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Displaying items by tag: Gary Fitzgerald

4th October 2013

Dubliner Is First To Swim From Kish Lighthouse To Shore

#OpenWaterSwimming - H2Open magazine reports on last week's successful swim from Kish Lighthouse to the Forty Foot by Dublin open water swimmer Gary Fitzgerald - the first person to swim the 12km route.

The 24-year-old took on the challenge in memory of his late former manager and friend Arthur Dunne of the Half Moon Swimming and Water Polo Club, who had dreamed of swimming the route before his untimely death at the age of just 42.

Gary was cheered on during his attempt on 27 September by his brother Mark and father Dave, himself a top swimmer and former national coach in water polo, as well as pioneering Channel swimmer Shane Moraghan, while Fergal Somerville - who swam the North Channel for charity this summer - served as independent observer.

Published in Sea Swim

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William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago