Maura Twomey prepares for a scheduled swim across the English Channel by training in Dorchester Bay and the waters off of L Street in South Boston. Charlie Dorf photoAs a young child growing up in Dublin, Maura Twomey dreamed of swimming the English Channel after her father’s employer, Guinness, opened a pool for their employees’ families. Twomey, now a resident of Jamaica Plain with her own acupuncture practice, will get a chance to fulfill her dream, as she is scheduled to swim the Channel as a fundraiser for Cork University Hospital between July 9-13.

“When I was a little kid, it was a thing people did. People would swim the Channel, and I’d get this little dream, ‘Maybe I’ll do that someday,” Twomey, 58. “But it didn’t turn out to be a possibility with the life I was living. It was a dream shelved.”

The path back to that dream began over twenty years ago, when she was asked to help swimmers out of the water at the Provincetown Harbor Swim for Life. “I started to ask myself, ‘why am I not swimming?’ So the next year I did it, and I’ve been doing that swim ever since,” she said.

Her growing interest in open water swimming lead her to swim in several open water events, including the mile-and-a-half swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco for her 50th birthday. After a particularly tough experience when she repeated the Alcatraz swim the following year, she joined the Cambridge Masters Swim Club to train more vigorously. More recently, Twomey completes most of her practice swims in the waters off of South Boston, near the Curley Community Center.

In 2013, Twomey undertook her longest open water swim yet: the Boston Light Swim, which spans 8 miles around 7 islands. Though she was unable to finish the race under the 5-hour time limit, she was undaunted.

“Twenty-three of us started that race, and only 12 finished. The conditions were unusually bad, but I was just happy that I swam for 5 hours and still felt ok the next day,” she said. Several weeks later, the original spark of Twomey’s Channel aspirations was rekindled when the race organizer for the Boston Light Swim urged her to attempt the 21-mile Channel swim, which can well over 20 hours in below 60-degree water.

While attending a open water swimming conference during a trip back to Ireland, Twomey realized what she needed to do to make her dream a reality.

“I was looking at some of the people who swam channels and I thought, the only difference between them and me is work. They’ve actually decided they’re going to do it and they do the training.”

Afterwards, she contacted Eilís Burns, a well-known coach of Channel swimmers, who accepted Twomey’s request for training a year later in 2014.

However, the strongest impetus behind Twomey’s decision to swim the Channel is to raise funds for something very close to home. Her niece, whose son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at a young age, is involved with Build4Life, a charity started in 2007 dedicated towards raising money for improved facilities for cystic fibrosis patients at Cork University Hospital. Twomey’s Build4Life fundraising goal of 20,000 euro, of which she has already raised 18,212.52 euro will go towards a suite of rooms dedicated to cystic fibrosis patients, which will limit the risk of cross-infection from other hospital patients.
Regardless of whether or not she successfully completes the swim, Twomey feels that the journey to get her to the Channel has been enough of a reward.

“This has been a fantastic journey, whatever happens in the next few weeks. First of all, open water swimmers are very inclusive and helpful around the country. They’ll welcome you and make sure you’re safe wherever you are. But above and beyond that, all kinds of people have helped me to do this in both the swimming and the fundraising,” she said.