Rhon­dor Dowlat

Four brave and ad­ven­tur­ous swim­mers will at­tempt to write their names down in the his­to­ry books of Trinidad and To­ba­go as they will at­tempt to swim from To­ba­go to Trinidad ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to col­league and part of the sup­port team, Tehe­li Sealey said it has been a long-time dream of William Carr and through his vi­sion, the swim team com­pris­ing of Carr, Patrick Lee Loy, Roger Watts and John Pro­cope will be­gin the epic jour­ney at 4 am near Mag­dale­na Grand with the in­ten­tion of touch­ing land in Trinidad in the Grande Riv­iere dis­trict about 12-15 hours lat­er.

In Au­gust 2017, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Wat­son Duke un­suc­cess­ful­ly made an at­tempt to swim from Trinidad to To­ba­go to high­light the woes and is­sues ex­pe­ri­enced on the sea bridge at the time.

"This swim is by no means an easy feat and has been at­tempt­ed in the past with­out com­ple­tion," Sealey said.

"This swim was last at­tempt­ed in 2013 by swim­mers Gor­don Bor­de, Jef­frey Fer­di­nand and Tony Leav­itt. They com­plet­ed 75 per cent of the jour­ney be­fore they were pulled out by the Coast Guard as they were at risk of swim­ming in­to night­fall," she added.

For the cur­rent team, high tides, weath­er con­di­tions, nu­tri­tion, train­ing and ma­rine life are just a few of the chal­lenges they shall face.

How­ev­er, Carr and his team, as Sealey ex­plained "be­lieve that this is very pos­si­ble and have been train­ing for this his­toric event well be­fore the pan­dem­ic hit our shores and the coun­try went in­to lock­down."

"In spite of these set­backs, these de­ter­mined swim­mers found cre­ative ways to keep their train­ing on­go­ing – this swim which was orig­i­nal­ly card­ed for May 2021 but was de­layed due to an over­whelm­ing in­crease in COVID mor­tal­i­ty cas­es and the coun­try’s sub­se­quent lock­down, this dream was shelved and lat­er re­newed when they were al­lowed per­mis­sion to swim again in open wa­ter in late No­vem­ber 2021," Sealey said.

"Carr and team have metic­u­lous­ly planned out this vi­sion and have spent as much time plan­ning strate­gi­cal­ly as they have spent on their train­ing," she added.

There is a sup­port crew of ap­prox­i­mate­ly eleven mem­bers in­clud­ing a med­ical prac­ti­tion­er, sup­port swim­mers, sup­port kayak­er, sup­port feed­ers, a drone op­er­a­tor for sight­ing or spot­ting any pos­si­ble chal­lenges ahead and two sup­port ves­sels – one tug boat and a pirogue which will en­sure that these swim­mers stay on course and de­feat the de­mands of Moth­er Na­ture such as cur­rents.

The T&T Coast Guard will al­so be on hand giv­ing sur­veil­lance.