With Christmas just behind us and New Year’s Eve approaching, butcher Gert-Jan Wit is as always very busy in his butcher shop in Den Helder. But fortunately he also has a short time to look back on 2023, the year in which he crossed the Channel between Dover and Calais and thus made his big dream come true. “The adrenaline in your body does strange things to you.”
In the middle of the night, 60-year-old Gert-Jan Wit made an attempt for the second time last September 13 (he also tried it in 2015, but it failed, ed.) to cross the Channel between England and France. swimming. And this time with success: in 12 hours and 40 minutes the butcher managed to make the crossing of no less than 53 kilometers.
The crossing was a challenge for Gert-Jan that he will never forget. In fact, months later, he still thinks about it every day. Although that was different when he reached Dover beach. “I thought it would be very euphoric, but it wasn’t at all. I was completely done with it and was extremely tired,” says Gert-Jan in his butcher’s shop.
Gert-Jan started the swim with a big setback: he had to start at night due to the changing tides. As a result, he had to swim for more than eight hours in pitch darkness. “That doesn’t mean anything to me at all. But you’ve trained for it for so long, so you take that for granted.”
In the video below, Gert-Jan looks back on his unforgettable swimming trip and shows special images of the swimming trip (text continues below the video).
Gert-Jan received a lot of mental support during the crossing from family and friends who encouraged him and provided food and drinks during the moments of rest. And that help was desperately needed. “You don’t know how hard something like that is, swimming across the Channel. It’s not just the physical effort, but also the mental effort. You have to keep swimming relatively hard for so long in a row,” Gert-Jan explains.
Documentary
But there was another special guest on board the ship. Documentary maker Jasper Sauer followed Gert-Jan’s adventure closely and captured every moment of his crossing. Sauer is making a documentary of this special swimming trip that, according to Gert-Jan, will hopefully be seen on television or on the silver screen next year.
In addition, all loyal fans of Gert-Jan will soon be able to watch the documentary in Den Helder. “Here in Den Helder we get the rough version and I want to show it to the public in Den Helder. I charge an entrance fee for it and I want to use it for my swimming club. The documentary is already 95 percent ready and I think it is somewhere is actually finished in March. Then I will also be on the air where people can watch the documentary.”