Jellyfish could be the make or break for a Tasmanian’s dream to swim the English Channel in September.
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Not that Kim White is concerned.
“Why stress about factors that are out of my control,” Mr White said.
He swims for charity, and he has already faced a shark scare when he completed a six hour, cold water swim assessment at Coles Bay in April.
A black silhouette rocketed underneath him, before he realised it was a pod of dolphins.
“But jellyfish could bring about the end of the day because it’s a pretty painful sting,” Mr White said.
Swimming the English Channel had been in the back of his mind since he was a child.
When his sister-in-law Rachel was diagnosed with muscle dystrophy a couple of years ago, he started to consider how he could combine his childhood dream and his desire to help.
He created a gofundraise page to raise money and awareness for Muscle Dystrophy Tasmania.
“My team and I decided to give [the money] to people who are suffering right more,” Mr White said.
The disease wastes away muscles so he hoped the funding would go towards providing people with muscle dystrophy with access to nurses, specialised equipment and information.
His journey will start with a phone call six hours before he needed to go to the docks at Dover’s Cove in England.
Mr White hoped the approximately 32 kilometre swim would take him between 12 to 15 hours. The average time is 13 hours, with the longest successful swim taking about 27 hours.
He heads off to England at the end of August before his early September swim.