Former Fleetwood Army Captain abandons attempt to become first person to swim from the UK to the IOM

A former army captain has been forced to cancel his world record attempt of swimming to the Isle of Man from the UK.

Adam Diver left St Bees beach in Cumbria just after 9am on Thursday, 22 July, but was forced to turn back due to poor weather.

His support team made the decision after deciding continuing would cause "serious risk to life". Weather conditions worsened as the day went on, and a heavy swell was prevalent.

Diver was described as "fine", but his team put safety first.

The aptly named Adam Diver had attempted to swim 32 nautical miles of treacherous waters.

Prior to setting off, he said: "It is daunting. It has (swimming from the UK to the Isle of Man) never been done before." A record that will continue.

The distance from the Isle of Man to the mainland is around 34 miles as the crow flies. The Channel swim is usually around a distance of 21 miles.

The Irish Sea is also home to large amounts of jellyfish in the summer, an additional challenge for Diver.

His friends, and support crew, described him as having an "adventurous spirit". They were optimistic for the day ahead.

"The team have gone through all the scenarios that we could possible go through. We're going to give it a really good shot over the next 48 hours", they added.

This morning his support crew said that they "couldn't ask for better conditions", but the weather reportedly worsened.

The 45-year-old who served tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bosnia, has been preparing to take on the gruelling mental and physical challenge by training at a special wave pool at Fleetwood Nautical Campus where he works.

"It's going to be the mental side. Having the mental strength to get back into the water is going to play a massive part", he previously said.

Adam has been swimming since he was five-year-old, has completed numerous triathlons, and even represented Great Britain at the Europe Triathlon Championship in 2021.

His team always knew that this would be challenge.

Mark Sumner, Lecturer, Fleetwood Nautical Campus, said: "We can predict the the tide, in terms of tidal speed and direction of flow, but we can't predict the wind on the day.

"There are hundreds of records of crossings of the English channel to refer back to, but this is new territory for us."

The Big Swim, as it is being nicknamed, was a chance for vital research to be carried out from the two boats accompanying Adam during his challenge.

Storm Isles, who is a Marine biologist at Blackpool and Fylde College, said: "We going to come on the trip with a plankton counter and we're going to be looking at micro-plastics.

"We're also going to bringing along a marine probe, so we can take things like temperature, salinity, conductivity measurements.

"We're going to be taking collection bottles so we can actually sample the water and have a look at the content in it."

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