Ger Devin’s Channel swim took under 1
FINALLY, through bloodshot, bleary, salt-burnt eyes, Ger Devin saw dry land. After an agonising 14-hour swim, from pitch darkness into light, across 70km of rough open English Channel waters, an exhausted Ger thrashed through waves towards what he thought was his destination in south Calais — and his dream of conquering the swimmer’s equivalent of Mount Everest.
Suddenly, another mountain appeared to rear up ahead of him. ‘I looked up and spotted a P&O ferry,’ remembers the father-of-three. ‘I knew that wasn’t right — I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.’
An embattled Ger, 53, knew he was in trouble: ‘I knew I was in Calais Port and I knew I wasn’t meant to be there. I threw a worried look up at the lads.’ In their Pathfinder boat, by Ger’s side since he’d left Dover at midnight the night before, were his pilot Eric Hartley, his wife Janet Devin, swimming partner Ger Kennedy and an observer watching like a hawk to ensure Ger didn’t touch the side of the boat or another human for the swim’s duration. If he did, he’d be disqualified.
Adventurers from all over the world flock to Dover on the English south coast every year to attempt the toughest swim on the planet. Since Matthew Webb first swam the Channel in 1875, in under 22 hours, just over 1,800 swimmers have completed it — Ger is only the 85th solo swimmer from Ireland to finish.
The sheer mental and physical demands of the swim itself makes for a superhuman feat. Tip to tip it’s 34km but erratic weather, currents and tides blow, push and pull swimmers many miles off course — one participant swam 105km.
But lone swimmers nowadays, wearing nothing but togs, a slick of Vaseline, goggles and earplugs, must also negotiate the busiest shipping lane in the world, with 600 tankers and 200 colossal ferries passing through daily.
Unbeknown to Ger, five hours out, his crew had made the call to the French coastguard telling them he’d be coming through ferry traffic. ‘Keep working away,’ said the French, ‘but if he gets in the way, we’ll lift him’ — every Channel swimmer’s worst nightmare.
Spotting the cruise liner, using hand signals and the giant whiteboard with which they’d communicated with Ger throughout the torturous crossing, his team urged him to up his strokes from 62 strokes a minute to 65.
‘I’m wrecked after the 14 hoursplus non-stop swimming but I focused on my hands, my position and getting the most of out of each stroke,’ Ger says. ‘I didn’t know it then the ferry was veering off course a bit to let me pass by.
‘When I went to land at Calais, French guys in yellow jackets came out telling me not to land. The gusts had upped to green from blue and I tried to get shelter from the boat but it was rough. All you can do is keep turning the arms.’
Driving Ger on was the knowledge that he was taking on this mammoth feat to raise money for the Gavin Glynn Foundation, supporting families of children with cancer. Also awaiting him on shore was Aisling, a 13-year-old from Clontarf battling anaplastic ependymoma, a tumour in the central nervous system. She’ll be embarking on six weeks of specialist radiation proton therapy in Essen, Germany, soon.
Thanks to Ger’s challenge, the Gavin Glynn Foundation can tell her family ‘don’t worry, we’ll look after everything, just go be with your child’ when they travel for her life-saving treatment.
John Glynn and his wife Jayne set up the charity after losing their beloved son Gavin to rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer, on October 21, 2014. Little Gavin had been diagnosed at just 18 months in 2011 and was treated in many hospitals abroad, including Amsterdam and Houston. John and Jayne set up the charity as they did not not want other families to go through what they did while travelling overseas for specialist cancer treatment, and as a way to keep Gavin’s memory alive.
A friend of the couple, Ger didn’t know how he could help at first. But a swimmer since his youth, doggiepaddling even before he could walk, his hobby soon gave him an idea.
His parents Bernie and Tom Devin were well-known around Bray and ran the local swimming club. As a young man, he worked summers in Dublin pools as a lifeguard.
But work, family and life took over and he stopped swimming until eight years ago, when his friend and now swimming partner Ger Kennedy cajoled him into doing the Bray to Greystones race.
He met a new community of openwater all-season swimmers, who fondly call themselves the ‘Greystones Zimmers’.
Four years ago Ger joined Dublin Swimming Club but three years ago, he faced the prospect of never swimming again. Collapsed discs stopped him from moving his neck and he was unable to take to the water for 18 months. But after an operation to insert a steel plate gave him movement again, he decided: ‘Right, I’ll make the most of this.’
With a dismissive wave, he says: ‘Now with the plate in my neck I can feel the cold a bit more but you get on with it.’
At his 50th birthday party, a bunch of friends joked about swimming the English Channel. The following year, Ger and three friends completed the four-leg Channel relay and he set his sights on going the Channel alone.
Upping the ante, he went for 10km swims, then 15km, then returned to the pools for time-training.
He travelled to Poland for ice swimming sessions where it took an hourand-a-half to thaw out after an 18minute swim. Himself and Ger Kennedy sat in large ice-filled ‘buckets’ or vats for 15 minutes at a time to prepare for the Channel crossing.
‘It’s all mental,’ Ger smiles. ‘You train your mind to think what you’re in is normal. In the ice buckets I took out a cigar and had an ice-cream.’
As the Channel swim loomed, his punishing weekday swim and physio schedule ended with heavy training on Saturday and Sunday, swimming for up to four hours each day.
He laughs: ‘The Zimmers came and fed me, throwing me food in the water — I was like Sammy the Seal.’
It was to these thoughts Ger turned for inspiration when he encountered, as he calls it, ‘the darkness’ at various points along the journey.
His thoughts also turned to jellyfish — but instead of trying to avoid them, Ger sought them out. He laughs: ‘I thought a good sting off one of them would take my mind off the other stuff for a while.’
After ten days in his campervan waiting at Dover, where he was the only Irishman among swimmers from all over the world hoping their strict time slot would coincide with the low ‘neap’ tide and good weather, Ger was given the all-clear to depart at midnight on September 26.
After his last supper on dry land — a meal of porridge, seeds, a banana and two fried eggs — Ger was ready.
I looked up and spotted a P&O ferry. I knew that wasn’t right
It’s all mental. You train your mind to think what you’re in is normal