Open Water Swim Training photos courtesy of Michael Renford and friends. Main image by Aaron Scott.

And from there everything that could go wrong did go wrong?

Well, in marathon swimming, your boat pilot is absolutely crucial. And for this Catalina swim I’d organised a guy called John Pittman – everyone told me John’s the best pilot at Catalina. So I booked him. But then, when I called him three days out to talk about the logistics of the swim, he told me that he wouldn’t be taking me. Instead, he’d handed the job to his second-in-command, Jeff. Now, in open water swimming, you need that confidence in the person in the boat. You need that bond between pilot and swimmer. So, for me, that was a real mental setback. That was the first little chink.

Anyway, the swim invariably starts at midnight, because mid-morning an off-shore wind springs up and that can make it very difficult to reach the mainland, so you swim at night, when the wind’s down and the water’s calmer. Normally swimmers come over at 8pm for the midnight start, but because Tony and I both suffer from sea-sickness, we went over at lunchtime, so we could anchor in the harbour and not be worried about feeling crook. So, it’s a beautiful day, we anchor in the harbour, have lunch, relax ...

Then, eight o’clock at night, we get a call from Jeff on the pilot boat back in harbour on the mainland. And he says the weather’s not great, he doesn’t want to leave the harbour and he doesn’t think the swim should go ahead. I couldn’t deal with it. I just handed the phone to the skipper of our boat. He spoke to the pilot for a couple of minutes, then hung up the phone and said, “Well, look Murph, I’ve convinced him to come out here. “ That’s when the weather turned ...

[Tony interrupts: “Mate, bingo, it was on. Lightning, rain ... Absolutely out of control.”]

Which must be disastrous for the swim?

Well, if you swim the English Channel, you get a six-day window of opportunity to complete it. You don’t get that at Catalina. You get the day you’ve booked and that day only. If you don’t swim, it’s over. So there’s a lot more pressure to go in unfavourable conditions.

Anyway, the pilot boat eventually pulls in at Catalina around 12:30am. We jump onboard, do the pleasantries, then the pilot says, “Look, I’m going to be frank with you: I don’t think the swim should go ahead. But if you do decide to go ahead, then know this: these will be the worst conditions we’ve taken a swimmer across in all season.” Then he looks at me and says, “So what do you want to do?” I was just ... [shakes his head]. You know, marathon swimming is such a mental thing. And at that point I was a basket case. I’m preparing to get in the water for a ten-hour swim and my head’s just spinning.

To be honest, the pilot on the boat didn’t know me from Adam, and I don’t think he thought I was the real deal. I reckon he was thinking, “Here’s a bloke who could only get halfway across two years ago in perfect conditions. Now we’ve got a horror night.” I’m not so sure the pilot and his crew had much faith in me. And that was probably warranted to a certain degree ...

Anyway, when he asked me what I wanted to do, I said, “Well, what are my options here? I can’t come back tomorrow. I have to swim.” His response to that was a really blase, “Yeah, okay, we’ll set off and see how long you last ... ” So I greased up and at one o’clock in the morning I jumped in ...

How was the weather at this point?

Well, for the first 20 minutes we were protected by the island, and it was absolutely beautiful. But as soon as we lost that protection, it started to get rough. Extremely rough ...

[Tony interrupts: “Rough? The conditions were outrageous! You can’t even explain to people how bad it was. It’s the middle of the night, pitch black. We’re getting smashed by waves. There’s wind like you wouldn’t believe. There’s rain, there’s lightning. It was like going for a swim at Bondi, on a six-foot, south-swell day, and staying out there for nine hours. We were getting smashed.”]