Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket Island

This swim is 26 kms long between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island which is off the coast of Boston. I did this swim with Debbie Taylor who lives in Boston and now resides on Marth's Vineyard. The swim came about after in October of 1999 I had sent my application to swim in the 25km FINA World championships event in Hawaii and my swim application ended up with Debbie and she nicely contacted me to inform me that she was not part of the FINA committee considering application forms for the World championships event, but she would forward it onto the relevant people. On the same phone call Debbie asked if I would like to come and swim with her in July 2000 in a swim to raise money and awareness of the Martha's Vineyard Aquatic centre and do a swim from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket Island. After many months I said that I would come and do the swim with Debbie in July 2000. The organiser of the swim was Charlie Blair who ran the Edgartown harbour. We attempted the swim in the same place as where the annual Shark fishing competition was held the previous day. We needed a South West wind of 5 knots and little wind against currents for any hope of this swim being completed. We arrived for the day of the swim on the 23rd of July 2000 with exactly the conditions that we required. After not swimming to our original plan of 2 miles per hour we quickly drifted off on the worng tangent, but Charlie got us back on track and after 7 hours and 53 minutes of swimming I arrived at Nantucket Island and shortly afterwards Debbie also completed the swim. We had become the first 2 people to swim from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket Island and to this day more than 25 years later are still the only 2 people to do this swim.