And we're off

It took about 20 minutes to motor out of the marina, past the harbour wall and head round to Shakespeare Beach. I had the odd wobble, clutching John's arm at one point and looking slightly more panic-stricken than was strictly necessary. "I can do this, can't I?"

What else could his answer be at this point? "Of course you can," he said. "You know you can."

Yes, I did know it. Just a little wobble.

The air temperature was about 7 degrees and by far the coldest part of the day was standing in a cossie on the deck while John plastered on sunblock and some grease. (Thankfully no pictures of this bit... A-team support crew was busy being 'A', and not taking photos.) The wind whipped around me, biting into my skin and making me so keen to jump in and warm up again.

I fixed the glow light to my goggle strap and asked Jane to attach the other one to the back of my cossie. "Don't worry, you won't need that," she said.

"But what if it's dark by the time I finish? I can't fix it on to my back myself," I worried.

"You'll be finished long before dark," Jane replied, with alarming confidence.

Looking out to sea, I could see other swimmers' boats bobbing around far ahead of us. The earliest swimmer had set off about 4am and I was either the last to set off, or the second last.

"How come everyone else has already started?"

"Stop worrying," said Jane, "You're a fast swimmer; you'll be fine."

I have never felt like a fast swimmer. I train with people much faster than me and I seem to lack the ability to change pace for more than about 30 seconds; after that, it's just the one pace all day. All that bothered me was the thought that I would much rather have set off in the dark in order to finish in the daylight, rather than have the dark at the end of the swim.

Still, as happened throughout much of the day, if Jane said something, I believed it. Having so much experience of Channel swimming and having been support crew so often, her word was gospel to me right then. If Jane believed I didn't need that light stick on, then so be it.

Eddie pointed at the boats ahead of us. "See those?" he said. "They're your target. Now go get 'em."

I descended the ladder at the back of the boat and in I jumped. The water was sooo much warmer than the air, it felt lovely. Unfortunately, I banged my heel quite hard on something on the way in and it started to throb. 'Brilliant,' I thought, 'I might well be the first person to fail on a Channel swim before I even reach the beach at the start.' Wouldn't that be something. But I think at that point, even if I'd broken my ankle I would have ignored it and carried on swimming.

The sky was growing lighter by the minute as I swam the 100 metres or so into the beach. There were a few stones but it wasn't nearly as bad as the 'beach' we trained at in the harbour, which was very painful to walk on in bare feet. Sonia and Martin had actually driven down to the beach to wave me goodbye too (also their second trip down to the beach that morning as well - fantastic people!)

Also there was a man called John, who took these couple of photos and emailed them through the next week. Thanks very much, John.

Arriving at the beach ready for the start.

A quick goodbye to the beach crew and I fixed my goggles, waved to the boat to signal that I was ready to start, and headed back into the water. It was 6.35am.