Ferry Dodgers - Charity Channel Swim 2010

The Story of the Ferry Dodgers
24/10/2010 by Matt Houghton

The official 35 minute long movie is now online, documenting our efforts and giving the background to how we came to be swimming through the world's busiest shipping lanes.

You can either view it on our YouTube channel (recommended!) or using the viewer below.

It's split into five clips so make sure you watch them in order!

Another milestone reached - £5000!
27/09/2010 by Matt Houghton

We're very pleased to have hit another target this morning, from our initial £1K per charity target, we've managed to add nearly £700 extra per charity and the figure keeps rising!

I'm still working on the full movie, but here's a short clip of Rich Sanders starting off at 0310am. Keep watching this space for more video.

Channel Swim Info and Photos Online
06/09/2010 by Matt Houghton

There are now a number of photographs online from the actual swim! Click on the image above or check out this page to see the team completing the challenge.

We're all very proud to have completed the challenge and we were today told that our official time was 13 hours 14 minutes. The team completed the challenge in relay, the order being:

1. Rich Sanders (0310 - 0410), (0910 - 1010), (1510 - 1610)
2. Stu Haile (0410 - 0510), (1010 - 1110), (1610 - 1624)
3. Matt Fletcher (0510 - 0610), (1110 - 1210)
4. Matt Houghton (0610 - 0710), (1210 - 1310)
5. Rich Birks (0710 - 0810), (1310 - 1410)
6. Keith Norris (0810 - 0910), (1410 - 1510)

Each of the team swam for one hour before a strict changeover took place - there was an overtake completed by the starting swimmer and there could be no contact between us. During the hour swim, we were unable to touch the boat and despite fighting off a Jellyfish sting (Stu), we had to stay in the water and keep swimming.

Each of the team had two full hour swims with Rich Sanders as the team captain completing a mamoth third hour to get us closer to France. Stu was the lucky swimmer to reach the rocky coastline of Cap Gris Nez some 14 minutes into his final swim. Unfortunately due to the strict rules of the Channel Swimming Association, our reserve swimmer Eley Haile was unable to get in the water despite her completing as much (some may say more!) training as the rest of the team. We would all like to thank Eley for being as much a team member as the any of the rest of us and she provided constant support and encouragement for the swimmers over the 13 hours, no mean feat with no sleep for 2 days!

We hope to continue putting information online and we have collected a massive amount of video footage which will be compiled very soon. Please keep checking back to this site.

Thank you to all of our supporters who have so far donated a massive £3600 to the three charities, and this figure keeps on increasing as we collect our cash sponsorship.

For those people who have not yet donated, you can still show your support for our efforts online!

Ferry Dodgers complete the challenge!
02/09/2010 by Matt Houghton

We're very pleased to say that the team suceeded in the Channel Swim today and we look forward to uploading photos, videos and more information about the swim when we get back into the land of the living!

We managed a time of 13 hours 15 minutes starting in the early hours of this morning so we're now so shattered we can't even celebrate properly!

Thank you to all of out supporters, we are still 50 pounds off our online target so please dig deep to push us over the 1K target for the Cobalt Unit.

Please check back soon for more information about the actual swim!

We're off! The team sets sail
02/09/2010 by Matt Houghton

0310- we're off! Rich is in the water and looking strong. For live photos during our challenge please check out facebook!