It has been a month since I swam across the English Channel from England to France. It was a magical feeling when I walked onto the shore at Le Petit Blanc Nez after entering the sea at Shakespeare Beach 18 hours and 21 minutes before, but the journey was incredibly tough, and it was nowhere near perfection. I made many irrecoverable mistakes during my preparation resulting in 2 years of time and opportunity cost lost, which would be valued at…
This article focuses solely on my journey to my second attempt of the English Channel. I will publish an article later for an overview of my whole journey from the point I started thinking about doing this in 2018. As mentioned before, after failing my Channel swim attempt in 2021, I had no intention to retry the swim in the near future. However, I made my second attempt on 2023-09-07 and got a provisional success in 18 hours, 21 minutes….
Update 2022-11-22: Unfortunately our swim ended up as a DQ due to the a failed changeover at 04:52. According to the observer log, Ingrid missed the deadline and entered the water at 04:55, making my 1st shift overrun by 3 minutes. As a result the swim was declared invalid by the CS&PF committee. We hope to try again in 2023. All times in this article are in British Summer Time (UTC+1). Photo credit to my crew Paul Cribb unless otherwise…
It’s one week since my disaster and I still can’t make my mind out of it. Everything was very wrong. It was the worst moment in my life. I really shouldn’t have tried it at all before I am completely ready. I totally underestimated the difficulty of Channel swimming, thinking it’s not much different to swim 14-16 km along the coast. Let me start with my motivation. The primary reasons I signed up to do the Channel were: as a…
All photos courtesy of my crew Deborah Vine unless specified. It has already been a few months since I made my final training update on my Channel swim, and I have now made the attempt. Here’s is the report of it. My booked tide was 12-17 September 2021. As I am a slow swimmer, the pilot had agreed that he wouldn’t take me out on a spring tide. Although the weather was good on 12 September, it was still spring…
I travelled to Dover by high speed train and met Kate and her dad at the marina. She was very enthusiastic and looking forward to getting across. The boat was Viking Princess II with Reg Brickell as the pilot. We boarded it and got near the Samphire Hoe where she started her Channel swim. I chased her for her feeding plan and I could finally read it. It was very complicated, listing different stuff every hour until 20 hours and…
Within a week, 4 Hongkongers made history in the English Channel as the first ever solo Hongkonger and the first ever Hong Kong relay team to swim across it. The solo crossing was done by Chun Kong Mak. He lives in Czechia currently. He is a seasoned marathon swimmer and ice swimmer. Last year he also became the first ever Hongkonger to complete an ice mile. He started at 23:39 1st September and got it across in 13 hours and…
Hongkongers are going to make history in the English Channel soon. In a few days’ time, there will be a solo and a relay team attempting to swim the 33-km crossing from England to France. Chun Kong Mak will likely depart tomorrow on a spring tide, weather permitting. He will attempt to become the first Hongkonger to swim the English Channel solo. He is a very accomplished open water swimmer. He raced a lot of marathon swimming races in Czechia….
3 HKU alumni lawyers Eliza Chang, Allan Che and Eugene Wong will form a relay team to swim the English Channel this July, named “The Rule of Law Swimming Marathon”. They are planning to become the first ever Hong Kong relay team to cross the channel. They have been preparing for this challenge in the past 18 months, with the initial idea of a 6-person relay, 3 lawyers from Hong Kong and 3 lawyers from Guangdong. However the Guangdong team…
Chun Kong Mak has announced that he will attempt to swim across the English Channel this October, hoping to become the first Hongkonger to complete this epic challenge in open water swimming. He currently lives in Brno, Czechia. He is an experienced long-distance swimmer and ice swimmer, the only ice swimmer from Hong Kong with his first ice mile in 2019, and his second this year in butterfly. He and 3 other Czech swimmers crossed Loch Ness as a relay…