Irishman's massive swimming challenge in World Record bid and fundraising effort

Irish Daily Mirror

a day ago

He has lost count of the number of times he has been stung by jellyfish.
But Daragh Morgan won't be stopped in his bid to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by becoming the first person to swim around the entire island of Ireland.
The Dubliner, who now lives in Galway, began his tidal-assisted stage swim on May 31 and is now over the halfway mark, averaging close to 20km per day.
When we spoke on Monday, he had completed 868km of an approximately 1,600km long fundraising swim, which began from Blackrock Diving Tower in his adopted hometown.
'We passed the halfway point, which was Dublin. That was a great milestone for us as a team,' he told Fitter Happier. You can check on his progress via his Swim Éire socials, his website and a live tracker.
Morgan, an endurance swimmer, tends to be in the water for six hours, then rests for six, a schedule that helps him take advantage of the tides.
Even so, the 26-year-old is battling more than just the painful whip of a lion's mane's tentacle; challenging weather and shifting currents also conspire to try to knock him off course.
'We always talked about Ireland in quarters. What we realised was the first quarter was probably going to be the most challenging,' he said.
'Starting off is hard, whatever you are doing. That's the stage when you haven't really put the miles in.
'But on top of that, the first quarter of the country is very tough, not just to swim, but to navigate a boat around the likes of Slyne Head in Galway and different places like Donegal Bay, that was the most challenging part.' Daragh Morgan swimming along the Irish coast
Even more challenging than the jellyfish stings?
'We had a few tough night swims,' he said. 'One of the night swims, we were going around a place called Macehead, and that was quite challenging because it was one of the first swims, and the weather was tricky as well.
'You feel jellyfish on your face at night. You can't see them. Usually it's bad enough during the day because you can see them a lot and you can try to dodge them.
'But at night you have to release whatever tiny level of control you had and you just have to keep swimming.
'The stretch from Skerries to Howth and then Dublin Bay was the worst out of the whole lot.
'Now, there are loads (of jellyfish) up the north, but they were quite a bit deeper.
'I just found Dublin, from Skerries down to pretty much Dun Laoghaire was littered with lion's mains, and they are the worst because their tentacles go everywhere. It's like hair everywhere in the water. You are getting stung a lot.
'The worst thing about them is, it gets worse when you get out. You can't sleep and you are kind of twitching with the itchiness and pain of it.
'But I try to use that to be hyperfocused. I try to anchor myself in that, to be focused. It is
what it is - you can't really go swimming and not get wet.' Daragh Morgan on the Naomh Cronan
Morgan, who works in sales for Innocent drinks, first came up with the idea of circumnavigating Ireland six years ago - and thoughts of achieving it 'just would not leave me.'
He usually swims between one and two miles off the coast.
'We've seen great wildlife, a lot of dolphins, porpoises, lots of different diversity on the west coast. We've seen dolphins there by Skerries as well,' he says.
'No basking sharks or bigger mammals. I haven't seen any of them so far, but I can imagine there have been a few underneath me.
'We've seen a lot of seals as well. Sometimes when you are swimming you are in a flow. People have said to me from the boat, this and that was following you, and I didn't realise, because I was just in the zone.
'I know they are checking me out, but I am just firing away.'
He couldn't undertake such a challenge without a support crew. After each swim, he climbs on board the Naomh Cronan, a traditional Galway hooker built in Clondalkin and gifted to Badoiri an Cladaig (the Claddagh Boatmen), to recover, refuel and sleep.
'It's been great to carry a cultural flag as well around Ireland, which this boat is,' Morgan said.
On board are captain Dara Bailey, pilots Cillin and Padraic Mac Donnacha and Peter Connolly, all from The Claddagh Boatmen Group.
Padraic is also a marine scientist and in collaboration with ATU and university of Galway has undertaken to collect a water sample every 20 nautical miles and filter it.
The filters will then be analysed for E-DNA (environmental DNA) in order to determine the species of animals (fish, marine mammals ect) which swim in the coastal waters of Ireland.
This research could provide an important baseline for monitoring species migration due to climate change and the warming of the oceans.
How much longer does Morgan think his swim will take?
'That's the big question,' he says. 'I can't tell you that and it's not like I don't want to tell you, it's just based on so many factors. I couldn't tell you where we'll be at the end of the week.
'It's very hard, because you are dealing with so many factors out of our control. Really, all we kind of know about is today and tomorrow.'
# Daragh Morgan is aiming to raise money for the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) and Simon Community. Search for Swim Éire on gofundme to donate.