The men – James Miller, Mark Gransbury, Andrew Fish, Jackson Lowe, Tom Buist and John Bouchet – have all now begun preparing to complete the feat which they do not think anyone has tried to do before.
Mr Fish, who has been kitesurfing for around five years, explained what the challenge would entail.
‘We are going to set off from Gorey and try and get to Carteret which is about 20 miles. I think some windsurfers did it in the 1980s to Guernsey which is a further distance but I do not think anyone has ever done this. We could be mistaken but we do not think so,’ he said.
‘It depends on the wind but best case, with a consistent 25 knots, it should take us about an hour and half and worst case is three hours. The problem is that the currents will be with us on the way out but against us on the way back. The tide moves brutally fast so it could take five to ten knots off us. We have really planned it well and now we are just looking for a north-westerly or north-easterly direction and consistent 20 to 25 knots.’
Mr Fish added that the group had now begun training for the challenge but there was still more work to be done.
‘The wind has been rubbish but I cycle to work every day and it is all kind of in the legs so I have been doing squat training and all sorts. It is going to be absolutely brutal on the back leg,’ he said.
‘At the weekend we will go out [kitesurfing] and will probably cover a distance of about 50 miles but we are doing this all in one go so it is going to be all about endurance really.
‘We kitesurfed from St Catherine to Seymour Tower – we did about three runs of that which is a fair distance really but the back leg was really killing and was only about a sixth of the distance we need to do.’
Mr Fish says he hopes to embark on the challenge within a month and has now set up a sponsorship page aimed at raising money for the British Heart Foundation, Jersey Hospice and Mind Jersey. Anyone who wishes to donate should visit justgiving.com and search for ‘Andrew Fish’.
