The Cabrera Channel and The Incidental Record

May 11, 2013

If you’re training 12 hours a day you may as well be going somewhere, and that’s how Anna set out to swim the Cabrera Channel. Originally she planned to tackle the 25 mile channel between Minorca to Mallorca as a kind of an incidental training swim, but everything from lack of approved pilots to Coastguard permission conspired against it.  Cabrera on the other hand seemed a likely candidate and all the stars aligned to make that possible.  Cabrera to Mallorca is about 17 miles with water temperature around 61 degrees this time of year.  After seeing Anna swimming the previous weeks, I knew she could make the 12 hours, but braving the conditions of a channel are much different than swimming close to shore.  For one thing, there are strong currents, rough water, and winds, let alone the dread jellyfish to contend with.  She did encounter all these things and more, but she made the crossing in a record 12 hours, 24 minutes.  In fact, she made three records that day:

• First woman ever to cross the Cabrera Channel
• First person to cross that Cabrera Channel without a wetsuit
• Earliest crossing in the year (all others were done later in the year when the water is warmer)

But more impressive than the records set that day is the gargantuan effort it took to put her in the position to swim those 12 hours; the physical and mental stamina to do the not-so-glamorous day-to-day, year-round training. This is the reason we’re not all swimming channels.  As Anna with her inimitable good humor says, Nothing Hard is Easy, and it’s true.

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We’re in Colonia de Sant Gordi, Mallorca at the Best Swim Centre: www.BESTswimCentre.com Anna is being coached by Patrick Blake, one of the founders of this state-of-the-art Olympic pool and training center. Teams from all over the world come here to train and the Centre boasts of training over two dozen World and Olympic champion swimmers. Currently the French team, Team Marseille is here and I’ve had the privilege of photographing them through the Centre’s special underwater viewing window.  Several of these swimmers currently hold World and Olympic records and you will see the physical power, incredible technique, and extreme grace of these elite athletes in the photos.  Watching them swim is more like watching a ballet than a sporting event.  I hope you enjoy this pure Poetry in Motion.  To read more about Team Marseille: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics

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Welcome to Mallorca where some people come to relax and gaze at the sea while others beat their hearts out training to swim it. I’m on the southern tip of the island in a small hillside village overlooking the sea called Cala Figuera.  This area has become the training grounds for countless World and Olympic champions and I’ve come here to help my friend Anna Wardley train for the three major swims she’ll be doing this summer; swimming around the islands of Jersey and Tiree, and the Isle of Wight. Anna is a bootstraps kind of an athlete.  She took up swimming in her early thirties, decided to swim the English Channel, and she’s been making up challenges ever since. I first met Anna in Turkey five years ago when we were both swimming the Hellespont crossing from Europe to Asia.  We became instant friends and I’ve been following her amazing achievements ever since.  To date Anna has crossed the English Channel, competed at the World Ice Swimming Championships on the Finnish-Russian border, swam the Hellespont Race in Turkey, the 21-mile Double Windermere in the Lake District of English, and the Gibraltar Straits from Europe to Africa. Anna trains all year long at home in Gosport, the South of England but she also works as a freelance journalist for the BBC, and publicist for the Jubilee Sailing Trust, a charity which runs two specially equipped Tall Ships to accommodate disabled sailors. On top of all that she has raised over £40,000 for charity through her swim challenges.

I arrived here May 1^st and the next day kayaked for her on a three hour swim, the day after that piloted a zodiac for her 12 hour training swim, the day after that for 8 hours, and the day after that we both got a massage from Sven, the famous German Masseuse.

Anna has her own open water style and you won’t find it in any training manual. But lest you think she takes these major challenges frivolously, think again. She’s a logistical genius, juggling schedules, equipment, and support crews with her day job as a journalist/publicist.  There’s always a solid plan and a list which she sticks to very seriously until catastrophe strikes, and then its plan B tempered by her British good humor, grit and a lot of hard work.  Once on the swim, she puts her head down, one arm in front of the other, and its serious swimming from beginning to end.  She feeds every half hour and it’s not only energy bars and sports drinks, but solid food like pasta, fruit, pudding, English tea biscuits, Gummy-bear like candies called Percy Pigs and an occasional Red Bull (don’t tell anyone that I gave it to her). After the swim, in a shivering state, there’s no hot tub awaiting her, but instead it’s a slow warm up over many hours wrapped in layers of clothing and warm blankets.

In case you think that Anna is the only one here that has done some serious swimming you’re wrong. Kevin Murphy, King of the Channel is here helping to quailify English Channel hopefuls.   Kevin holds numerous records including 34 English Channel crossings, 2 of them double crossings.  Kevin’s advise on channel crossings is “just keep swimming until you get there”.

We all ask ourselves why people set out upon these monumental journeys.  How do they overcome their fears and calm those voices that tell them to turn back or get in the boat?  I asked Anna this question and she simply said, I don’t know – it’s an interesting life, filled with interesting people, beautiful places, it’s never boring and I can’t think of anything  I’d rather do.  I wonder if it’s as simple as what George Mallory said about climbing Mt. Everest, because it’s there - or maybe their real purpose is to inspire us all to do a little more than we imagine we can do.
To read more about Anna’s swim challenges or follow her on Facebook or Twitter go to: www.AnnaWardley.com

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“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.   -T.S.Eliot  from The Four Quartets

On our last evening in Hanoi our group of twenty-four photographers pinned up 15 each of our best photos.  Our guide, a wonderfully insightful man named Cuong, was asked to go around the room and pick one photo from each photographer that he thought best depicted Vietnam.  His choices were interesting and when we asked him what he thought of the work in general, he said in all honesty, that he thought we had chosen to portray the old Vietnam and not the new more prosperous, modern Vietnam. He was right. We had chosen mostly women with cone hats, smiling children in villages, outdoor markets, and the chaos-on-wheels – the motorbike.  The perspective from the First World is definitely not the same as the Third but I told him that I thought that in thirty years this Vietnam would not exist.  It will be replaced by modern cities, cell phones, supermarkets and shopping malls, and that will be a good thing for the people, but we were trying to photograph the intersection between these two worlds. The Still Point. Vietnam, like so many other developing countries, is at a crossroads – walking the tight-rope between traditional and modern life.  It’s not right to wish them to remain where they are, but I do hope that they can retain some of Eliot’s “Still point in the turning world.” because their particular dance is a beautiful one.

Traffic in Hanoi: Throw out all your preconceived ideas about traffic safety – they’ve got it covered in Hanoi – they don’t have any.  Crazy, insane, unbelievable can’t begin to convey the chaos of 5 o’clock rush-hour.  With almost one motorbike for every 4 people and each bike carrying 4 people, that comes out just about even. If you don’t happen to be one of those lucky people on a bike, that means that you are one of the unlucky ones trying to maneuver through them on foot. This is how it’s done: you look to see how many directions the bikes are coming from, then you confidently wade out into the river of speeding metal, eyes forward never looking back, never showing the slightest sign of fear, and you weave yourself through this honking mass of humanity as though you were threading a needle.  It’s easy!

Threading the needle

Good Luck on wheels

Laughing Yoga

Buddhist Temple

I’ve been surprised at how willing people are to be photographed.  I expected more animosity towards Americans because of the Vietnam War, (known here as the American War), but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Vietnam is experiencing an economic boom and people are just happy to be moving forward and seeing their lot in life improved.  Over and over again you hear the words now-a-days, meaning that things have improved compared to before the American embargo was lifted and the “Doors to the West” were opened.   It also means that now-a-days the Communist Party has relaxed some of its restrictions over travel and personal business causing some to rename the system as Communist/Capitalism.  All of this they will tell you with a lot of humor tinged with irony knowing that fortunes can change on a dime and luck plays a big part in everyone’s future.  Fortunately here, luck can be modified by all kinds of interventions like ceremonies with chanting monks and red flags, burning incense and fake money to mollify the gods of fortune.  Ancestor worship plays a big role because they believe that ancestors can mediate on their behalf and protect them from harm.  The Ancestors love to have a little niche in a corner of the home to rest and enjoy little signs of devotion like their favorite cigarette, alcohol or maybe some fresh fruit, during the time they remain on earth between their death and their admittance into heaven.  No matter what their other religious beliefs, Ancestor Worship is intertwined and helps to connect the past to the future.

Vietnam is a cacophony of sights and sounds.  Modernity and antiquity joined at the hip.  A country where people have known wars and domination for centuries.  A country where they expect a hard life, and yet remain energetically involved with life and all its possibilities.

Street Vendor In Hanoi

The Still Point in a Turning World