Huge congratulations to Team Itomic, who crossed the line in last Saturday’s Rottnest Channel Swim in an official time of 7 hrs 55 mins and 23 secs.
Team Itomic members were/are:
Ross Gerring
Annie Stanley
Nathan Taylor
Aaron Smith
It was the first time taking part in the event for the entire team, swimmers and support crew. Some bullet point ‘highlights’:
- Ross took off from Cottesloe Beach with two pink balloons filled with helium attached to his bathers (to help finding him in the crowd – not an attempt to float to Rottnest!) but forward motion, wetness, and the balloons slowly deflating meant that they were dragged behind him rather than floating a metre above him. Doh!
- Our impressively large support boat lost one of two engines fairly early on, which made steerage, er, ‘interesting’.
- Our two support paddlers made it ALL the way to Rottnest without their arms falling off. We sincerely think their feat exceeded that of the swimmers. Contact was lost for about an hour with one of them (Lawrie, Annie’s Dad) after he capsized, but fortunately we were able to rendezvous closer to the island.
- No sharks were spotted! Visibility wasn’t great, but we did see a good few shoals of fish and stingrays (closer to the island).
- The swell and wind picked up from about half-way (10km), which made swimming tougher and caused a few upset stomachs amongst the support crew who dutifully ‘fed the fish’, so to speak.
All in all it was a fantastic achievement after a year of training, and just a little emotional when we all crossed the line together and into the arms of our friends and families.
Well done, and thanks, to everyone involved.
http://www.watoday.com.au/rottnest-channel-swim – lots of news stories, video, etc.
http://racetectiming.com/rottnest.html – the results