By CASEY NEILL
SELBY man Paul Hoffman has braved sharks to swim a marathon and set a record.
The Rhodesian-born father of two, along with Michael Gregory and Steven Klugman, on 8 March swam 47 kilometres across Port Phillip Bay.
“We became the first people to do the swim without a shark cage,” Mr Hoffman said.
They set off from Port Arlington about 3.15am and arrived at Frankston 14 hours and seven minutes later, about 5.20pm.
Mr Hoffman said only 10 other people had swum across the bay and one was in his support team – long distance swimming champion Tammy Van Wisse.
She was the last person to complete the marathon and did so in a shark cage.
“She kept us fed for the duration and then popped in the water for the last 13km of the swim,” Mr Hoffman said.
“That was fantastic. The last couple of hours got choppy.”
But it was nothing compared to his journey across the English Channel on 26 July last year.
Mr Hoffman set off from Dover at 7.30pm and emerged from the water in France at 9am the following day.
The course is 34km in a straight line but he swam more than 60km.
“The current is quite strong and it flows up and down the channel,” he said.
“I really got dragged around quite a bit.”
Mr Hoffman took on the challenge to mark his 40th birthday. His support crew dragged him from the water eight hours into his first attempt at the swim in July 2012 following four hours of vomiting.
“I always wanted to do it (the bay swim) but the channel was my focus,” he said.
“I needed a goal when I was done with the channel to help me get rid of the weight.”
During training for the bay crossing he shed 15 kilograms he’d put on for the channel journey.
Swimming for fun is now his focus and he’ll support two swimmers in training to tackle the channel this year.
