Summer Job

I observed 8 swims for the Channel Swimming Association and thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave me many opportunities to take photographs, most of them are posted on Photobox. Not just swimmers, but also some of the 500, or more, ships that travel up, down and across the English Channel every day.
The work involves sitting on a small boat watching someone swim from England to France, a process that takes on average 12½ hours. It can be boring, tiring and uncomfortable, but when they succeed it's unbelievably satisfying to have contributed in some small way.
This photo shows one of the boats that accompanies swimmers and a cargo boat. The coastguard say that swimmers have no rights in the channel, so sometimes the big ships are really close.The swimmer is alongside the tiny boat just in front of the cargo ship, they were probably about 300m apart.