THE NORTH CHANNEL: A CELTIC CROSSING
Dr Will Verling, a consultant paediatrician, set a world record for crossing the Irish Sea on a windsurfer, while also raising money for UK children’s charity Dreamflight. He tells us more about his adventure!
WORDS – Will Verling // PHOTOS – Will Verling
The North Channel. Portpatrick to Donaghadee. A treacherous stretch of water between the southwestern corner of Scotland and Northern Ireland, iconic within the long distance swimming community as one of the more fearsome ‘seven sea swims’ of the world. At 21.5 miles it is roughly the same distance as Dover to Calais, but is colder, rougher and has the ominous prospect of crossing ‘Beaufort’s Dyke’, a one-thousand-foot deep canyon halfway across, into which large amounts of World War 2 ammunitions and more recently nuclear waste has been dumped.
Challenge
We had visited Portpatrick as a family a few years ago. Looking across this stretch of the Irish Sea on a warm summer’s evening, the twinkling lights of Donaghadee seemed a long way away, yet…possible. I have always been interested by the long distance possibilities of our wonderful sport of windsurfing (and SUP’ing) and in particular would mention Guy Cribb’s amazing feats over the years as a real inspiration. I have had mixed success trying to emulate these. Bournemouth to Bognor doesn’t have the same ring to it, but it was a fun day out, albeit falling short of a glorious finish on Brighton beach. Better days of paddling the Great Glen Way across Scotland and completing the 32-mile paddleboard race between the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall had hooked me in to the wonderful feeling of setting out on your craft of choice and seeing just how far you could go with sail or paddle in hand. How fast could I windsurf from the mainland to Northern Ireland, now that had to be a challenge worth looking into.
Safety
Safety was going to be key. Living on the south coast I had no real contacts in the area so I started ringing around local North Channel fishermen to see if they could help escort me across. Initial discussions started promisingly, but when I mentioned I would be looking for 20-30 knots of wind and would be hopefully reaching speeds of 20-25 mph, I was met with some disbelief and comments about 20 foot mid-channel standing waves wrecking their boats. These calls were also wrecking my confidence. I am far from being a professional windsurfer, having young kids and a fairly time consuming NHS job. But I had fallen in love with the sport in its magical nineties heyday and my enthusiastic amateur status had certainly never changed!
After many long evenings looking at tide charts, maps and accounts of the North Chanel swims I came across Padraig and his team at Infinity Channel crossings. Padraig was the opposite of the responses I’d had thus far – confident, determined and with his own hugely impressive open water resume – I felt sure he could handle a boat in rough water and provide excellent safety cover.
Window
We set a crossing window of late September. Still warm enough to be safe, but with the added promise of autumnal low pressures to propel me across at speed. I had limited kit of a 120-litre freeride board and 7m sail, so my wind limits were pretty tight. After a few false starts, conditions began to align to make an attempt on Friday 16th of September. It felt somewhat strange to set off on a good but far from certain forecast to a distant spot in Scotland 500 miles from home, and arriving in a rowdy Carlisle for my overnight stopover felt a million miles away from what I was about to attempt the next day.
The following morning driving through the utterly gorgeous scenery of Galloway, I craned to watch every tree, desperate to see the telltale flattening of the upper branches to show me the wind had arrived – but I saw nothing. My fears further confirmed by the pedestrian-like slow spin of the occasional wind turbine I drove past.
On
I pressed on, and as I drove down the hill into Portpartick, further out to sea – there were definite flecks of white – this was ON! Padraig arrived in the harbour with his safety crew and did little to ease my growing anxiety with comments like, “The swell is the height of the harbour wall in the channel”, and “I hope you’ve done plenty of rough water training” (I hadn’t).
A final quick reccy of a mile or so out offshore on the boat to check wind strength and I began to switch on. We set a start time, I rigged, changed and waited on the water’s edge of the tiny beach within the harbour. Padraig came past with a blast of the horn and I was off.
Anticlimax
The wind, flukey and offshore, died within moments of leaving the beach, and I wobbled and tiptoed desperately, trying not to fall. I made it just past the harbour wall and fell in. Not enough wind to waterstart and my ungainly attempts at uphauling I am sure were placing significant doubts in Padraig’s mind as to my credibility. After a rather depressing 10 minutes of drifting out to sea, I finally saw a wind line. I was hauled up by a gust and felt that wonderful feeling of a fully-powered sail. A few quick pumps and the sudden roar of 600 hp engines told me I had overtaken the boat and was now flying at some speed – I felt utterly elated! Time to lock in and go.
Goal
The goal was 22 miles in 90 minutes. That was definitely doable. What had started out as a fairly simple aim of crossing from the mainland to Northern Ireland as fast as possible, now had the added distraction of setting a world record. A surprisingly easy process of logging onto the Guinness World Record website and suggesting a new world-record event had been given the green light a few weeks before. My awful start was a distant memory as the board skimmed across the ocean, autumnal light flecking the steadily growing swell.
It is an amazing, if not slightly unnerving feeling of blasting out to sea on a long reach, and …not turning around. Just holding that line and slowly relaxing, tuning fully into the conditions and enjoying the sheer marvel of flying over the sea at 25 mph using nothing but a board and sail. I had moments during the crossing when I felt a deeper appreciation of our sport; that these few pieces of kit can slot together to give you access to such a wild untamed environment.
Fall
I had my first fall around 7 miles out, as I kicked my board round and repositioned my sail, I completely lost sight of the boat in the swells. I suddenly felt very small, and lost – I tried not to imagine the 1000 feet of water underneath me. And so followed a pattern of feeling the exhilaration and power of fully planing amongst the rolling 20 foot swells and then the humbling insignificance I felt having catapulted on some cross-chop and floating around with my board in this wilderness.
After an hour, and the surreal moment of overtaking a fishing trawler which then absolutely blasted me with its horn, the distinct outlines of the Copeland Islands came into view, a welcome sight heralding the Northern Irish coast beyond. Just as I was beginning to relax, I hit the infamous tidal races around the islands and a pretty uncomfortable half hour ensued as the wind picked up to 30 knots and I had to stand on the tail and point upwind to lose power so I could navigate this watery mogul field.
Final run
The final run in to the beach just north of Donaghadee was surreal. I knew after so much thought, angst and planning, I was going to make it. I fell in 10m out from the beach and felt sand beneath my feet – utter relief! As I walked up the beach a surprised couple ran down, it was their private beach and they had been watching me come in. They thought I had sailed down from Bangor in Northern Ireland and were very surprised when I said Scotland. The kindest of folk, they brought me tea and food, helped me de-rig on their lawn, and then drove me the short distance to the harbour where I met Padraig and the team.
Record
We had time to have a quick pint at the famous Pier 36 pub on the quay, write my name alongside all the swimmers who have completed the channel crossing, and then it was a very bumpy ride back to Scotland. After a fairly stark return to the reality of work, I received news a few weeks later that 1 hour 37 minutes windsurfing from Scotland to Northern Ireland was a new world record. Not bad, but definitely beatable!