We made it to France with a night paddle across the Channel!

I’ve had a great time accompanying Sarah Outen from Tower Bridge to Calais over the last 4 days. A distance of about 110 nautical miles  in 65 hours! We’ve beasted it amazingly quickly, especially when you hear that Sarah hasn’t been in a kayak since October & she was having trouble keeping her food down for the first few days. She’s an incredible woman with bundles of energy, positive attitude and motivation.

My role was to help Sarah get safely to France on the first leg of her journey to loop the globe (and to film the adventure). She wanted to do it quickly so we did it quickly, making the most of the tides which whipped us down the Thames and along the Kent coast. The sea was calm so we paddled with the tide in the early hours of the morning and made good distances. When we reached Kingsdown yesterday at 10am, the person driving our support boat for the Channel crossing wanted us to leave more or less straight away as bad weather was due by midday the following day. As we’d been up since 3am and already spent 6 hours paddling 23 nautical miles, we didn’t feel it would be sensible to cross the Channel without a rest, some sleep and some food!

In the end we decided to leave 12 hours later, which would give us some chance to recover but should still get us to France before our weather window closed. The Royal Temple Yacht Club in Ramsgate kindly provided us with showers and beds to get some rest. Still tired, but feeling a lot better, we launched at 10pm in the dark and began heading towards France. The sea was much rougher than forecast and a real contrast to earlier that day. The first two hours required full concentration as metre high waves battered us on the side and occasionally broke. I was pleased to see Sarah dealing admirably with the conditions. Later on the wind dropped and the waves decreased, then the main battle was with the sleep monsters & tiredness. We stopped every hour for food but our paddling pace slowed down as our tanks grew emptier. If I stopped paddling I was in danger of falling asleep and I saw some amazing things that weren’t there, including a huge marquee, an unlit buoy & a giant wall in front of Calais with a deep pit in front of it! Finally after 8 and a half hours we surfed tiny waves onto a beach at Calais. It was 6.30am, time for croissants! I was delighted we’d made it (and we didn’t have to paddle any more!).

After 6 hours sleep today, I still feel tired and I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I’ve had a great adventure with Sarah and am delighted to have paddled with her from London. That’s the end of the adventure for me but tomorrow Sarah starts cycling from Calais towards Russia on stage 2 of London2London. See her website for updates.

A photographer, David Tett, endured a cold, long night on the support boat to take a few photos of us. You can see some of them here.

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