The “Dovercoaster” is how Channel swimmers refer to the uncertainty around when—or indeed, if—they are going to get the call from their boat pilot saying they have a slot to swim. Time and tide may wait for no one, but many a Channel swimmer has waited for time and tide, only to be thwarted before they’ve even started. Sometimes the weather doesn’t play nice and the timing doesn’t work out and the swim doesn’t happen at all.

I’ve been on something of my own private Dovercoaster over the past few months, ever since making the decision not to swim the Channel relay this year. That decision took a huge amount of pressure off me, but once the relief wore off and the reality set in, I (predictably) went into a bit of a tailspin. The ups and downs were not unlike being tossed around on a boat in heavy seas.

First, it proved tricker than expected to find a replacement for me, which made me feel guilty for leaving everyone in the lurch. The team had an alternate who initially stepped in when I bowed out, but then circumstances changed and the alternate wasn’t able to take my place after all. This meant that our coach, Christine, needed to find both a new team member and a new alternate. The team member issue was finally resolved when Esther (an experienced relay swimmer and all-around wonderful woman) agreed to join. There couldn’t have been a better person to have on the team in terms of both swimming ability and personality. The alternate situation never did get resolved, but with Esther taking my place, it felt like the team was set up for success in any case.

Second, I had a bit of an identity crisis. “Training for a Channel relay” had become my whole personality, so once I was no longer doing that, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I had been working towards this huge goal for the better part of a year, and suddenly it was gone—but instead of the comedown you get after reaching a goal, I had the comedown after reaching nothing at all. I’d been tremendously motivated to swim regularly when I was training for the relay, but when I no longer had to prepare for anything, I totally lost my swimming mojo. Swimming had been everything to me, but I went from swimming multiple times a week to not stepping foot in the water for weeks on end.

The few times I did get in the water, it didn’t go well. Christine invited me to swim one morning with several other women, including someone who was potentially going to be the team alternate. I hadn’t realized that I wouldn’t know any of the other swimmers, and I also hadn’t realized just how accomplished all of them would be: women training for Channel solos and long-distance lake swims, women who had already completed relays and triathlons, women who apparently had no qualms about wading into the sea and swimming alone for hours on end far from the shore. I stuck close to the beach and only managed about half an hour (it was mid-May and the water was still very cold). I met Jeremy for lunch afterwards, and as soon as I saw him, I started to cry. I felt like such an imposter, like I had absolutely no business being in the company of swimmers like that. I had imagined that I could someday be in their league, but now that seemed impossible. That was a real low point.

And third, I had no idea where I fit into the team anymore—if I fit in at all. I had agreed to continue doing the admin (and reader, there was SO much admin), so I was still involved in the logistics of getting the team cleared to swim. I was still going along on some training swims, but I often worried about whether my presence was a distraction. I still wanted to be around to support my friend Silvina especially, but I didn’t want to stand in the way of her bonding with the people she would actually be swimming with on the relay. And I had initially thought that I would be able to go along on the boat as support crew, but it turned out that wasn’t such a sure bet after all.

Many different factors determine the shape of a Channel swim. There are the tides and weather, of course, but also the specific boat and crew. Channel escort boats are very much not luxurious affairs; the ones I know of are small and fairly stripped-down, with room for maybe twelve people at most—and that’s not twelve people spread out on comfy seats, that’s a few people in the cabin piloting the boat and everyone else perching outside wherever they can, squished between all the supplies they’ve brought on board. A six-person relay team will take up half the space on the boat all on their own. When you factor in the boat pilot, the boat crew, and the official observer who is there to certify the swim, you already have a very crowded boat, even before accounting for anyone going along to support the swimmers.

Our coach Christine was obviously going to be the team’s main support person on the boat, and for a while it looked like someone else would also go as dedicated support for one of the team members who had a medical condition. It wasn’t clear how many boat crew would be accompanying the pilot, but even if it was just one person, that would mean a total of eleven people on board already. Basically, no one really knew whether there was going to be room for me, especially since I wasn’t going to have any specific function on the boat. So for months, people constantly asked me when the swim was happening and whether I was going, and I just had to keep saying “I don’t know.”

Even though I understood the reasons for it, this not-knowing was frustrating; the team’s “tide” (the window of time in which they could potentially be called to swim) was from August 17 to 21, so the middle of August was just one big question mark both on my calendar and in my mind. As August 17 drew closer without bringing any clarity, I began to assume that I wouldn’t be going after all. And honestly, I was okay with that. I had thought it would be a fun experience, and I knew I would feel left out when the swim started and I wasn’t there to cheer on the team in person, but I had to acknowledge that I was kind of a random element in this whole thing: associated with the team but not on the team, a supporter but not essential support. In a way, the assumption that I wasn’t going was a relief because it meant I didn’t have to wait for clarity anymore. Once again, all pressure was off.

On the morning of Tuesday, August 12, I was just finishing a cup of coffee before heading out for a swim (my swimming mojo did, obviously, return) when Christine called. I don’t remember her exact words, but it was along the lines of: “The team has a slot to go out on Thursday night, would you like to go?”. I was so surprised I could barely string a sentence together. I wasn’t expecting such an early date for the swim OR the opportunity to actually be on the boat. I babbled something about yes, of course, if there’s room for me, absolutely.

And then the kicker—Christine said: “My passport has been stolen, so I won’t be going along.”

Um.

This was very much not on my bingo card of potential scenarios. Christine was the glue holding together a very disparate group of people. She is a calm, reassuring presence, someone who has swum the Channel solo herself and guided many other swimmers across as well. The team was named “Jitterbugs” because this was the name of a team she had been part of with her brother twenty years ago—and this twentieth-anniversary swim was going to be extra special because Christine’s nephew was one of the team members. There was no way I could imagine the Jitterbugs setting out on their swim without Christine there to guide them.

But when a Channel pilot offers you a confirmed slot, it’s very risky to pass it up because you don’t know when or if the opportunity is going to come around again (and in this case, the weather was due to change that weekend, so it’s very possible the opportunity wouldn’t have come around again). Considering this, it made sense for the team to go. Christine said that I could take her place, as it were, just to keep an eye on everything and make sure everyone had what they needed for a successful swim. I had absolutely no faith in my ability to do this, but I also realized that it was probably me or nothing at that point. So it was me.

I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday speedily acquiring stuff to bring on the boat: a flashlight and camping lights for the first hours of the journey (because we would be setting off in the dark), bottles of water, food that was easy to prepare and digest (pots of oatmeal, ramen, crackers, cookies, fruit), stuff to make hot drinks (tea bags, instant coffee), seasickness medicine, headache medicine, sunscreen, clothes for the chilly nighttime, clothes for the sunny daytime. I was very aware of not wanting to bring too much stuff, because the boat pilots hate that, but I also knew I’d be stuck on a small vessel for an indefinite amount of time, so if I needed something, I’d need to have it with me from the start. I live in fear of not prepared for every possible scenario, but by Wednesday evening I figured I’d done all that I could, so I was as ready to go as I’d ever be.

On Thursday morning, Christine called again. She was at the passport office, and it turned out there was a very, very slim chance she might be able to get a fast-tracked passport before the boat set off that night. She needed all the supporting evidence she could get to prove that the boat was booked, all the fees had been paid, all the paperwork was submitted, and everything had been cleared for the crossing—but she didn’t have this evidence because I was the team admin, so all correspondence with the boat pilot and CSPF had gone through me. What followed was two absolutely frantic hours as I trawled through documents and attempted to forward them to Christine, all the while trying to stay calm and not to get my hopes up that this was actually going to work.

Somehow, it worked. At lunchtime, Christine forwarded me a picture of her confirmed passport application, and I wrote “OMG does this mean you get to go?” and she wrote “Yes!” and I wrote “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH” and then I had a little cry of relief and dance of joy. And suddenly everything seemed much more manageable and, frankly, much more fun. This was really happening, and I was going to be part of it after all.

Silvina picked me up Thursday evening after dinner and we made the 2+ hour journey to Dover. Even the drive itself somehow felt iconic to me, because I’ve read so many accounts of Channel swims and the majority start with a nighttime drive to Dover. A Channel swim takes an average of maybe twelve to fifteen hours, and a lot of swims set off in the dark so the swimmer(s) will land in France in daylight (rather than starting in the day and swimming into darkness, which can be dispiriting). We were scheduled to meet at the marina at 11 p.m., be on the boat at 11:30, and have the first swimmer in the water around midnight. With this in mind, I had tried to sleep a bit earlier in the afternoon, knowing I was going to be awake throughout the night and into the next day. I hadn’t been very successful, but I figured adrenaline would keep us all going.

The adrenaline certainly hit once we arrived in Dover and loaded up the boat. The minute I saw the ladder at the back of the boat leading down to the water, I had a flashback to the Ramsgate swim camp which gave me a spike of anxiety followed by a feeling of intense relief that I wouldn’t have to descend that ladder at any point (unless something went very, very wrong). As predicted, it was a tight squeeze on the boat, so we stowed our gear as best we could and then settled into whatever seat we could find for the safety briefing.

The safety briefing unexpectedly gave me another surge of anxiety; I honestly hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of a disaster at sea, but as one of the crew ran through some potential scenarios and explained what we should do if, say, the entire crew was “incapacitated” and we had to trigger the emergency beacon, I felt my heart rate jump. We were on a small vessel heading out into a large, unpredictable, and extremely busy body of water, and as much as I didn’t fancy jumping into that water voluntarily, I really didn’t fancy finding myself in it involuntarily.

There was no time to back out now, though. We were told that the weather would be closing in towards the end of the next day and we needed to get the swim under way as soon as possible—so the pilot fired up the engine at around midnight and we motored out of the marina and down the coast to Samphire Hoe beach. The boat idled off the beach while the first swimmer, Rafe, jumped into the water, swam to the beach, got out and stood clear of the water to wait for the boat’s klaxon to sound, signaling him to get back into the water and start the swim for real. And with that, we were off.

Rafe swam hard for an hour, followed by Dan, Esther, and Phil. All of them had to swim in the pitch black, the only light coming from a small spotlight on the boat and the tiny flashing green lights they each wore clipped to the back of their goggles and swimsuit. It was 4:20 in the morning and still dark when Silvina got in for her first swim. Remembering how scary we’d both found the night swim in Ramsgate, I’d really hoped for her sake that the sky would already be light when she had to swim, but there was just the barest hint of red on the horizon when she plunged into the water and set off.

As she spent that hour in the water, all of us on the boat were treated to the most fabulous sunrise. Silvina said later that it was the changing light in the sky that kept her going, and although she had been terrified, experiencing that dawn light while finally swimming the Channel was truly profound for her. The sky was all pastel glory by the time George, the final swimmer in the rotation, got to do his first hour. And then suddenly it was day, and we could see the white cliffs of Dover in the distance, and tankers and container ships and ferries, and the gorgeous green-blue water all around us. It was glorious.

It was also…not actually going very well.

The shortest distance from England to France is from Dover to Cap Gris-Nez. But because of the very strong tides in the Channel, which change direction about every six hours, it is (almost) impossible to swim straight across. The swimmer who currently holds the record for the fastest crossing (6 hours and 45 minutes!) did just that, as you can see from his track, but that is an almost unheard-of feat. Everyone else gets carried up and down the Channel with the tide (which flows northeast-southwest, like a river changing direction, not “back and forth” between England and France). The boat pilots use the tide times, weather, and individual swimmer speeds to plot the best course across the Channel, ideally avoiding being swept too far northeast or southwest.

I’ve seen the tracking from the other boats that were out with swimmers that day, and everyone got pushed quite far to the northeast—but we got pushed really far. Like, after the first six hours, we were heading for Belgium instead of France. Also, for a while it was uncertain whether one of the swimmers was going to be able to continue; if they didn’t continue, the rest of the team could theoretically still keep going, but the swim wouldn’t be officially certified even if they made it to France. ALSO, the boat’s left engine broke down(!) after we’d been out for about eight hours, so Esther had to swim in a circle around the boat for a good half hour while it was repaired (again, the official relay rules require each swimmer to be in the water for precisely one hour, one after the other, so Esther had to keep the cycle going even though the boat itself wasn’t going).

We were so far off course and so many things were going wrong that the swim was very nearly called off. After much negotiation and discussion with the pilot and amongst the team, the decision was made to carry on for the time being. Everyone gave it their all on their second swim, and by around noon (after being on the water for twelve hours already) we were actually back on track, heading in the right direction, making decent progress. Whereas before it had seemed like stopping was the only sensible option, now it was clear that we would not be turning back. Christine was determined that the team was going to get to France, even if it took another twelve hours—and at that point, it looked like it might.

I’ll say here that I had spent the first eight hours of the journey feeling seasick. Despite having taken seasickness medicine, and despite not typically getting seasick, we were barely an hour out of the marina when I started feeling off. I tried to convince myself it was just tiredness and nerves, but by the time I was barfing over the side of the boat (remembering the advice from Ramsgate not to puke into the wind or onto a swimmer), it was pretty clear what was happening. I wasn’t massively ill, but I was just nauseous enough that all I wanted to do was sit very still with my eyes closed. And that’s pretty much what I did through the hours of darkness, with occasional interludes to make a cup of tea or take some pictures and videos. I felt crummy, but even worse, I felt absolutely useless, just taking up space—not swimming, but also not helping. It wasn’t great.

When the sun rose—and perhaps because the sun rose and I could see the horizon—the seasickness disappeared. I wasn’t 100% sure it wasn’t going to come back, though, and I was also very afraid that I might get a migraine. And by noon, I had been awake for something like 29 hours, and there had been a lot of emotional and psychological ups and downs with the team, and I was pretty wiped out (even though I was the one person on the boat not really doing anything). And the boat, as mentioned, was quite cramped, and precisely because I felt like I wasn’t contributing, I spent a lot of time trying to make myself as small and unobtrusive as possible. So honestly, the thought of spending another twelve hours bobbing slowly towards France—and bearing in mind that we’d still have to make the 3-hour return journey to Dover—was rather daunting.

But I wanted the team to make it all the way across as much as they wanted it. I knew how important it was to each of them, and it was unthinkable to have come so far and not go all the way. We were going to hold on for however long it took, and if that meant landing on a bunch of rocks in the dark (the worst case scenario, but one that certainly does happen—the best case is landing by La Sirène and having them bring out champagne, which also does happen!), then so be it. We were in this for the long haul.

The long haul turned out to be much shorter than expected.

I don’t really know how it happened, but at some point in the mid afternoon, it became apparent that we were making much better progress than anticipated. Suddenly there was talk of finishing in just a few hours instead of the middle of the night. The cliffs of Dover had receded a good while back, while the coast of France drew nearer and nearer. Everyone was on their third swim by this point, and they were all looking strong and confident, despite being thrown around in the growing waves. When Silvina climbed back on board after her final swim, she was sure she hadn’t moved forward at all for the past hour. I said, “Silvina, look”, and I pointed past the front of the boat to the sandy French beach that was suddenly right there, so close that you could see people strolling along the water, and houses perched in the dunes, and cars moving along the road behind them. It was only 5:30 p.m., and it was clear that within the next hour, the Jitterbugs were going to become successful Channel swimmers.

George was the next swimmer in the rotation. The water was too shallow for the boat to move any closer to the shore, so when George jumped in for his swim, he was accompanied by Dan as a support swimmer. And because it wasn’t 100% certain that George would reach the beach within the hour, he was also followed by Rafe, who would have been next up in the rotation and could have overtaken George in the water if necessary to keep to the relay rules. After the many long and, frankly, often tedious hours crossing the open Channel, that last hour was a nail-biter as all of us on the boat squinted anxiously at the three swimmers moving slowly towards the shore, trying to gauge distance versus swimming speed to figure out whether George was actually going to land it or if Rafe would have to sprint for the finish.

George landed it. We could see from afar that he was promptly surrounded by well-wishers on the beach—and because he appeared to be on his own with two support swimmers, we laughed that everyone probably assumed he had just finished a solo (complete in his baggy board shorts). Sometimes, if the conditions are right, all the members of a Channel relay team will be allowed to swim to the shore so they can all stand on French soil together. In this case, three members got to experience the French beach and the other three had to watch from boat. While apparently there were time and safety concerns about letting everyone go, I can’t help but wish that Silvina, Esther, and Phil had been able to join their teammates on the beach.

Not that this dimmed anyone’s excitement! We all shrieked and clapped and hugged in joy and disbelief. As soon as George, Rafe, and Dan were back on board, the pilot turned the boat around and gunned it for Dover while the rest of us cranked up the tunes and popped champagne and recounted the (loooong) day’s events, musing on how often it had seemed like everything was going to fall apart, and how remarkable it was that everything hadn’t. You can put in months of training and planning, you can pay all the fees, you can prepare to within an inch of your life, but there’s never any guarantee that a Channel swim is going to work out. That’s the nature of the Dovercoaster. And that’s what makes success all the sweeter.

It was a bumpy few hours back to England. The sun went down and the champagne ran out and the boat quieted down as the tiredness set in. I don’t think I was the only one to nod off before we reached Dover. When we did finally pull into the marina (at 9:30? 10? I honestly have no idea…) and unloaded the boat, I felt depleted in every possible sense—physically, mentally, emotionally. As the team took joyous photos on the dock and discussed where to go for a celebratory drink, I stood there starving, tired beyond belief, and absolutely desperate to be alone (actually, I was absolutely desperate to be home, but I was staying overnight in Dover, so home would have to wait). I was obviously delighted for the team, but my happiness was of a different quality than theirs. I was happy to have witnessed their success, but it wasn’t my success (yes, I made a small contribution to it, but things would have turned out just fine without me). And after being awake for something like 38 hours, and spending 22 hours of that time on a tiny boat with eleven other people, and 8 hours of that time feeling sick, I needed more than anything in the world to just sit still by myself for a minute, and eat something, and go to sleep.

Silvina and I were sharing a hotel room, and once we’d gotten checked in, she ventured out to find food and some other team members. Meanwhile, I sat on the bed and devoured a pot of instant noodles (unspeakably delicious), took a shower (pure bliss—amazing how briny you can get without ever entering the water), downed a cup of peppermint tea and a few cookies, spent an unreasonably long time trying to figure out how all lights worked in the hotel room, and then collapsed in an exhausted heap.

It was cool and cloudy in Dover the next morning. Silvina and I packed up the car and grabbed breakfast outside the hotel, and then I nipped in to the restroom while Silvina crossed the street to see what was going on the harbor. There was a rowing event happening, and there were (as always) swimmers doing their Channel training. This is where Silvina and some other team members had completed their multi-hour qualifier for the relay, which Silvina said was absolutely brutal—swimming in circles for hours in the frigid and frankly dreary harbor, hoping you passed muster with the people assessing your ability to take on the swim.

When I went to join Silvina, she was standing on her own gazing out over the silvery water of the harbor to the open Channel beyond. That’s when the magnitude of what she and the rest of the team had achieved finally hit me. I knew how hard Silvina had trained because I had been right there beside her for much of it. I knew how many uncertainties she had overcome, and I knew how much this challenge meant to her. I knew what an amazing feat it was for small, fragile human beings to swim across that unforgiving expanse of water because I’d watched them do it for eighteen straight hours, giving everything they had even when they were cold and scared and not sure they were going to succeed. I snapped a picture of Silvina standing there and suddenly every emotion I hadn’t really processed in the past 48 hours (and the past week, and the past three months) bubbled to the surface. When Silvina turned around, I said, “This is weird, but seeing you standing there like that has made me really emotional”—and then we both burst into floods of tears and hugged very tightly for a very long time.

This wasn’t the journey I expected when I said yes to the relay almost a year ago, but it also wasn’t a journey I could have imagined in any form even just a year and a half ago. I didn’t swim the relay, but I did train for it, and that alone was tremendously challenging, pushing me to do things I didn’t realize I had it in me to do. I didn’t swim the relay, but I dedicated a lot of time and effort to ensuring that everyone else could swim. I didn’t swim the relay, but I witnessed an English Channel swim first hand, and not everyone is lucky enough to do that. I didn’t swim the relay, but I got to see the relay through to the very end, and it was a successful end. The Dovercoaster was a rough ride in every sense—but wow, what a ride.