Swimming teachers Dilly Percival, Tracey Huish, Jenny Fitzgerald, Wendy Prunty, Dee Richards and Sally Minty-Gravett took 24 minutes off the fastest time to set the new Jersey ladies round Jersey relay record in 10 hours 59 seconds.
And that was despite the fact that four of the ladies on board had never swam a relay before – and two had no real sea swimming experience at all. Minty-Gravett, who is a dab hand at Channel swimming and has been acting as the team coach, said: ‘It was a fantastic day from start to finish. The weather hadn’t looked good, so we weren’t even going to go out, but I said we’ll give it a go and if it gets too rough we can turn back.
‘In fact it didn’t really start getting rough until we reached St Clement, but it was great along the North Coast and we were swimming with dolphins, which was absolutely amazing!’ The six-strong squad – as well as Marion Harvey, who has been training with the team all summer in preparation for the challenge but was unable to take part on the day – were also celebrating another achievement last night having raised almost £3,000 for the Jersey branch of CLIC Sargent, which is a children’s cancer support charity.
