Galway Bay swim for cancer care west.

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The Frances Thornton Memorial Galway Bay Swim

"The Frances Thornton Memorial Galway Bay Swim in aid of Cancer Care West, now in its 14th year, takes place on Saturday July 20th , 2019. The swim across Galway Bay from Auginish in Co. Clare to Blackrock Diving Tower in Salthill is a distance of approx 13 Kilometres (Km) and is the only bay swim crossing on the Wild Atlantic Way. Recent swims have raised over €100,000 each year bringing the total raised to date to over €750,000. In that period the charity has launched several new services to the people of Galway and the rest of Connacht."
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Our swimmer

Our swimmer was Darren Coyle a district manager from work that we trained a few years back.

Darren did a great job of fundraising, raising €1721 which was well over his target of €750 need to compete. This was only the final stage of the project as he had also put 12 months of training into getting mentally and physically prepared to take on the ridiculous challenge.

Safety team.

Darren knew my manager had a boat and asked if he would run support for the gruelling swim. The support team was going to be a team of three as we had a lot of areas to cover with myself, my manager and the Darren's girlfriend Maria helping him complete the challenge.

On the day.

I'm not sure how tough it was for the actual swimmer as he was on a different schedule to us. For me and the safety team it started the evening before with a full briefing for the event. With 160 swimmers and 100 boats taking part there were a lot of details to go through and everything needed to be run properly or we could have serious issues.

The next morning we launched from Oranmore docks at 7am on a fresh and dry morning,. Almost perfect except for the slight choppiness to the sea which was going to make it a lot more difficult for the swimmer. We met at the rendevous point at 8am with all the other boats waiting for our swimmer to make the fist 2k gate and make contact.

It was really cool having so many boats there and being part of such a huge undertaking. Darren reached us near to the front of the group and we managed first contact without a hitch. I think it just hit him then how big the swim was, after getting through the first 2k and feeling the burn already.

After that it was just up to us to set the line for our swimmer. Not kill any other swimmer and not crash into any other boats while being in communication with control and all the other crews. We made contact with our swimmer every 30 minutes where Maria had a feeding and nutrition plan for him to complete the challenge.

All in all it took our swimmer 5 hours to complete the 13km swim through heavy waves and strong winds. Personally I think it's madness but he kept going time after time while focusung on the finish line. It takes a mentally strong person to take this on and I was hugely impressed with how he went about it. The tiredness hit him hard after 6km and yet he straightened up again and again to face into the next leg.

At leat for the last one, Salthill was in view and we could hear the cheers from the waiting crowd to bring the swimmers home.

Takeaway's from the day.

I was a bit nervous in the beginning as there was a lot of responsabilty involved and I really shouldn't have been driving the boat in that environment as I had no experience and apparently should have some sort of qualifications but it went fine. Marek was the same and while he had more experience with the boat still wasn't that experienced.

I am glad that we got involved as it was for a good cause and Darren had put so much effort into it. I'm delighted that he made the finish line after all the work that went into it and had gotten a little worried when he was struggling so early. It really was an amazing effort on his behalf to keep going to the end.

All in all. Didn't kill anybody so result on all sides.