Channel swimmer sets slowest record
29 Jul 10
Jackie Cobell, who set a new record for the longest solo swim in the English Channel, said she achieved the feat unknowingly.
The 56-year-old, who was fundraising for charity, said she had forgotten to consider the difficulties caused by the tides, which resulted in the slowest crossing of the arm of the Atlantic Ocean.
Jackie, who started off from Shakespeare Beach in Dover, had hoped to cross the 21-mile stretch to reach the French coast at Calais in about 18 to 20 hours. She ended up covering 65 miles and finished in 28 hours and 44 minutes, beating the previous record of 26 hours and 50 minutes held by Henry Sullivan since 1923.
The mother-of-two from Five Oak Green, near Tonbridge, Kent said: "When you are in the water without a watch you lose sense of where you are.
"I kept thinking, I'm nearly there, as I could see the beach but I kept getting taken away by the tide."
Jackie began training five years ago by spending 20 hours a week at her local swimming pool, lakes and the sea. Her husband David said he was enormously proud of his wife, who so far had helped raise nearly £2,000 for the Huntingdon's Disease Association.
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