutes.” The training swims have also provided him with an opportunity to experiment with his diet and, it seems, that there is no way to develop a liking for salty bananas. ‘DISGUSTING Someone suggested he try Turkish Delights. He did, but said salty Turkish Delights are “disgusting.” He said: “It’s impossible to keep the food dry, not to mind salt-free because they have to be passed to me by a fishing road or in a bucket attached to a pole.” Nevertheless, he said he learned a lot on the swim from the Fastnet. “I never took anything warm in the six hours. I didn’t drink enough and I took too long over eating and drinking. I will have to drink twice as much in half of the time, approximately three-quarters of a litre every thirty minutes.” John’s most recent endurance test was from Tragumna to Baltimore, a nine-kilometre swim that took him three hours in tough tidal conditions. It’s all part of the training that starts some days at 4 or 5am and is done in addition to a full day’s work at his Baltimore Diving and Watersports Centre, overseeing various building projects, and spending time with his wife, Vivienne, and their children, five-year-old Amy and three-year-old John. John has been training a lot in Lough Ine. He starts some days in darkness at 4am, because he knows that his attempt to cross the channel will involve four, maybe five, hours swimming at night with the lights of France beckoning him in the distance. “I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve succeeded in swimming the channel and they all agree that, psychologically, that is when the channel swim really begins – the last leg in darkness,” said John. As part of his strict training regime, John knows he will have to complete two tough back-to-back swims and rest for a few weeks, if he is to be in peak condition to successful complete the channel swim. The first of these will be the swim from Baltimore Pier to Castletownshend Pier on Friday, August 17, at 2 pm. After completing the 24-kilometre swim, which is likely to take seven or eight hours. John will then undertake the 16-kilometre swim from Baltimore to Schull at 9 am on Saturday, August 18. The combined two-day swim represents the distance John will be expected to swim on the channel crossing. “If I can do the Castletownshend swim and the Schull swim,” he said, “I think the channel will be achievable – that is if I can master the feeding and dehydration.” Anyone who would like to mark John’s endeavour by contributing to the four local charities can make a donation to the following TSB Skibbereen bank account: 990717-11349034.