More than 2,500 braved the cool waters off Magheramore beach near Dublin to smash the previous mark

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Thousands of women have shed their inhibitions and their clothes on a secluded beach in Ireland for a world-record setting “skinny dip” to raise funds for a children’s cancer charity.

Lucia Sinigagliesi, the Guinness World Records official that adjudicated the naked swim on Saturday, said that 2,505 women spent at least five minutes in the sea to set a new world record.

No skinny dipping please, I’m British | Peter Bradshaw Read more

The previous record was set in Western Australia in 2015 when 786 participants swam naked near Perth, although an event in Finland involving 789 people also claimed the record.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Participants arrive on the beach. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

On Saturday, in 12C waters off Magheramore beach 50km south of Dublin, more than three times that number gathered to break the record.

The swim has been an annual event since it was started by Dee Featherstone in 2013, just weeks after her own mastectomy. The events have raised thousands of euro.

“Oh my god it was amazing. I have never been naked in front of anybody before, except my husband, and it was brilliant and bracing. It was great craic,” Deirdre Betson from Dunboyne said after leaving the water. “We are all different shapes and sizes and ages and it was just super.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Brilliant and bracing,’ said one participant. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

This year the money raised will go to Aoibheann’s Pink Tie, a charity set up in 2010 by Mick Rochford and Jimmy Norman, after Norman’s daughter Aoibheann died from cancer at the age of eight.

“Aoibheann went to school with my daughter. She would have been 17 this year. We did it in her memory,” said Betson.