My Toughest Challenge Yet!

by Kendall Peet, Head of School

They often say third time lucky, and this was definitely the case for our Primary School PE teacher, Paul Georgescu, when he entered the chilly waters on the northern beaches of Ireland ready to swim across the strait to bonnie Scotland, considered to be one of the most difficult swims in the world.

It was familiar territory for Paul, having twice before lined up for the attempted the crossing only to be defeated on both occasions by the cold waters and strong currents, which is why so few people have even attempted the crossing, let alone made it.

To give you some idea the degree of difficulty, 5790 people have climbed Mt Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary first summited it in 1953, and 1,831 swimmers, including Paul, have swum the English Channel since Matthew Webb first swam the Channel in 1875. In stark contrast, the total number of people to have swum the North Channel is just 56, according to Wikipedia, with Paul being number 56, the first Romanian to make the swimming 34.7km crossing in a time of 11 hours and 7 minutes- which is officially the 11th fastest crossing in history. It really is a huge achievement!

Absolutely determined to make the crossing on his third attempt, Paul arrived nine days before the start of his crossing “window” to get in the necessary acclimatisation swims to ensure he had the very best chance of making it across. Unfortunately, the weather was less than ideal, and so having spent eight of the nine days waiting for the seas to calm enough to attempt a crossing, it was finally accepted that the winds of fortune were not blowing favourably, forcing Paul to reconcile himself with the prospect of flying home to his family with the hope of returning in September in search of more favourable weather conditions:

“I talked to the boat pilot and we had already agreed to come back in September if nothing changed. Then, the day before my intended departure, the forecast suddenly changed and it was told that I would be able to swim on my very last day. I was already packed to go home, having accepted the inevitable, so the very first thing I needed to do was to unpack and refocus, as my concentration was gone. I mean, thinking I was coming back in September, my motivation had gone completely, so I had to suddenly flick all the switches and get myself back into the right headspace to face what was ahead. I was also a man down on my support team, as a friend had just flown back to Romania.”

Thank fully Paul found a local replacement and the swim started the next morning in near perfect weather, under blue, sunny skies, and moderate winds. The water temperature was still 14 degrees though, so it was really cold, and Paul said the last 5 kilometres were hellish. “The current was against me in the later part of the swim, with the winds coming from the side, so as you can imagine after ten hours of swimming, I was in an advanced state of exhaustion. My swim rate had dropped in the last hour to

44 from 60, and I was honestly swimming in survival mode. At the last two refuelling breaks, I was no longer communicating with my team. The only way I could keep going was to dig deep for a source of motivation. It probably sounds crazy, but I began to communicate imaginatively, in my mind, with my wife and two children and it was honestly with my absolute last drop of energy that I reached out and touched the rocks on the Scottish shore.”

Hearing Paul share his experiences, it’s hard to find the words to express what effort he made in reaching his goal. He subjected his body to the elements, with 13-15 degrees, strong winds, adverse currents, jellyfish the size of a breakfast table for more than 11 hours. He said the last two hours were the most difficult he has ever faced in the open water, as he had reached the limits of that fine line that separates consciousness from unconsciousness, reality from the dreamlike state before the darkness. For Paul, this was the fourth channel of the Ocean’s Seven project crossed, having already successfully completed the Catalina Strait (Los Angeles), the Molokai Strait (Hawaii) and the English Channel, which separates England and France. Next up is the Gibraltar Strait (Spain to Morocco) and the Tsuguru Strait (in Japan) in the summer of 2023, and finally the Cook Strait (in New Zealand) in February 2024.

In 2021, Paul was awarded “Man of the Year” by the World Open Water Swimming Association Awards (WOWSA), the largest open water swimming organization in the world. It is an honour that we are all able to celebrate and share with Paul, as a long standing member of the IBSB community, a role model of our Core Values, and an absolute inspiration to the next generation of IBSB athletes he is supporting each and every day in his lessons, teaching them that dreams really do come true for those willing to put in the hard work required to make their dreams a reality.