Rough patch for crossing

By CASEY NEILL
SELBY’S Paul Hoffman doesn’t remember being pulled from the English Channel after four hours of vomiting ended his attempt at the crossing – but the next day he signed up to do it all again.
The 40-year-old has no memory of the last half hour of his eight hours in the water or boarding the support boat, and has no idea what went wrong.
“That’s the frustrating thing,” he said.
“I was a bit devastated about it.
“There was so much attention beforehand, you don’t want to let everyone down.”
But the following morning Mr Hoffman called the boat driver and booked in another attempt for 2015.
“It’s back to the drawing board and time with family,” he said.
“I’m back in the water. I was back in the water two days before I left Dover.”
He still made it about 30 kilometres, or about 70 per cent of the way, from England to France and raised thousands of dollars for StarBright – a learning exchange program supporting AIDS and HIV-affected orphans in Cape Town’s slums and shanty towns.
“That’s a reward in itself,” he said.
Mr Hoffman had been dreaming about the challenge since he was 14 years old.
He’d volunteered as a surf lifeguard at Sunrise beach in Cape Town, South Africa. Legendary open water swimmer Lewis Pugh assessed his qualifying swim and told him about his tilt at the channel swim. The seed was planted.
So two years ago Mr Hoffman decided his 40th birthday would be a great time to tackle it. He contacted coach John Van Wisse and had been training in pools and open water across Melbourne ever since.
He’s already been back in the bay but is now swimming 10 to 15 kilometres a week instead of the 40-plus he was doing in the lead-up – although he is already eyeing a swim from Cottesloe Beach to Rottnest Island in Western Australia, and the annual Frankston to Mornington swim event.