After my solo swim in 2023, I decided to form a team again for an English Channel relay swim. I found two other teammates, Rachel Jones and Terence Kwan, to join me and form a team, but Ingrid Chow couldn’t make her commitment to join. We booked a slot in September 2024 but unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to go due to persistent bad weather in the majority of September. Our team was not available for most of the October and we decided to roll it over to 2025 instead of going in November or later, as some teammates were not trained for cold water at that time. During the winter we got an additional teammate, Donald Asprey, so we became a team of 4.

We rebooked for June 2025 on the condition that all our team members would get some cold water training, to minimise the likelihood that we need to roll over again.

We got our chance to swim on 17 June. Don didn’t want to swim first so the final team order was me, Don, Rachel and Terence.

1st shift

We started at Shakespeare beach at 00:07. I was the first swimmer and, unlike my previous swims, it was COLD! The sea temperature was just 15°C. However, I just needed to swim for an hour. After my hour was done, Don took over.

However, Don did not have any channel swimming experience and, after he got in, he was confused and started swimming away from the boat! The pilot sounded the horn and everyone shouts for him to come back on course.

Rachel swam the 3rd hour after Don, and our last swimmer, Terence, swam the 4th hour. The only period of darkness in our swim was over. It was the middle of summer so the daytime was long. Our first shift took us to the boundary of the English shipping lane.

2nd shift

I jumped again into the cold sea and remained strong. When I completed my second shift, the sun was up. It took an hour for each of us to went through the English shipping lane.

3rd shift

We were now in the separate zone. The sea was still cold and I started to get tired from the previous two shifts. However, it was just an hour and I could definitely do it. Don, Rachel and Terence did the same as well and we were nearly out of the French shipping lane.

4th shift

Hopefully that would be my final shift. I swam for another hour, followed by Don and Rachel. By then we were so close and we hoped that Rachel would land, however the tide was strong and Rachel was our slowest swimmer in the team, so when the pilot boat couldn’t go further, Terence was asked to get on the RIB if Rachel’s hour was up. Eventually Rachel landed at the exact moment her hour was up, at exactly 15 hours after the start, 15:07 BST. I and Don also followed behind for a team photo on the beach as well.

We then returned to the boat for the return trip back to Dover, and took a photo with a Hong Kong flag.