Mom, Tobey, Deni and Jaime right before the swim. On the left of my Mother is the white railing to the ladder we have to climb down to get on the boat. Good times.
Tobey on the Viking Princess, ready to make the jump!
Jumping off the boat. I'll swim into the beach, clear the water and wait for the boat horn to start the swim. no waiting around here...as soon as we arrive it's go, go, go!! Thank god for that added 20 pounds of fat. Little did we know the conditions forced up the colder water and I was about to swim around 13 hours in 60 degree water! It was FREEZING!!!
No time to think...clear the water, turn around and go! You have a Channel to swim across!!!
Swim Forrest, Swim!!! This is just off the shore of Dover where the water was pretty flat. It didn't last long! There were some swells here that were pretty tough, you just can't see them in the photos.
Tobey feeding with the White Cliffs of Dover in the background. This was the beginning of the swim where the conditions were swimable.
Seriously...where the hell is France???
Tobey and her ship. There were VERY FEW ships in the shipping lanes. I think I saw a total of 2 boats during the entire swim. From what I have heard that is really rare. Definitely made the swim harder because I didn't have any visual cues showing me I was making progress. Just water...and more water...everywhere...nothing but water!Conditions are starting to pick up a bit.
Uhhhh...where's Tobey???
Conditions about to explode! Not many photos after this as everyone was holding on for dear life.
You can't see me, but I'm on the left hand side of Ray and the dingy (or under it...LITERALLY, but I didn't care much at that point). It's time to land on France. About 100m to land.
Yes, this looks like a pitch black photo but it's not. I wanted to give everyone an idea of what we saw from the boat (what I saw from the water). We were in, what felt like, the middle of the Ocean. Yet all of a sudden they put a flashlight up and the White Cliffs of France appeared.
Look closely, the white spec in the middle/left is my arm coming out of the water. The round white mark is the huge flashlight on the cliff. NO JOKE...this is exactly what we saw. It was VERY eerie!!!
FINALLY DONE!!! WOOOHOOO, WE SWAM TO FRANCE!!! GET ME ON LAND, STAT!!!
THRILLED TO BE DONE AND IN CLOTHES...I WAS FREEZING!!!! 
4 comments:
YOU DID IT!!!! Congrats Tobey :)
Dave would be proud (or should I say IS proud)!
Congrats! Yes, dave would most definately be proud. I'm doing the dave memorial tri in madison this weekend. so jealous and can't wait to hear stories. The finish pictures at night are very scary!
Hi Ladies!!! Thanks so much. I was so excited to be in clothes again, it was SO COLD!!! Thankfully I put on all that extra fat becasue they would have been pulling out a popsicle!!!
Lauren...good luck in the Tri this weekend! I hear that's a really good one.
Talk to you guys soon!
Tobey
CONGRATS Tob .. what an AWESOME job you did! You must be incredibly proud .. I know everyone rooting for you on land are proud of you! Touch base when you can!
Hugs & kisses,
Meg, Mike & Erin
Post a Comment