One man is ready to do the longest swim ever completed in Australia.
Dean Summers will attempt to be the first person to swim over 40 hours from Newcastle to Sydney.
The 120 kilometre swim has been attempted twice, but never successfully completed.
Once the rain clears for over 40 hours, Mr Summers hopes to change that.
The swim is a tribute to the 1.3 million seafarers who sacrifice large parts of their life, often under difficult conditions. It will raise money for Hunterlink; a Newcastle based organisation that Mr Summers helped develop to provide free mental health programs for seafarers and their families.
"As someone who has spent my adult life fighting for their rights and industrial standards, I wanted to develop another angle to support them. I decided to combine my passion for swimming with highlighting the hardship of life at sea and the plight of seafarers, the forgotten workforce hidden from the eyes of the world," said Mr Summers.
"International seafarers come in and out of Newcastle on some of the biggest ships in the world. A lot of people come here with no support at all. It is a really tough industry and has suffered incredibly badly over the COVID times. I saw firsthand some seafarers have been on board these ships for two years without even stepping foot on land.
"The vast ocean is quite invisible to most of us, and few know that 90 per cent of everything we use comes to us with the help of over a million seafarers working around the globe and around the clock.
"There is a very high rate of suicide and mental health issues and Hunterlink reaches out in their own languages and provides immediate support for those seafarers.
"Mental health remains under-resourced everywhere but I'm confident we can make a difference for seafarers."
After completing multiple long-distance swims across the world Mr Summers has been training for years, swimming 40 to 50 kilometres every week alongside some of the best long-distance swimmers in Australia.
Two others who attempted to swim from Newcastle to Sydney were unsuccessful because of weather conditions and a broken shark cage, so Mr Summers said he is trying to be as prepared as possible.
"The water itself is a challenge. Even on good days you have got currents and things called gyres which are massive whirlpools. The biggest challenge is finding the course that is less impacted by currents and weather conditions all the way down for at least 40 hours.
"There is also fatigue, staying awake for 40 hours, hallucinating or coming to grips with hallucinations. All these things I have kind of felt before but I haven't really gone to this extent because the longest swim I have had is 20 hours so this is twice that distance."
He hopes this will put the swim from Newcastle to Sydney on the map.
"Since COVID I've noticed that we do all these international swims and a lot of Australians have to travel to them, but there is not enough Australian content. We have got some of the most beautiful coastline.
"I am aiming to put this swim on the international open water swim calendar for all endurance swimmers and to showcase our own coastal waters.
"I really want this swim to be dedicated to connecting Newcastle and Sydney and I want people to understand that long-distance swimming is a great sport that we don't have to go overseas for."
