'Everyone came out smiling': First of its kind mile-long swim raises thousands for GAFIRS

Committed swimmers have braved choppy conditions to complete a mile-long swim for an independent lifeboat charity.

Taking the plunge at the end of last month, 90 fearless people swam from Gosport’s shore line adjacent to The Bayside Cabin to the slip way outside the Gosport and Fareham Inshore Rescue Service (GAFIRS) station to raise money for the charity that saves hundreds of lives at sea annually.

Organised by Kelly O’Neill, the event sold out within two weeks of tickets going live, and saw people from all walks of life get involved, with the oldest swimmer being 80-years-old.

Kelly has been a crew member with GAFIRS for the past five years after her passion for swimming and being in the water led her to start volunteering at the station.

The 35-year-old, who works in HR on a full-time basis, said: “The last four years, I have been organising cross Solent swims from Stokes Bay to Ryde, and we have raised in excess of £30,000 but what we recognised is that the swim is a really big challenge and it is not accessible for everyone. We wanted to organise a swim challenge that wasn’t that far so more people could get involved. The Gosport golden mile run didn’t take place this year due to work along the promenade so we decided to do a golden mile swim instead.”

Working alonside the run organisers, Kelly launched the first swim of its kind for the charity, raising £2,550 despite challenging conditions. The swim, which was also sponsored by Sunrise Chimney Sweeps, had a limit of 100 so volunteers could test the waters with how well it was executed, but kelly said she would like to open it up to more people in the future.

She continued: “I’m really pleased with how it went. I think better conditions would have made it more successful but we can’t predict that, I did everything I could to make sure conditions were favourable for swimmers but the sea is a beast and it takes no prisoners but everyone was safe and came out with a smile on their face, and, if anything, the challenging conditions made them even more proud of what they achieved.

“I think it was a great success and I think it be a much bigger event in the future now we know how it went. The money for GAFIRS is great but bringing the community together is really important especially with everything going on in the world at the moment.

“It is often an assumption we are part of the RNLI but we are not, we are completely independent so all of these events are important and we really want the community to support us.”

For more information abouth GAFIRS, click here.