Ilfracombe to Swansea, 18-7-2025, 13hours 52minutes 47seconds. Fastest Female….and outright fastest crossing on this route!
Rebecca Lennonn
Captains log – The story of the swim by Off the Slip (Toms alter ego!) –
Absolute privilege to escort Rebecca Lennon across the Bristol Channel. Fabulous swim! The long version…
We slipped out of the Marina at a ridiculous hour to take on the monster. Bigger than the English Channel, Ilfracombe to Gower is an insane prospect of a swim… and Becky had it all….before the sun even came up 
. Bioluminessence in our wake, dolphins teaching their calves about crazy hoomans, seals, jellyfish….and that was before the sun even came up!
When the sun did come up, in Easterly wind blew up….that we were heading into for six hours. Wind over tide. Chop. The horrible chop that bats you in the face spoils your stroke, messes up your rhythm. That wasnt on the forecast….but that doesnt matter. Still, she swam on.
The thing with channel swimming (….and life in general!) is the dark times never last; you’ve got to stay in the fight, things will change, the tide will turn. A wise man once said “It aint about how hard you can hit, its about how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forwards” [Rocky Balboa 1976]. Nothing really correlates to channel swimming better. Whatever the channel decides to throw at you, its just one more feed. Just get to one more feed. Itll change. and if it doesnt? You just gotta get through one more feed. And then the next. And then the next
At about the 8 hour mark, it did change. The tides turned, the wind dropped to almost zero and we were steaming North at an insane speed. This is what we were playing for.
Nothing great is easy….and it isnt supposed to be. As always, the channel had one last question. The wind swung. We knew from the forecast we might have a northerly wind at the end but she actually blew up north west….which meant we had wind over tide. Again. And being a fairly big tide, it was fairly spicy! Becky was getting battered again, pushed away from the boat, slapped around right when she was at her most vulnerable.
When we asked her to give it what she had, Becky said she didn’t have much left. Doesnt matter whats left, we just need it. All of it. We need 100% of what youve got. Every stroke battles a tiny bit further through the current and the wind, every stroke closes down the bearing, closes down the gap to land. If you want to be a channel swimmer, you need to switch the head off and and unload everything you got when you’re broken and you dont think you can. That is the exam question the channel has set, thats the one that needs to be answered…. and there is no-one elses homework to copy.
Becky had all the answers and rolled into Port Eynon with Sian Clements accompanying her in, to finish on the beach, holding her hand up to stop the clock in 13 hours, 52 minutes. Breaking Sians nigh on ten year old record. The two fastest ever people to swim Ilfracombe to Swansea to channel swimming rules right there. 
We rolled back into Porthcawl Marina yesterday evening with a very happy boat, a very tired swimmer….and a new world record under our belt (subject to ratification). Fabulous swim 
Huge thanks as ever to our observer Ros, Sian and Alex for crewing and the marina for letting us play.
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