Untitled - Quintessential Barrington Magazine

Rachel, Don and Jennifer Macdonald
embrace after Don finishes the 2010
Light Open Water Race in Boston last
August.
photo: SUSAN MCCONNELL
Jennifer Macdonald
Rachel Macdonald is a topflight junior swimmer.
Jennifer Macdonald can swim, but won’t,
“Unless something big is chasing me.”
Has this been fun? Or is that the wrong word?
Up at dawn. Trips to open water marathons in lagoons
and bays you’ve never heard of. It can be
numbingly cold at 4 a.m. Plus, life turned upside
down for a cockamamie quest. And clothes that
never quite get dry.
They have become water-born, ocean-fixated
pollywogs. Surely, it’s not all fun.
“It’s been a blast,” Susan says. “So totally fun for
the whole family. At the end of the day it’s the best
thing that ever happened to us. All the kids have
found that there is nothing you can’t do.”
Sometimes the task seems too large to comprehend
comfortably. “I am in awe of what they
are doing,” Jennifer adds. “I can’t quite grasp the
magnitude of it. It’s gonna be a once-in-a-lifetime
experience.”
Channel swim royalty
That anticipation will ripen into reality on Aug.
24. It’s D-Day for Don and Doug in Dover. The
families and Cleveland will all stand aside, and
turn Don and Doug over to Michael Oram and
his son, Lance.
The Orams operate the Dover Sea School and
are the royalty of the Channel’s swimming support
infrastructure. Have been for three decades.
They literally are the “Pros from Dover.” The
accredited pilots have ultimate authority over
each expedition. They operate the support boats,
manned by their safety teams and also toting the
swimmer’s personal cohorts. Everybody is going.
But the pilots are not a taxi service; they maintain
constant vigil over the progress of the swim.
They are Mission Control.
Michael, 62, has guided 500 crossings, many
of them world record achievements. Lance has
more than 300. Dad’s success rate is 75 percent
and Lance’s charges have made it 77 percent of the
time. Good odds. Both numbers are considerably
higher than the average for pilot competitors.
No one has guided more swimmers on their
trip to France (some were roundtrip ventures)
than Michael Oram, who was honored for his
skills with an induction into the International
Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame. But the
Orams are not merely hired hands. The candidates
for these Channel swims apply for acceptance,
present themselves to the pilots for close inspection,
and the pilots ultimately decide if they will
take the job.
“They pick people who they believe can do it,”
Susan says.
More than the $3,000 pilot fees each for Mc-
Connell and Macdonald are at stake. Professional
reputation is on the line, too, as well as the lives
of the swimmers, for the Channel is a dangerous,
hostile environment and the churning, frigid water
there can be unforgiving of error. That is why
preparing for the swim has taken two years of
daily, grinding physical preparation. But success
requires intelligent partnerships.
The Orams have done this long enough to
judge which candidates are more likely to be
seaworthy. And it didn’t hurt that Cleveland was
the coach of record. Her name carries a cachet in
this realm.
Thus, less than 10 hours after slipping into
the waters, they both will stride ashore in France
triumphantly. Fingers crossed. Knock-on-wood.
No one says “if.” At this point, there is little room
for “ifs.”
No one in either family has the exact specifications
for the post-swim celebration that will mark
the pair’s arrival in Calais.
But it’s a good guess that spaghetti and meatballs
will be a part of it.
106 • Quintessential Barrington | QBarrington.com