Serpentine Ladies Swim Loch Ness In Aid of Afghan Mother and Child Rescue

The Serpentine Ladies Swam Loch Ness!
At 04:30 hours on 5 August 2010 the boat Atlantis, piloted by Tom Kent and his wife Margaret, and the rib 'Pioneer' with it's cheerful crew Jimmy and Ricky, set off from Fort Augustus with six Serpentine swimmers on board ready to swim in the chilly waters of Loch Ness.
Water temperature was recorded at 11.5ºC but varied between 9ºC and 12ºC throughout. At 0500 hours BLDSA observer, Juan Warshawsky, sounded the horn and Jenny Rice started the swim through the tranquil waters of Loch Ness. At 0600 hours Kristy began her swim as the wind picked up and the waters became choppier. Following her, in swim order were Clare, Anne, Martha and Sophie. Each swimmer spent 1 hour in the water, with a hot Maxim feed at 30 minutes. Conditions were excellent - with the current helping us north to Loch End. The odd squall passed through, but the sun also chose to shine intermittently. Clare was the lucky swimmer to swim past Urquhart Castle and provided us with some fantastic photo opportunities - making sure she smiled for the camera. Towards the end, it was predicted Jenny would finish the swim in her third hour, but Loch End was still some distance away when she finished and Kristy had the glory swim. The team finished in 13 hours and 23 minutes, some 5 hours faster than our predicted time.

The team would like to thank the following people for ensuring the swim was safe and successful:

Juan Warshawky - 'The Juan' - our strict and efficient BLDSA observer

Tom Kent - the skilled skipper of Atlantis - who generously gave his time and donated fuel

Margaret Kent - our hostess on Atlantis - who attended to the swimmers when on board the boat

Jimmy Braithwaite and Ricky Crossar - the skippers of the Pioner - who spent hours on the rib guiding the swimmer towards Loch End

Fiona Gately, Roddy Jones, Mark Pickersgill and Neil Price - the Fabulous Land Support Team

Piera Constantina Scala for her photography, particularly her effort to commandeer a tourist boat so she could photograph us from the water

Michael Armitage - former head of the RNLI - for his help in organising the swim and for telling everyone on his tourist boat about our swim

Martin Douglas - crew member of the Loch Ness lifeboat - for his support and escort to shore on reaching Loch End

Linda Ross - member of the Red Cross - for her local knowledge swimming knowledge and securing of hand held radios

Lots more people helped us in our endeavour - they are mentioned on the Thank You page.

Photos and Videos
Here's a slideshow of photos from our swim. Video to follow soon...

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Fundraising
Many thanks to those who have donated, we are now nearing £3000, with more money coming in every day. If you have not yet donated and would like to, please go to justgiving.com/lochnessrelayswim

To find out more about the swim and why we DID it, please explore this website. Press and media please contact Fiona Gately on 07968 962 039 or for press release please click here to download.