How one Liffordman conquered the English Channel

When the phone rang at 7.30pm on Sunday, Shane McCauley knew his time had come.

Eight hours later, the Liffordman dived into the English Channel at Dover.

After 11 hours and 42 minutes, his solo swim of the Channel was completed.

Swimming the English Channel solo is considered by many to be the ultimate long-distance challenge (fewer have completed it than have summited Everest).

A return to dry land, at Cap Gris-Nez near Calais in France brought a strange sensation coursing through his body.

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“At the end, it was just pure relief,” he told Donegal Live. “There was no joy in it. I thought that I would have been emotional, but it was just quite bizarre.

“People had warned me about getting back to France. You’re horizontal and cold for almost 12 hours.

“When you see the coast, you think you’re within touching distance, but there is such an east to west current you could end up getting caught and being in the water for another four hours.

“It didn’t actually dawn on me that I was back on dry land again. I fell back into the water. I’ve never drank alcohol so I don’t know what it’s like to be drunk, but that was as close as I’ve been; I just had no control over my body.

“It was as if I couldn’t get the message to my legs to stand up.”

Back aboard the Viking Princess II, the vessel that accompanied McCauley and carried his support crew, he ‘passed out in the cabin and slept for two hours’.

McCauley was given a window of somewhere between October 1-8 to carry out his feat. The green light flashed on Sunday and, just after 3pm on Monday, it was completed.

“I don’t know how I kept going,” he says. “My dad asked me what percent of it that I enjoyed and I said zero! A few moments were quite prolonged where there was just nothing in my head and I was just listening to the sound of my stroke rate and the boat engine, almost dreaming of being in a hot bed.

“At times, it felt as if I was about to doze off.”

In June 2018, Shane and two other members of Ful-On Tri triathlon club, in Fulham, London, swam the Channel, covering a total distance of 46.5km in a time of 10 hours 30 minutes.

In 2020, Shane and his oldest friend, Neil Macbeth from Strabane, swam at Portnoo, near to where Macbeth has a holiday home.

The two became friends while swimming with the Riversdale Otters in Strabane during their youth.

McCauley said: “Neil turned to me and said: ‘When are you doing the Channel on your own?’ There wasn’t a hope, I thought, but the seed was sown.

“Neil went and spoke to the skipper on the Viking Princess (Reg Brickell) to see if he could get it sorted.”

Macbeth, in a kayak, supported his friend during a six-hour qualifying swim in Portnoo.

The plan was two years in the making, but the doubts surfaced last week.

Just 90 minutes in, the tears trickled from his eyes

“The cold got me and I thought I couldn’t stick it,” he says

“You have to start on dry land and I had the chills for 11 and a half hours. I looked up at one stage and said I couldn’t do it.

“Everyone was quiet and Karen said to me: ‘Shane, the sun is rising, keep going’. Once I saw the pink sky and the sun, it gave me a huge lift.”

Some of his support team joined him in the water, Karen joined aboard by Camilla Rogers, Kostantinos Leontaridis, Neil McBeth, Jane Osbourne, Joanna Peterschmitt and Jon Wackrow.

“It became quite poetic with my support swimmers,” he says. “Once daylight came, these guys, who I train with, got in and it was cool to be back in with Neil too.”

A batch of sweet potatoes, boiled before departure, and a variety of snacks including energy bars, Snickers, Lucozade, sugary tea and energy gel were thrown to him at regular intervals (under rules, those undertaking the challenge are not allowed to touch the boat and an observer kept watch for the duration).

The big objective of his 34-kilometre swim was to raise money for the SynGAP Research Fund (SRF).

SYNGAP1 Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder.

Bear, the six-year-old son of McCauley’s friends Daniel and Katrien Frommelt, was diagnosed with SynGAP.

“Just two hours before we set out from London to Dover, Dan sent me a wonderful video of Bear completing his first ever dive through a raised hoop into a swimming pool and swimming to the edge,” McCauley says.

“This is a huge feat of physicality for a Syngapian, so that video played over and over in my head. That was his Channel Swim right there and if he can get to that stage at six, then I knew I could and would get to France.”

McCauley works as head of audit for GRP, a London-based insurance broker, and was back at work this week, having stayed up ‘in so much pain’ all night on Monday watching Peaky Blinders.

Next on his mission is the 2023 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Finland.