In the swim: team completes first round-the-coast expedition

AN expedition to rival any in Irish history ended in Donegal yesterday when six swimmers completed the first ever round-the-coast swim.

Henry O’Donnell led the team and its support crew on to the blue flag beach at Carrickfinn, returning to the same spot they left 56 days and five hours before.

Since then they battled high seas, changing tides, exhaustion, sun burn, wind burn and hyperthermia (the opposite of hypothermia) to become the first relay team of swimmers to circumnavigate the country.

It came out of an idea conceived by Henry more than 10 years before he ever got around to hand picking the team of swimmers and support staff that would pull off the unrivalled feat.

He said: “It boiled down to an extraordinary team of people doing an extraordinary thing for their community. If you think of all the other expeditions undertaken by Irish people, they have all been done abroad but this was done in our own country around our own coastline.”

The expedition relied on the meticulous research of tide times and the dynamism to change plans on a day-to-day basis.

It was supported by staff on land that Henry says clocked up tens of thousands of miles ferrying supplies and equipment, in tandem with a flotilla of safety craft which included the permanent presence of a touring Sheephaven sub-aqua club.

The team trained during one of the coldest winters on record and swam during one of the country’s warmest summers, putting immense strain on the capabilities of the human body.

The project ran a month over schedule but Henry says quitting was never an option.

“The team was determined, willing and able to proceed through the most gruelling conditions,” he says. “There was not one accident either on road or at sea — safety came before everything else.”

Although the number of rest days had to increase when they hit the harsher conditions along the south west, they were still clocking up nearly eight miles each on days they were in the water.

Henry said: “We worked with nature. I did not dictate when we went swimming, nature did.”

After receiving a hero’s welcome at Carrickfinn, the team of Henry, Nuala Moore, Tom Watters, Ian Claxton, Anne Marie Ward and Ryan Ward will enjoy a weekend of festivities.

Henry, who recovered from a very serious injury in the 1990s, says he will now turn his attention to writing a book about his experiences and sorting through more than 4,000 photographs.

The expedition had pharmaceutical company Wyeth and the Canadian Helicopter Corporation as its two main sponsors but it has still run up additional debts of €10,000.

* The team has called for any additional sponsors to contact them through their website www.roundirelandswim.ie