Details

• Name: Monte Cristo Escape Swim
• Location: Marseille, France
• Route: Ile d’If to Ile Tiboulen de Maire
• Type: Sea swim
• Distance: 7.5 km (approximate)
• Swim Time: 2 hours 5 minutes
• Water Temperature: 21 degrees
• Support: Boat and skipper hired via Boaterfly
• Date: 22nd August 2016

The Full Story

I read the Alexandre Dumas novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo” in early 2016. It’s an old book that was first published in 1844. In the book, the protagonist Edmond Dantes is wrongly imprisoned in the Chateau d’If prison situated on the island of Ile d’If off the coast of Marseille.

After several years of imprisonment, he finally escapes by switching places with another dead prisoner in a bag which is then thrown into the sea. Once in the sea he decides the safest option is not simply to swim to the Marseille shore for fear of being seen, but instead to swim towards the uninhabited islands of Tiboulen and Lemarie despite them being “at least a league [5.5 km] away:”

“The islands of Tiboulen and Lemaire are a league from the Chateau d’If; Dantes, nevertheless, determined to make for them.”
– The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (first published in 1844)

He completes his escape by reaching Tiboulen and thus begins an amazing tale of revenge on his enemies who had him wrongly imprisoned. I’d strongly recommend the novel, which I’ll state for clarity is a work of fiction.

Inspired by what I’d read in the book, I decided to investigate the swim further and whether I could potentially do it. Looking into it, I came across the annual Le Defi de Monte Cristo swim which was established in homage to The Counte of Monte Cristo. This is an organised swim event each year in Marseille which it turns out some of my fellow Red Top club swimmers had done previously. However, on further inspection it transpired that this swim didn’t follow the exact route as described in the novel, instead it went from the island of Ile d’If directly into the nearby shore of Marseille. My view was that if I was going to do this swim, I was going to do it right.

I measured the distance between Ile d’If and Ile Tiboulen de Maire via Google Maps and determined it was approximately 7.5 km as the crow flies. Of course at this point I had no idea about the influence of tides or currents but with my experience of previous long swims was confident this was going to be do-able.

Whilst the book was written 170 years ago, I couldn’t find any evidence online about anyone attempting this swim before. Given the popularity and age of the novel, I can’t believe no-one has done it before but the fact I was potentially pioneering this swim was definitely an added incentive.

I was planning a holiday to the south of France in August and so it was a perfect opportunity to attempt this swim during that trip. With the route clear and my plans confirmed to be in Marseille, all that was left in terms of logistics was to find a local support boat and obtain any necessary permission for the swim.

I managed to identify a support boat using the rental company Boaterfly. They are an intermediary who place boat owners with people who want to rent a boat and were very helpful. The only challenge was the language barrier as whilst I speak some French, it was a little difficult to converse with the boat owner on the complexities of what I was looking to do. Their typical hires are excursions to nearby beaches so I don’t blame them in the slightest. I was just grateful to find someone who was potentially willing to do this for me. Prior to me leaving for France, I had confidence that Boaterfly were going to be able to help but hadn’t confirmed the specifics of which boat I would use and who would skipper it.

What was also outstanding was obtaining permission to do the swim. I’d asked Boaterfly and the boat owner to assist with this and they thought it was likely to be the Harbour Master I’d have to check with. However, both felt it was more appropriate for me to do that directly. This is where the language barrier really became on obstacle as the Harbour Master was unable to converse with me in English (or my limited French) over email or via the phone. This surprised me in an international port as large as Marseille, but there you go. So I decided that I’d have to insist on the boat owner helping me with this (once I’d confirmed who that was) and ended up leaving for France without having permission secured.

On arrival in France a week prior to the planned date of my swim, I was determined to lock down the logistics but it was more difficult that expected. I was able to get a French native to call the Harbour Master on my behalf, but we went around the houses a little before being told that it was the Prefecture de Maritime I should speak to in order to obtain permission. At this point, I checked again with the boat rental company and they suggested that given the amount of bureaucracy that is typically prevalent in France it might be better to simply go for it without officially obtaining permission. This was a concern as I didn’t want to be hauled out of the water by an angry coast guard before completing the swim, but given the difficulties I’d faced trying to obtain permission I decided to take the risk and go with this approach.

With a few days to go I was finally able to secure a boat via Boaterfly. This was with a boat owner called Samuel who didn’t speak English but was going to bring an English speaker with him on the boat to translate. Boaterfly assured me they had been through all the details with and that he was comfortable with what would be needed to be done to support my swim. So I formally booked the boat about 48 hours before my swim and confirmed the meeting time and location for the day of the swim. Whilst I was pleased to have the boat confirmed, having not spoken to the owner directly this added a small element of doubt to the swim and I was slightly concerned about how this would work out on the day.

The weather. Having not actually been to the location of the swim before, and having no local insight, the weather and resultant water conditions was a complete unknown. What I did know was that the Le Defi de Monte Cristo swim had been cancelled just a couple of months earlier due to very bad weather, so I knew that there was a risk I wouldn’t be able to do the swim due to poor conditions. With that in mind I had given myself a two day window in Marseille to attempt the swim. I was in France for the week prior and as we approached that window the weather worsened significantly. The day before the swim there were very strong winds (45 km per hour) which would have made it impossible to attempt, but fortunately the forecast via Windguru was showing a large reduction in the wind to approximately 8 km per hour on the first day of my window. This was the best I was going to get and that confirmed Monday 22nd August as my day to attempt to the swim.

So far, I’ve talked mainly about logistics so I should mention something about my training for this swim. Unlike last year when I was training for my 3 Lakes in 3 Days swim, this year I had no big goals or targets so my training had been very light. I was just ticking over and probably averaging 5 km a week (compared with a peak of 20 km per week last year). That said, even with that level of training I’d rocked up and completed a 10 km (100 x 100 m) Sport Relief pool swim with Red Top in February and recently returned from the Red Top Training Camp in Croatia in June where I did 50 km in a week. I was therefore confident I could just get in and do a 7.5 km swim, relying on muscle memory to get me through it. My only concern was the potential influence of the tide or current which could potentially make the swim much more difficult. But either way, like Edmund Dantes, I was “determined” to get this done.

I got in touch with my coach Tim Denyer from Red Top the day before the swim to let him know the swim was on for the next day. With it being potentially dubious conditions he instructed me to make sure I feed every 30 minutes “without messing about” (he used a different phrase!) and simply “get my head down and make it happen.”

With those words ringing in my ears and all plans now in place I got my head down for a good night’s sleep ready for the next day. Unfortunately though I couldn’t sleep and literally woke every couple of hours during the night. There were a lot of things that could go wrong and as I lay in bed with howling winds rattling the windows I was concerned that the conditions may make the swim very difficult or even not possible, especially given my limited training this year. So after a very restless night, I got up at 7am to prepare for the day.

I always struggle to eat much before a big swim, and the morning of this swim was no different. Knowing that I forced some breakfast down me but was really relying on a pre-swim feed to give me the nutrition I’d need. In terms of nutrition, as Tim had said I was going to feed every 30 minutes and take something onboard immediately prior to starting the swim. I hadn’t brought any nutrition with me, but had got hold of some Apple PowerGel’s (with caffeine), Blue Powerade and Ovaltine chocolate bars to use. I planned to take half a bottle (250 ml) of Powerade each feed plus alternate between a power gel and an Ovaltine bar. My only reservation was I didn’t have a suitable pen to write my name on everything, but given I was doing this swim solo I thought it would be ok.

Arriving at the location in the morning I was delighted to see calm conditions in the bay, with hardly any wind, very little swell and not a cloud in the sky. Importantly, having only seen the islands before on a map it made a big difference to actually see the distance between them with my own eyes. It was definitely do-able and it was at that point I knew I’d got this.

My skipper Samuel arrived and in French confirmed that there wouldn’t actually be an English speaker with us on the boat. However, he called an English speaking friend of his and I was able to relay all my instructions to them, for them to translate to Samuel. After we’d done that we got on board the rib and set off for the island of Ile d’If.

Ile d’If is quite close to the shore and the Chateau d’If stood proudly on top of it. As we drove out to it, after all the planning and with how much I’d looked forward to the swim I was incredibly excited. We were unable to get too close to the island so I dove off the boat and swam the remaining 50 metres to the island, climbing up onto a jetty via a metal ladder. Finally standing on the island, looking out towards Tiboulen “at least a league away” was a brilliant feeling. I clearly piqued the curiosity of a number of tourists visiting the Chateau d’If as they were all looking down at me wondering what I was up to.

I leapt into the sea, put my head down and started gunning it towards Tiboulen. The water was glorious. A brilliant blue colour and very clear. The water temperature was 21 degrees which was an absolute pleasure, particularly with the sun on my back and an air temperature of 26 degrees. As usual it felt a little chilly when I first entered the water but I knew that wouldn’t last and any cold feeling disappeared well before the first feed.

Following Tim’s advice, I wanted to go hard for the first hour to break the back of the swim. I was very happy to have done 2 km when I hit the first feed at 30 minutes. This left 5.5 km to go so after a quick feed I set off again, pushing hard to get as far as possible in the first hour. When I hit the second feed at the hour mark I was even happier to have done 4.3 km leaving 3.2 km to go. I’d definitely broken the back of the swim and was feeling extremely confident. At this point, the skipper Samuel proclaimed that I was “un professional” which I was delighted with.

Even though I’d made excellent progress, I was unsure what conditions would come into play as I continued so just got my head down again and set off for the next 30 minutes. Shortly after setting off, I was aware of several yachts suddenly in the vicinity and stopped to ask Samuel what was happening. It turned out there was a large flotilla of about 30 sailing yachts passing us on route to Toulouse. As they didn’t have motors and weren’t as easy to control, Samuel said it was very dangerous for me to be in the water and insisted I got on the boat until they passed. Samuel had GPS so once they had passed after about five minutes he was able to deposit me back in the water in the exact same place I got out. We’d paused the clock whilst I was on the boat, so we re-started it as I resumed the swim.

During this stage of the swim, my pace slowed as I was obviously tired after my initial exertion in the first hour. So after 90 minutes I had done 6 km and had 1.5 km to go. I was really pleased to have got so far (perhaps with some tidal or current assistance) so relaxed and took it very easy to savour what was left of the swim. During the next stage Tiboulen seemed to be so close but so far, something I’ve experienced before on other swims. I wasn’t sure if this was because the tide had turned or perhaps some sort of mind game. But I just kept swimming onto the next feed and at the 120 minute mark I had done 7.1 km so had just 400 m to go. I was tempted not to feed and just push through to finish it off, but some of the stories from my fellow Red Top swimmers sprang to mind where they’d swam against currents at practically a stand-still, so I took on board the nutrition just in case.

Then I gunned it again to get in and complete the swim. At this point I genuinely felt like the Count of Monte Cristo about to complete “my escape” which was really exciting. Ile Tiboulen de Marie is uninhabited and is pretty much just a rock in the sea so I was unsure how I would actually land on it but I was determined to climb out of the water to officially complete the swim. I spotted some steps cut into the rock just above the water line so made for them. When I got to them, I was about a metre below them so with some difficulty scrambled up the rock cutting myself in several places in the process. But it didn’t matter as I stood on Tiboulen and threw my hands in the air in celebration. I had successfully completed the Monte Cristo Escape swim in 2 hours and 5 minutes and I was very, very happy.

After all the planning and effort I’d put into this swim, it felt amazing to make it happen. As always, my fellow swimmers at Red Top were very encouraging and supportive of the swim and when you’re far from home doing something like this in isolation that’s really appreciated.

For me, this swim was all about doing something I’d read about and been inspired by in a book that was 170 years old. The distance of course wasn’t too taxing compared with some of my previous swims, but it felt really good to have smashed it.

This story is courtesy of and written by Elliot Newsome. You can read more about him on his blog