Milko van Gool reports: Bangla Channel 2012

Monday, 5 March 2012 New plan: swimming the Bangla Channel on 16 March 2011

Will tell you more about it soon, as well as about the CIPRB's Swimsafe project, which will start in April, when the weather and the water get warmer.

http://mvgchannelswim.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-plan-swimming-bangla-channel.html

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Thursday, 15 March 2012 Two days to go

Lipton Sarker, Musa Ibrahim and their coach and co-organiser Hamid have already left Dhaka and are practicing  around St. Martin's Island today. Weather forecasts are looking good.

But unfortunately Tullio Ferri has had to cancel his participation for work-related reasons. And I am not 100% well myself: yesterday I had to go to bed early with a throbbing headache, bad muscle pain and a temperature. I feared dengue fever for a moment, but probably not: with copious paracetamol I am back on my feet again this morning, but feeling weak. Hopefully it will just pass - this is no condition to try and swim >30 kms in...

Tomorrow my friend and colleague Aminul Islam and I will take the 12:50 flight to Cox Bazaar, then take a car to Teknaf, where we will have appr. an hour until sunset to practice with my crew and meet up with the others. I will meet my crew and the boat Sampan (kindly made available by Yves Marre's Tara Tari shipyard) for the first time.

http://mvgchannelswim.blogspot.com/2012/03/new-plan-swimming-bangla-channel.html

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Sunday, 18 March 2012 Bangla Channel 2012: 3h46m single crossing, double crossing attempt aborted

The first two hours were fine and fast, helped by the outgoing tide. It started to get difficult and more tiring already in the third hour, much earlier than I expected. It didn't get much better in the fourth hour, and it turned out that the water was teeming with 'stingers', invisible little jellyfish that feel like a thousend pinpricks, like rolling your face in nettles!  I was relieved to arrive at the beach on St. Martin's Island, where I was received by Hamid the race organiser, press including two TV-crews (!), and a crowd of onlooking locals. I still wanted to make the attempt for the double so I didn't linger: applied some fresh grease and sunscreen, gave one - not very coherent - reply to a TV crew, and was off again. I don't think my arrival was all that impressive: I was quite tired and came onto the beack stumbling.

The attempt at a double crossing had to be given up: just off St. Martin's Island we got caught in a countercurrent combined with a headwind and rougher sea. For 1.5 hours I felt like a hamster in a treadmill as the island seemed to remain exactly where it was beside me, instead of disappearing behind me. While I could have continued swimming for a few more hours to see if I could get out of the current, or for the current to turn, I realised that after that I would still need another 4-5 hours to get back to the mainland. That seemed a tall order in view of the modest volumes of training I had had in the past couple of months and last week's short but nasty bout of stomach flu, which had sensibly undermined my reserves. So I called it quits five and a half hours into the swim while I still felt reasonably well and lucid. On our way back we almost lost the way on an ever rougher sea and were joking that we would land in Birma and spend time in a prison cell...
Lipton arrived at St. Martin's Island after 5 hours and 10 minutes, and also turned around for the double. But he must have swum into the same current as I and aborted his double crossing attempt shortly after me. Musa and Monir arrived at the island both after more than 8 hours - on our return to the mainland we saw them swim and they looked utterly spent - bravo for finishing!

I can't help but feel a little disappointed: this is the first time I do not (fully) finish a swim I had set my mind on, but I am quite sure it was a sensible thing to do. I spoke to Lipton over the phone and he wants us to try the double again next year. We'll see - insh'Allah.

There were a lot of photo and film journalists active, but I haven't seen a single photo or any footage online so far. Will try to post some as soon as I find them.

http://mvgchannelswim.blogspot.com/2012/03/bangla-channel-2012-3h46m-single.html

(all published with full permission)

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Milko mailed me:

I'm still waiting for beautiful photos, there was a battery of TV and photo journalists, but I have not seen a picture online or in the newspapers.

However, the crossing was briefly mentioned in the local newspaper here:

Musa Ibrahim crosses Bangla Channel  http://thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=226710
A Correspondent, Cox's Bazar, Sunday, March 18, 2012

English Channel winner Van Gool Milko of the Netherlands along with Bangladesh's first Mount Everest conqueror Musa Ibrahim yesterday swam across Bangla Channel.

The Dutch swimmer was accompanied by first Bangla Channel winner Lipton Sarker and Bangladesh Television cameraman Moniruzzaman.

They began swimming from Shah Parirdwip jettyghat under Teknaf upazila in Cox's Bazar at 7:00am. The Netherlands' English Channel hero took three hours 46 minutes to cross Bangla Channel. He and his teammates reached St Martin's Island at 10:46am.

Lipton took five hours five minutes to cross Bangla Channel while Moniruzzaman took eight hours 10 minutes and Musa eight hours 18 minutes to reach the island.

The expedition was styled “Bangla Channel Swimming 2012”.

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archive:

July 28, 2011 Milko crossed the Channel in 10:30h

http://openwaterswimming.eu/node/5069

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Wednesday, October 19, 2011 Milko van Gool, Swimming So Others Can