Abu Dhabi author to float new ideas after 33km English Channel swim
Motivational speaker hopes there will be leadership lessons for her next book in the 12-hour slog
A motivational speaker and author will try to swim the English Channel this summer – a feat achieved by fewer than half the number of people who have climbed Mount Everest.
Just 2,369 solo swimmers have completed the 33-kilometre crossing, which takes on average 12 to 14 hours, compared to 4,833 mountaineers who have reached Everest’s summit.
Julie Lewis, a 56-year-old Briton living in Abu Dhabi, originally applied to take part in a relay swim with four other UAE residents but for one reason or another they all dropped out.
Having already paid her deposit, Lewis was faced with a choice – to convert her application to a solo swim or abandon the attempt.
She visited Dover in March. At that time, the longest swim she had made was just one hour. She asked Loretta Cox, a swim coach who has swum the channel six times, for advice.
“I said, ‘Look, this is the situation. I have five months. If I do what you tell me to, do you think I can do this?’” Lewis says. “And so we went to the local swimming pool in Dover and she said, ‘Okay, just swim until I tell you to stop’. So I swam and swam.
“She said ‘Julie, if you do as I tell you and you train hard, eat well and sleep well, and do your acclimatisation, you have got it about you to do it’.”
The Channel Swimming Association, the governing body that observes and authenticates all English Channel swims, approved her application for a solo effort, pointing out that it would mean a significant change financially, mentally and physically.
Being part of a team she would have been in the water for just one hour at a time but as a solo entry, she is now facing at least a 12-hour swim to cross the stretch of water, which some estimates suggest five out of people six people fail to complete.
“Once you are in the water no one can touch you and you can’t get on and off the boat,” says Lewis, who wrote the book Moving Mountains: Discover the Mountain in You.
“The crew throw bottles out on a line at you with liquid nutrition in or a net with food like peaches and soft mushy food.”
People mainly fail because they either have not trained
enough, or do not eat well enough while they are preparing, she says.
Lewis will fly to the UK on June 5 to acclimatise ahead of her time window for the swim in August. One of the first things she will do is a six-hour qualifier swim in cold water of less than 16°C to prove she is capable of crossing the Channel.
She is making the swim to collect material for her next book – H20 Leadership: Lessons from Water.
“It’s really about how water is extremely resilient because it moves around obstacles,” Lewis says.
“So if we can be like water, in terms of going with the flow and finding a way through challenges, then it is kind of an interesting take on self-leadership.”
She will be accompanied by a boat that will sail alongside her, carrying her coach who will show her pictures of her friends and family, which she will use as motivation to keep pushing through.
Lewis’s window is August 18 to 25, which is especially auspicious since the most successful day of the year for the swim, according to statistics, is the 22.
“I actually looked through a trail of emails because this started last summer, and one of these emails said ‘Your first potential date could be August 22’,” she said.
“And I thought, that’s amazing.”
If we can be like water, in terms of going with the flow, then it is kind of an interesting take on self-leadership
JULIE LEWIS
Abu Dhabi author