Kaise Stephan who is fundraising for a swim across the English Channel recounts his recent training swim along the Port Hacking to Bondi.

I've recovered and resumed full training this week after attempting to swim from the Royal National Park to Bondi on Sunday, February 10.

I had originally planned to cover the 35 kilometres on the Saturday, but conditions made it impossible.

For a while it looked as though a 2.5 metre swell would stop me hitting the water on Sunday too.

But in the end my team decided to brave the conditions and I was relieved to finally step onto the sand at Turriel Point near Bundeena at 4am.

That was until I looked at the darkness of the ocean.

Suddenly plunging into the sea in the pitch black didn't seem like such a great idea.

Especially when someone pointed out an endagered species sign that stood close to the shore.

Among the protected creatures on the sign was the Great White Shark, other sharks and some marine life which I have never heard of before.

Someone joked that if I don't know some of these creatures I may know them by the end of the swim.

A nervous laugh followed!!

I joked to the others that maybe a long distance swimmer deserved protection more.

Actually it was more of a statement than a joke. No one seemed to mind when I suggested that we wait for the sun to come up before starting the swim. I was quite relaxed when I finally got in the water just after dawn. Conditions were a bit tough, but everything was going well until we reached Wanda.

Then something happened that scared the life out of everyone in the boat following me.

Fortunately I was oblivious at the time and my crew had the sense not to tell me about it until we were safely on dry land.

The boat captain noticed something triangular in shape and about eight inches high sticking out of the water.

The dark shape was travelling towards me.

Apparently he yelled: "What the hell is that?" and everyone in the boat, including my poor support swimmer, just froze.

The guys instructed me to change my line and the thing simply disappeared.

I'm not sure how the support swimmer plucked up the courage to join me in the water at the two hour mark. Although, he told me that after some initial nervousness when he got in, he enjoyed the swim out in the ocean and felt satisfied in supporting me on this swim.

As we rounded Kurnell we got word that there were thunderstorms at Coogee.

So, saftey being the main priority, the boat captain made the call and we decided to turn back.

In the end I swam 23km in 7 hours and 6 minutes.

Of course I would have liked to swim the full 35km, but I was happy with how I felt. So was my coach.

I had lots of energy left and "sprinted" the last 200m.

Perhaps that was as a result of shorter than expected swim and somehow psychologically I felt much better than I was physically feeling because the end was nearer than what I had expected.

Suffice to say, the last two kilometres were very slow because current was flowing against us and at times I was swimming for 5-10 minutes but not moving forward!!! Aqua-Treadmill style.

I turned up for a normal day at work on Monday and trained that afternoon.

Last week was a pretty normal training week really; I put in 40km across eight sessions.

I felt slightly off my top speed, but this week my times are back to normal.

I'm hoping that I can set another date and the weather lets us swim all the way to Bondi in the near future.

In the meantime, I will keep swimming and thanks everyone for your encouragement so far and for your donations.

Keep them coming in and I will keep swimming :o) for sure. Perhaps the target of $250,000 for The Children's Hospital at Westmead is not impossible after all.

Make a donation on my website www.channelcrossingforlife.com