Help Paul, a blind swimmer, in an open water swim challenge

Hi, my name is Joanne and I'm fundraising to help Paul Davis train and enter The British Long Distance Swimming Association's "Swim to the Sunset" event on Coniston on June 28th 2025.

Paul has been blind from birth and started open water swimming around Leeds last year. Like many others he soon found that he gained physical health benefits and improved his emotional wellbeing.

Paul represented his country in 1990 in the world championships achieving gold and silver medals along with the UK record for 200mts freestyle in 1991. He has now set himself a new challenge, by entering the BLDSA Swim to the Sunset Swim on Coniston. Paul has chosen to swim for three hours around a 1.5km circuit, and he will have the support of a kayaker.

Paul is training regularly with Open Water Coach Karen Purdy (pictured) and at the Edge pool, Leeds.

Paul says:

"I started serious open water swimming in May last year. At the time, I was struggling with my mental health and my great pal Phil suggested I try it out.

Although I'd dipped in and out of it before, I soon found that I'd taken to it like a duck to water and wanted the challenge of completing an open water event. I enlisted the help of Joanne, via a facebook group, and have never looked back since. My mental and physical health have improved immeasurably, and I now take cold showers each morning, even in winter, to get the cold water buzz.

Although I am an accomplished indoor swimmer, open water swimming is a totally different ball game, for so many reasons.

So, I'm very much embracing the challenge of seeing how far I can swim in 3 hours in open water and and I feel this is exactly the challenge that I'm looking for"

Communication is key for safety in open water and currently we are using a whistle and calling. However, as you can imagine this has its challenges due to other noise, and on race days whistles are used to draw the attention of safety crews.

We are looking for donation or sponsorship to purchase

If we raise more than we need, it will be donated to a charity of Paul's choosing.

Karen Purdy says:

"Pauls, trust, determination, and dedication to learn and develop is wonderful to be around, I feel very honoured to be his coach, Paul is teaching me so much, my communication is much more focused! "

Thanks for reading this and we hope you can help.