If he succeeds, Ben Hooper will be first person to have swum 2,000 miles across breadth of Atlantic

On Sunday morning, Ben Hooper will don a wetsuit specially designed to make him invisible to sharks, trot down a beach in Senegal and start to swim.

Hooper, a 38-year-old father and former police officer from Gloucestershire with a deceptively languid-looking front crawl, aims to keep swimming until he reaches Brazil in about four months’ time.

If he succeeds, he will have covered approximately 2,000 miles (3,220km) to be the first person to have swum the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean.

“I am feeling so many different things right now,” Hooper told the Guardian hours before his scheduled departure. “Slowly the emotion is creeping in about the enormity of what I am embarking on, the three years of struggle to get here and the fact we are on the eve of something extraordinary.

“I fear failure, but believe in our expedition. I feel that this is something I was born to do. I have a water instinct and am ready to prove that anything is possible when you put your mind and spirit to it.”

Hooper’s journey to this starting point has been challenging. He was a sick child, clinically dying three times during his first days of life. At five, Hooper nearly drowned in a swimming pool when he got out of his depth. Rather than prompting him to stay away from the water, the experience led him to vow to swim an ocean one day.

In the meantime, Hooper served in the army and then the police force, but when he retired he had depression and decided that a way out of it was to embark on a new challenge. Rather than take up golf or cycling, he focused on his childhood dream.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hooper aims to raise £1m. Photograph: Island Breeze Photography

“I realised I needed to turn my life around,” he said. “I checked with Guinness World Records and they confirmed no human has ever swum every single mile of an ocean, and that was it.”

Much of Hooper’s training has taken place in a swimming pool in Cheltenham, where the sight of him ploughing up and down has become a familiar one to users and staff. He has also trained in open water in Florida and in the Mediterranean, notching up 7,450 miles (12,000km) of training in pool and ocean.

Such is his attention to detail that he worked with Hartpury College in Gloucestershire to find out what music – played on a waterproof MP3 player – helped him most. It turned out that if he listened to Eminem his performance was bolstered by up to 10%, though he will leaven the American rapper with tunes by the Prodigy and Faithless.

He cites his fears as being failure and not reaching his £1m fundraising target. But the marine creatures he will encounter also come into the reckoning.

It is possible he will swim close to great white sharks – though he is more worried about the smaller oceanic whitetip, described by the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau as the most dangerous of all sharks.

The swimwear specialist Arena has designed a Sams (shark attack mitigation systems) wetsuit with Hooper in mind. It features a camouflage print that makes the wearer harder for sharks to spot.

Hooper sounds stoical. “I am not too worried about marine life, I am going into their world, so I need to be respectful. I’ve already met sharks and jellyfish and nothing has eaten me yet.”

He will not be completely alone. Hooper will have a support boat in which he will sleep and eat. The plan is to swim 12 of the 14 daylight hours – he will spend six hours swimming, two hours resting and another six swimming.

During the night the boat will be kept in position, ensuring that it does not drift in Hooper’s favour while he is asleep. Any movement will be accounted for and made up towards the end of the expedition.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hooper says listening to Eminem can bolster his performance by up to 10%. Photograph: Island Breeze Photography

“The biggest challenges are marine life, weather and being able to consume 10,000 calories per day as well as mentally staying in one piece,” said Hooper. “This also applies to the crew for they will need to remain sharp, busy, maintaining vessels and morale. However, I know this is possible and believe we will do it.”

There have been other mammoth swims of the Atlantic. In 1998, Benoît Lecomte took 73 days to swim from the US to France but his achievement was not verified by Guinness. Hooper’s team argues it would have been impossible for any human to swim the miles claimed in the time achieved.

The explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes called Hooper’s attempt remarkable, adding: “The expedition has the potential of becoming the modern-day equivalent of Sir Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest.”

• To donate to Hooper’s charities go to: www.swimthebigblue.com/charities



• He can be followed on followed on: www.followmychallenge.com/live/swimthebigblue