We Attempted to Cross the English Channel

Oh.

Oh, no, no.

Want me to hold on to your toes?

Wait, mine's not working.

We are stranded. This was not the video that we planned on making.

In less than 48 hours, we are going to attempt to ride these futuristic surfboards across the English Channel. At this point, we don't even know our exact route, but the plan is to take a boat over to France, get dropped off, and then depending on the route that we choose, we'll have 20 to 30 miles to get back to the UK. I honestly have no clue how big of a challenge this is going to be. First off, these boards are not exactly easy to balance on a ride. It's been almost a year since I've ridden one, so we'll have to see if I remember how to do it. And then you have the external factors. I think if we end up not making it, it'll be because of the ocean conditions, because the English Channel is not exactly known for having flat, calm water. And then there's the added challenge of having to cross one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. I think what terrifies me more than anything is having to pass behind a big cargo ship that's thrown up a big wake and then that wake knocks me off my board in the middle of the English Channel. And then I'm just sitting there floating in deep dark water, having no clue what's around me. That is probably my biggest phobia. I cannot believe we are actually doing this. But there's no backing out now. Eamon's flown all the way from Canada to join us, so I guess it's actually happening.

So for once, instead of Nate asking me to join in on one of his crazy ideas, he recruited some of our best, most spontaneous friends, Eamon and Louie. Less than a week ago, Nate sent Eamon a last minute text to see if he could join us. Unsurprisingly, within three minutes, Eamon was in training.

Starts now on the one wheel. Gonna go for 35k.

And six days later, here he is in London.

All right, I think I found the right house cuz there's a big mustache out front.

Welcome home.

Hey.

Welcome to London. Then there's Louie. Despite the fact that he and Raya just had their first baby four weeks ago, I don't think he's capable of saying no to an adventure. But this won't be Louie's first time crossing the English Channel. Meet Andy, our skill skipper for this adventure. Andy and Louie are childhood best friends and they've attempted this crossing not once, not twice, but Three times.

That was truly terrifying and is kind.

Of like the glue that's holding this adventurous team together. Turns out there's a ton of logistics, planning, and paperwork that goes into something.

Like this that is totally under control.

Andy's the one with the nautical knowledge, steering the team in the right direction.

Since national waters. Yeah, this is where you can murder people and you can't get in trouble.

But most importantly, he's the one with the boat. So after days of preparation and planning, the guys were ready to test the waters.

Okay, we've got the boards, we've got the boat, and we are about to head out for a little dress rehearsal. This is either going to make me feel a lot better, a lot worse.

How are you feeling? Overwhelmingly excited for the practice. Tomorrow might be different, but right now I'm stoked.

What do you think our chances are of success?

50 50. Now that we got Andy, we're 90% man.

So Louie is one of the most optimistic people that I know. So for him to give it 50, 50, that says a lot. And he's the only one that has experience crossing the channel. What do you think our chances are?

I've not seen you on the board, so if you're competent and experts as you've said you are, it'll be fine.

Here goes.

So we've just pulled out from behind the harbor wall, and it looked like a lake out here from far away, but there's definitely a little more chop than I expected. The good news is the weather today is forecasted to be quite a bit worse than the weather tomorrow. There's a chance it will just be like a lake tomorrow morning when we're actually trying to do this.

We're really diving in head first here. See, we haven't even set up the boards.

It's always six screws. So surely we can figure this out. Pretty sure Nate is the only one.

That has actually put this board together.

It comes in. No. Have we watched how it stood together?

The confidence is coming in waves.

It does match the team colors.

This is the board that we're hoping to ride across the English Channel. It's called a lift foil. Basically an electrified surfboard. There's a big lithium battery in the board, and then it has a prop just like a boat on the back of it. And the only reason this works is because instead of riding with the board touching the water, so there's a bunch of drag. Somehow with science. Yes, science, you can get the board to lift up on the foil. So this will be the only thing that's in the water right here, so there's very little drag. So, theoretically, the lithium battery that's inside of this board should be strong enough to power this thing all the way across the English Channel. But that comes with a major caveat. You need to be good enough to ride the board. It looks fun and easy, but it's both physically and mentally exhausting and also an amazing adrenaline rush and so much fun. That's why we're doing this.

Before taking the hearty cold.

The problem is, last time we did this, Amo was the best. So if he's struggling, we're all really in trouble. You know what's also a big thing? What's that?

Because you really feel the waves.

Really?

So, like, when you're riding into the.

Waves like that, the wave kicks your balance.

They'll be bigger tomorrow. You reckon? Yeah, because you're out in the middle of the the channel, There'll be much more swell.

And Ken, baby, you got this. Louie.

Wait. Mine's not working.

Oh, no, no.

It's so cold.

It's colder than Alcatraz. It's cold.

Oh. Can I just say how happy I am that I didn't get talked into doing this? Thank you, Avon and Louie, for being friends with Nate and getting me out of this one.

Oh, you got to keep your feet out of the water. It's so cold. It, like, hurts. This board is tiny.

Not bad so far. He's just getting a feel for it, remembering what it's like. It's all right. Come on, Nate.

I'm tired already.

It's been a total of three minutes.

Nate hasn't quite gotten out of the water yet. Oh, and he's sinking.

All the water's going down. My wetsuit. Oh, my goodness. Honestly, after five minutes of riding this thing, I don't think there's any. We're doing this.

What's going on, Louie?

It's not paired.

Have you tried turning the battery off and then back on again?

I am so glad we have this practice today.

I mean, honestly, it's going to be hard. Yeah.

I think we good. That's enough practice.

You ready?

I'm ready.

Dude.

Get ready. I'm signing you off as ready. I'll meet you in France.

Amy's having the most fun, that's for sure.

Oh, Louie is down.

There he goes.

Oh, and he's down.

I don't know. It's taking them a lot longer than I thought it would to get the hang of it again.

My legs hurt.

I knew the waves were Gonna make it hard. I didn't think it was gonna be this hard, though.

Look at those.

You still thinking 50 chance?

50?

50.

No, I think there's a lot less chance we're gonna do it now. Maybe like, 20 chance.

I'm having a really hard time getting a read on how everybody's feeling right now. I think they're all trying to stay positive. It seems like it's a lot harder than everybody was expecting. They're all smiling, though, so you don't look very confident. Carol, how you going, mates?

Oh, I'm changing my percentage chance of us making it to 10.

Oh, no. Y' all are smashing it.

What was that? Oh, it's not fake.

No, it wasn't.

It was.

Was it? Yeah, it's gone.

Thank you, Andy, for that offering to the sea. Yeah, for safe passage. Tomorrow.

Real quick, we want to say a big thank you to AG1 for continuing to support this channel and our crazy ideas, no matter how doomed to failure that they are. Literally everyone who is living in this house right now drinks AG1 almost every single day. Let me show you some proof.

Kara brought a ziploc bag of 40 travel packs with us, right? And Louis keep theirs in their cabinet. What are you getting here?

Carry on and check just in case you lose it.

The reason that we all love this stuff is because it's an all in one nutritional supplement that has 75 vitamins, minerals, whole food source ingredients, prebiotics, probiotics, all the good stuff your body needs, and all in one convenient pack for us. We're moving around all the time, so it's really important that we don't have to carry around a ton of supplements. But this is super easy. You just grab one of these travel packs, or if you're stationary, a scoop. You put it in 8 to 12 ounces of water, give it a good shake, and then you have your nutritional insurance for the day. I'm gonna have to clean that off. Ryan. Louis. Carpet. Did it get my mustache? Things I have to worry about these days. If you'd like to try AG1 for yourself, you can use the link in the description below. And you will get five free travel packs. I promise one of them will not be drank like the one I just used. And also a year supply of vitamin D that is using the link in the description below. And if you're curious about how it tastes and worried it might be a little too green for you, I would say it's one of the most unique flavors I've ever tried. The two closest tasting Notes I can give you are green apple and bubble gum. It tastes a lot less green than it looks. You're ready to try it out? Click the link in the description below. Now back to the video. I didn't quite get all the powder out of that pack.

You have a lot of rolls today. I don't know.

What would you do without me?

Chef, videographer, spotter, warrior, potential drone pilot.

I feel like the art of making PB and JS is very polarizing. This is not how I usually make them.

Today's the day.

Remember, left side, left side, left side, left, left, left.

Okay, slightly stressful morning, but we're off. So Louis, Andy, and Eamon are on the boat. They're gonna meet us there. We're gonna get the boat, drive across to France, put the boards in the water, and ride back. That is the plan for the day. I think one of the reasons I've been super stressed about this, in addition to just my fear of being in the water, is because I kind of feel like the instigator of this whole thing. Like, I think it was my idea, and I definitely kind of like, rallied the whole team to do this now. Amen. Flew all the way from Canada. Louie has a newborn baby. So I feel like it's a really big deal that everyone ones here doing this together, and I just want it to go decently well. And honestly, there's just been so many things to figure out and reasons why we probably shouldn't be doing this that I would have given up if I wouldn't have had other people already committed to doing this and had reorganized their lives to be here and do it. It's feeling really forced at the moment. You know, sometimes your gut instinct just tells you, like, it's probably just a better idea to let this one go. That's what I've been feeling in my stomach the past couple days.

Everyone dresses so cute in the uk.

That's what you're thinking about right now. We've never started filming a video of a challenge and not finished it.

That's true.

I think this adventure has the highest probability of failure.

Okay, we are on a random beach somewhere in Dungeness.

The boat is now sideways. Okay, that's not good. Oh, wave in the boat. We still have a boat. We literally almost lost it, but we're good now.

Sounds like we missed the adventure.

Well, yeah, we're not too bad now. The boat's only one minute away, and then we'll bring it all over there and hopefully quickly hit the beach, load it up. Doesn't this feel like some weird dystopian future?

It's like a nuclear dystopian wasteland. So what is this place?

Especially with, like, the random people?

Honestly, the creepiest place I've ever been if it was dark.

So weird.

Quiet, quiet, quiet. Qua.

Yes.

I feel like we just did, like, a rescue vision. I feel like a Navy seal right now. That was awesome. Here we go.

Just brought better the second time.

I feel like somehow we've been successful just by getting on the boat. Like, no matter what happens after this, we've done pretty good.

We did it.

Go home. Maybe don't put this on the camera. I am taking my pants off.

All right.

Not quite in international waters yet. This might be illegal. Every step of this trip has been a challenge, including trying to put this wetsuit on and then moving boat.

Hold on tight.

Oh, my gosh. What? I'm just seeing the cargo ships for the first time.

That is huge.

Looks like a moving city. There's dolphins. Dolphins.

Where?

This is amazing. If all else fails, we went on a dolphin sightseeing boat ride.

The weather was supposed to be better today, like, lighter winds, blue skies. But the sea is way rougher than where we were practicing yesterday. And if you remember, I didn't go that well.

Andy was just saying for a lot of boaters, it's a big deal just to get their boat across the channel, and we're just popping across to drop some e foils in, and then we're coming back to the other side. This all sounded so simple in my head when I had the idea. What do you think the chances are that we're making it back on the board?

I'm still sticking with 20 chance. So on the way here, I was feeling really apprehensive about today. You know, when you get that little knot in your stomach and you know, it's a good adventure when you feel that, because I feel a lot of the traveling we do, you know, it's kind of going to go quite easy. But this is so many question marks around today. Oh, I feel nervous now.

I actually feel nervous.

We've made it about a mile out to sea, and Andy's had a warning light come up on the boat. What? Nothing. Also, there is no way that you can appreciate just how big this swell is in the camera. I'm not saying it's huge. I'm just saying the camera makes it look flat, and it is definitely not flat.

It's a water separator warning indicator. All right, Drain the water. From the filters.

Yeah.

Try and drain it.

Have you got a cup or something?

Not a single thing has gone as planned. But my favorite thing about these guys is that I honestly think they're having more fun because nothing is going as planned. It's just solving one problem at a time.

The light didn't go off, but we're back.

I think hope for the best is the new motto of this trip.

The boat literally just shut down.

We're trying to empty the crazy. I see what looks like a fuel fill. I think that fuel bill is just. It just got warped full of water. It's weird. They both cut off at the same time.

Yeah.

Maybe there's a clever auto shut off and that fills up.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's empty. It does say you need to fill it back up with fuel.

We need to put some fuel back in the fuel filter. We think you don't need much, but it's that way.

Okay, stop.

Okay.

I think I'm alright for now. Fire it up.

Oh.

Just backfired.

The last thing you want to see when you're in the middle of the English Channel is the top of your motor sitting in the front of the boat. We are stranded. You can barely see land in that direction. But.

This was not the video that we planned on making.

I don't want to say this too loudly because I don't want to stress anyone out, but we are just broken.

Down in the middle of the water right now.

Really dangerously close to the shipyard. But if anybody can figure it out, these guys who knew I was their biggest hype girl. Eamonn's built multiple vans. Louie has converted multiple vehicles into other things. And Nate.

Has a great attitude.

Dungeness. We took a couple of waves over the. The, the, the back. Nothing. Well, I didn't think it was too severe, but we then had the water separation light come up on the dashboard. And then a minute or two later, both the engines cut out.

Okay. All right.

Sounds like a serious problem. Sounds like you've got.

Tank integrity issues that that dewater has made its way into your tank. Radio on board.

Yeah. Yeah. Stop.

Probably put in a call to the Coast Guard. It doesn't feel like we're gonna get to France so that you guys can jetboard back. There's a question to whether we'll even get the boat back to Brighton.

Let's just have a beach holiday today, eh?

In this nuclear dystopian beach.

Even though we had been advised to call the Coast Guard, the guys weren't gonna give up that either.

Should we disconnect it and maybe, like, purge some out?

They were as determined as ever to fix the engine and get to France. Everything they're talking about right now sounds like a foreign language to me, but it feels like we're making progress. They're just doing trial and error right now. There's still a chance we're going to get this done. Time is ticking, though.

This isn't worst case scenario because we're not in the shipping lane. If. If we were sitting in the middle of the shipping lane right now, we would for sure be calling the Coast Guard. But we broke down before we got to the shipping lane and now we're just drifting sideways. So we're just drifting parallel to the shipping lane.

Start in France. Start. Start in France. French waters. Yes. It doesn't have to. It just has to be just past the shipping lane. We are haven't even solved the issue and everyone's excited about boarding back to the UK already.

We still don't have a working engine, so not only were we running out of daylight to complete this challenge, but we were also drifting even closer to the shipping lane, which would force us to call the Coast Guard. But just when it was starting to feel like all, all hope was lost, a tip from a YouTube video gave us a glimmer of hope.

You have to fill them back up. Why didn't the guy on the phone say that? Call him back and see if he needs help.

This is it, Andy. This is it.

Oh, oh, oh. We got one engine.

We only need one engine. Really? We only need one engine because you're going the same speed. We're going half an engine.

It died again.

Why is our good engine dying?

Is the fuel filter still got a bit of a leak?

Please.

I wish I could say that this triumphant spirit scene meant that we had made it to France and the guys were on their way back to the uk. But in reality, we only had one jerry can of clean fuel to get us back to where we started. At this point, we had driven out to the edge of the shipping lane, floated eight miles east, and we were limping home towards Dungeness. Even though the boat wasn't 100%, the boys decided to put the boards in the water and ride the final 10 miles back where we started. After the stress of being stranded in the English Channel subsided, we started to realize that this entire adventure had become much more about the journey than the destination.

Well, all things considered, I'd say everything worked out just fine. I can't believe how calm it is out here in the middle of the English Channel.

It would have been epic to say that we crossed the English Channel, but honestly, I think today will be more memorable and still really, really fun.

With the wrong group of people, this could have felt like an epic failure. But with this crew, it felt like the adventure we were all meant to be on. Even though we didn't accomplish the route we set out for, in the end, four friends went out on an adventure and made memories that will last a lifetime.

You nut up.

That said, we don't give up that easy. It won't be next week or maybe even this year, but these four will eventually make it across the English Channel.

Wait, Carol. See you, Nate.

The adventure never ends.

Bye, guys.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh.

What a day. Is this the furthest you've ever been alone in the ocean? I felt like my board was kind of just. And then all of a sudden, it's giving me, like, a no wi fi signal. Nate is being a very good friend and staying with me, and Louie is trying to go flag down the boat, which is continuing that direction.

I would hope someone would do the same for me, because this is my worst nightmare. Just floating out of here. I'm going to get my feet out of the water. How many things don't stop talking? Yeah, I thought you were gonna say, how many things are swimming under us? Just to tow you back here.

I'll hold on your feet this way. Do we look more like a seal?

We're bigger and more intimidating this way. Right? Want me to hold on to your toes?

Okay.

I think the boat will just come back and get it.

Do you want to listen to a.

Girl and everyone's made.

That was confusing. I had to go around the car, and then I got the right lane, and I just stayed there.

Have you got the instruction manual?

Because it's really good.

It does talk you through everything.

First man to ever say that.

Oh, it's nice to go.