what is the cca?

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The Channel Crossing Association (CCA) has achieved worldwide recognition as a club able to facilitate and adjudicate attempts for its members to swim across the English Channel, under the rules of English Channel swimming. Being a set of rules which have been universally applied and recognised since the sport of English Channel-swimming commenced. 

The CCA has permission to oversee English Channel Swimming from the  British Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), and the French coastguards (Centre RègionalOpèrational de Surveillance et de Sauvetage (CROSS) Gris Nez  and is currently one of the three organisations currently accompanying attempts to swim the English Channel. 

The CCA is particularly focused on providing guidance and assistance in training for an attempt, as well as attempting, to swim the English Channel as a solo swimmer or as part of a relay team. 

 The Channel Crossing Assosstion assists swimmers to achieve their goals of swimming the English Channel.

We ensure all our pilots have the relevant qualifications and that their escort boats are fully equipped and in good working order to escort the swimmers across the Channel

We make sure that all Channel aspirants have passed a medical examination and have done a 'qualifying swim' before they're allowed to attempt their Channel swim.

We also make sure that all swims are witnessed by one of our observers onboard which do contain rules. 

For any more information please contact us.

 The shortest distance in a straight line from England to France is 21 miles. The tides will affect every aspiring English Channel swimmer to varying degrees.  A simplistic description of what to expect is laid out in the subsequent paragraphs.   For roughly six hours the tide will take the swimmer 'up' the Channel, and then as the tide changes direction, the following six hours will take the swimmer 'down' the Channel. This up and down movement of the water is relentless and unavoidable. When traversing the English Channel, the boat pilot pays respect to the aforementioned tides when heading for France, which means the tidal effect will be perpendicular to the direction of the swimmer. It is incredibly rare for a swimmer to ever be swimming with or against the tide. 

 The moon's position relative to the earth and sun changes, creating different strengths of tide. The smaller tides are called neap tides, and the bigger ones are spring tides.  Historically, swimmers have made their attempts on neap tides, as the belief is that this reduces the effect of wind against tide. It also reduces the risk of the swimmer missing the land target of Cap Gris Nez in France. During the swim season (May - October) you can track crossing attempts on our live tracking page.