Due to increasing global demand, a worldwide network of like-minded swimmers and coaches will soon be offering a free open water swimming lecture series and support for global Freedom Swims as part of the Freedom Swim Network.



The need for these services arises in the increased need for experienced support crew and knowledge of extreme open water swimming, by people who will use that swimming to achieve something that we all know is the core of open water swimming; personal freedom. For some people, open water swimming is more than a lifestyle choice or sport. It’s a life and death decision. Together we will come together to form the Freedom Swim Network, using the last free and open (if somewhat damp) place in the world to discover,express, and use that freedom.



To begin,we will offer an educational and supportive interactive lecture series, which will be open to people from:

South and Central America, Syria, Myanmar, Hungary, Egypt, Philippines, North Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, the United States, Facebook users,

or anyone from an oppressed or impoverished society seeking to escape to make a better life by crossing a border via water, whether ocean, lake or river.

Let’s take a look at the series outline.

Lectures One through Three: Open Water Skills

These lecture will contain plans to help beginner or intermediate swimmers learn the basic skills of swimming to produce in the shortest time possible a capable swimmer who can traverse distances up to about eight miles, thirteen kilometres of open water, unsupported. We will focus on efficiency, developing control and the confidence to keep going in adverse circumstances. We will look at how to swim in non-standard swimming gear such as cheap supermarket wetsuits, board shorts, burkinis, street clothes and baseball uniforms.



Lecture Four: Weather and Marine Traffic Prediction

This lecture will focus on weather prediction. We will look at the wide range of information sources available to help the average person predict optimum conditions, what weather to look out for and avoid and how to apply meterological weather forecasts to swim locations. We will also look at local marine traffic patterns for your desired crossing, how to recognise Coast Guard, Navy, and Border Police patrols and how to disguise yourself as a marathon swimmer out training or an “Adventure swimmer”.



Lecture Five: Crossing Hazards



Most Freedom Swimmers will only have to plan one type of crossing and all will be one-way. However the hazards can vary according to the type of crossing. A North Korean Freedom Swimmer will have a different set of location challenges attempting a Freedom Swim crossing of the Han Delta than an American trying an escape north across a border lake to Canada in summer, or an ocean traversal around the Pacific and Atlantic termini of The Wall at the Mexican border in winter, or a Syrian attempting the treacherous Kos Island crossing which has claimed so many lives in the Mediterranean. The Canadian and Mexican border patrols are welcoming and unarmed but the US Border Patrol and North Korean anti-defection organisations are potentially lethal.

Lecture Five: Survival Planning



As a Freedom Swimmer, you may have to deal with a range of situations that could end your life or result in your incarceration, deportation or extradition. We’ll look at how to make a swim raft, what to pack in it, and the limits and weight reduction of provisions that a self-supported Freedom Swimmer can tow, as well as what you will need to escape detection on landing. We’ll look at potential marine and land wildlife dangers such as those on the hazardous southwards and less swum South Padre Island or Boca Chica Rio Bravo delta Freedom Swim routes and try the balance the risks of escaping the USA while risking alligator attack or from North Korea by dodging sea-mines and DPRK Army patrols.

Lecture Six: Route Planning

In this we will look at the specific charts for the most likely crossings, their predicted difficulty and mortality rates and how to reduce your chances of being picked up by security services or detected by immigration services, secret police or informers.

Specifically we’ll look the hugely popular San Diego to Tijuana Freedom Swim, the various possible Colorado or Rio Grande Rivers Freedom Swims, the Turkey to Kos Freedom toures, the many options available for North Korea to South Korea Freedom Swims across the Han river estuary. Of course, we’ll look also at unsupported Freedom Swims across the better known English Channel which has led to previous desperate tragedies.

Lecture Seven: Arrival

What to do after safe landing in your new country. From South and Central Americans going north, we look at the tactics the US Secret Police and Stasi network use to pick up economic immigrants versus the marching bands and invitations to speak on radio talk shows Americans can expect on their arrival. We’ll also take a quick look at conditions in the detentions camps of Turkey, North Korea, France and the UK and the USA.

Panel Discussion: The Future

In this round-table discussion we will discuss securing the future of Freedom Swims and the threats and challenges that look increasingly possible. The UK will almost certainly cut off Internet connection to Europe at the end of Hard Brexit in 2019 when it commences its own coastal wall and the US will follow suit in 2021 once the the Dear Supreme President King assumes his throne and takes complete control. Subsequently there will be a dearth of local information and experience tor those populations. We will need to continue to support the oppressed local populations and extend our local partisan bases in Aquatic Park Life Guards under Commander Suzie, the Conrad Wennerberg Promontory Point Northern Rescue Squad, Barra’s Brighton Beach Brigade and Matron’s Famous Few in Dover, many of whose brave Channel swimmers will stay behind to help the desperate, at least until swimming is completely banned in North America when the Wall In The North severs the Canadian crossings, and the UK replaces its WWII coastal defences, things once inconceivable, now increasingly certain. We will also need to ask some escapees for a further ultimate sacrifice and to return to their countries of origin bringing vital supplies of Swedish goggles and maltodextrin. We will need to build up and provision a base on Wissant Beach after France once again embraces and encourages English Channel swimming following the imposition of Hard Brexit cuts off the United Kingdom. At the same time we will need Receiving Centres at Tarifa and in the extended Dodecanese archipelago for those escaping equally repressive middle-eastern and north African regimes. On a positive note, it is likely that following the imminent collapse of North Korea, if we act immediately, we can have a cadre of experienced Freedom Swimmers who can be retrained to act as ground staff since we will need to look at previously unheard of Freedom Swims. Potential routes across the Irish Sea or North Channel or the Firths of Forth or Clyde to the Celtic Nation of Ireland and Scotland, or from Australia to New Zealand or from Florida to Cuba, utilizing the advanced operative techniques of press misdirection, evasion, secrecy, assistive technologies and boat camouflage developed by Diana Nyad in her visionary swims planning for this day can certainly now be foreseen.

We must look forward, to supporting our fellow oppressed swimmers, to securing the future of open water swimming and to helping the oppressed of the world. The United Nation of Ireland and Scotland shall be a lighthouse for Freedom Swimmers of the world!

Few people understand the visceral and tangible sense of actual physical freedom like open water swimmers. Swim for freedom.