On August 23 our A Long Swim Team made the first attempt, ever, to swim from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard. Eighteen miles of open ocean, jellyfish, sharks, currents and serious rip currents.

It has been said by Richard Branson that, “If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re too small.”

Together, with our team, I have swum the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, the length of Tampa Bay, the Ka’iwi Channel, and a loop around the island of Manhattan.

My family has been a part of Martha’s Vineyard for 25 summers, though in recent summers our time there has been cut short due to our swims. It was my family’s idea to swim from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard and make history.

The Gazette’s front-page article on August 23 introduced the swim to the Island, starting from Nantucket’s Eel Point and landing at the Edgartown Lighthouse. The article explained that our foundation, A Long Swim, raises awareness and funds for ALS research, a mission that has been long ignored by entrepreneurs and leaders. My family has been hit hard by ALS, as I have lost my father and my sister to the neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure. A Long Swim has raised over $600,000 with our open water marathon swims and the research is gaining great speed. We fund a lab at Northwestern University that works collaboratively throughout the world and equally shares their research.

I want to thank our world-class boat captains Eamonn Solway and Spa Tharp, as well as our navigator Dana Gaines, and our advisors Deb Blair and Charlie Blair. We could not have done this without the dedication of the Gazette staff, including Jane Seagrave and Will Sennott. Will was on our crew for the entire trip and was the first reporter ever to be on one of our adventures.

I also want to thank Bernard Chiu and his Harbor View Hotel for wholeheartedly embracing the swim with public relations, social media, and a landing party and press conference. If a hotel can have a heart, the Harbor View has a big one. They also donated $10,000 to ALS Research.

By the end of the swim, we were 3/10ths of a mile from the landing beach. Less than 400 strokes. Facing a serious rip current that would have risked my life and those with me, the safety-first rule ended the swim. According to English Channel Rules — start on dry land, end on dry land, no wetsuit, no touching a human or the boat — I touched the boat and the swim was over. My teammates pulled me aboard.

We have raised more than $100,000 with this swim alone. The Gazette has set the standard for marathon swimming reporting; the newspaper’s team made sure the world was watching. Based on the feedback we’ve received, it is clear that the world will be watching for a long time.

Our team will again meet on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 2020 to accomplish this swim. Our complete team will be in place, and this time we will make it. We are considering our 2019 swim a practice.

Thanks to all of you for your support. We want you to be assured that we will not stop swimming until, one day, we are met on the beach by an ALS survivor. See you in 2020.

Doug McConnell

Barrington, Ill.