Barrington swimmer conquers English Channel

Doug McConnell heard the stories about swimmers who had conquered the English Channel saying they felt strong enough on the French shore to think about getting back in the water and heading all the way back to their starting place in Dover, England.

But a one-way journey was just fine for the Barrington resident.

At 53, McConnell was just the 48th person over the age of 50 to successfully cross the Channel — one of the most famous physical challenges human beings have set for themselves.

Both he and fellow Barrington resident Don Macdonald, 49, traveled to the United Kingdom last month with plans to swim the Channel. But the weather that week allowed only McConnell to start the swim. Macdonald was forced to return home without seeing another day good enough to even make an attempt.

For McConnell, the most difficult parts of the swim were not the ones he expected during his long preparation for the endurance challenge. While he went in most anxious about the prospect of cold water and stinging jellyfish, it was the high, choppy waves that proved the most frustrating to his progress across the Channel.

“The water was 63 degrees the whole way,” McConnell said. “I never got cold. And I was really able to avoid that mental crash people talk about eight or 10 hours into the swim. Once I started swimming, it never occurred to me that I wasn't going to make it to the other side.”

And the only jellyfish sting he received was a mere pinprick from a particularly small one about two-thirds of the way across.

Virtually no one completes the entire swim in daylight, McConnell said. People either begin or end the journey in darkness. And for him, his arrival on the beach in France came in the pitch blackness of 3 a.m.

As he approached the French coast, McConnell aimed toward a light on the shore, which to him looked farther away than his wife, Susan, and the crew of his accompanying boat told him it was. Finally, the captain told him the boat was as close to shore as it could go and that he would shine a light toward the sand for McConnell to follow.

“Even when my hand touched the sand beneath me, I still couldn't see the beach,” he said. “It was that dark.”

He'd also been expecting to have to clamber over large slippery rocks, but he'd arrived in an area where all he had to do was walk up until he reached a patch of dry sand beyond the reach of the tides to have officially made it.

He tried to find a rock or stone as a memento to give to his wife. But after two or three minutes, he began to feel extremely cold and reluctantly got back in the water for the final swim back to the boat.

The icing on the cake was not only that McConnell's swim had raised $146,000 for the Les Turner ALS Foundation in memory of his father, David, who'd died of the disease, but that he'd succeeded on the very day researchers announced they'd identified the common cause of all forms of ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

“It was absolutely amazing,” McConnell said of the news. “Compared to (researchers') endurance contest, mine was like a walk around the block.”

With his successful crossing, McConnell is now one of only about 1,220 swimmers to succeed with the approximately 21-mile crossing, according to dover.uk.com.

The trek, known as the Everest of swimming, was first completed by British sea captain Matthew Webb in 1875. Perhaps trying to top or at least match his feat, Webb drowned eight years later while trying to swim through Whirlpool Rapids on the Niagara River, just below Niagara Falls.

It would be another 80 attempts, and 36 years, before a second swimmer equaled Webb. And while crossings have become far more frequent since then, success is far from a sure thing, as Macdonald learned.

“He worked harder than I did for this,” McConnell said. “He really is a gifted swimmer.”

Macdonald said he had to deal day by day with the increasing disappointment that the weather wasn't cooperating during his own weeklong window to swim.

“It was death by a thousand cuts,” Macdonald said. “We had learned that the weather all season this year had just been a mixed bag.”

Macdonald had banked on swimming the Channel as being a lesson in personal resiliency that he could share with the students of Barrington Unit District 220's social-emotional learning programs.

He still intends to use his experience that way, just not how he expected.

“This is emotionally the harder,” Macdonald said. “You don't sleep very well.”

Macdonald is considering a similarly long swim at Catalina Island off the coast of California this fall, or putting himself back in the rotation for another attempt of the English Channel in a year or two.

Usually, one must plan ahead at least two or three years to get an opening to swim the English Channel during the very limited time each year that it can be done. But challenging economic times could cause more than the usual number of cancellations next year, Macdonald said.

Regardless, he said he's very happy for McConnell's success this year.

“I think it's absolutely fabulous that Doug made it across,” Macdonald said.