Finswim 150: 15/50/150

Three Distances. One Purpose. Every Kilometre for Every Mind.

... is my long‑term cold‑water endurance project supporting Mind Sverige and their work in suicide prevention and mental health.

Every swim in this series has a purpose.

I’m doing this to help, to raise awareness, and to show that resilience can be rebuilt one cold, honest mile at a time.

My life has taken me through abuse, addiction, suicidal thoughts, and years of trying to put myself back together piece by piece. I live with hypertension, a reminder that health is something you have to take seriously every single day.

Cold water, long distances, structure, and discipline became the first things that helped me find stability when everything else felt chaotic. Supporting Mind Sverige is my way of giving something back to people who are still fighting their way through the dark.

August 8th - The Öresund Strait is where this journey begins.

It’s a 15km cold, fast, tidal stretch of water between Sweden and Denmark, full of shipping traffic, shifting winds, and unpredictable currents. Nothing about it is easy. My fifteen‑kilometre Öresund finswim is the first step in this series, a way of setting the tone: real conditions, real difficulty, and no shortcuts.

From there, the project grows into a fully documented, GPS‑tracked fifty‑kilometre world‑record attempt, pushing the limits of what is possible with bifins in open water.

After that comes the long‑term goal, a 150km staged, unsupported finswim across Lake Vänern, Sweden’s and the European Union's largest lake and one of the toughest cold‑water endurance challenges in Europe.

In the future, I plan to continue the progression with a straight‑line crossing from Sweden to Bornholm, another cold, unpredictable strait with long exposure and shifting conditions.

Each swim is a chapter. Each distance is a step forward. Each challenge is a way to turn my own history into something useful.

Finswimming itself is simple and honest: a wetsuit, bifins, a front‑mounted snorkel, and goggles. It isn’t scuba, it isn’t freediving, and it isn’t monofin sprinting. It’s endurance. It’s technique. It’s efficiency over hours, not minutes. It’s maintaining pace, form, and focus in cold water while your legs do most of the work. It’s a discipline built on consistency rather than spectacle, and it has become the structure that keeps me grounded.

I’m doing this because I know what it feels like when life gets heavy, when your thoughts turn against you, when trauma follows you into adulthood, and when addiction takes over. I know what it feels like to rebuild yourself from the ground up.

Cold water helped me.

Distance helped me.

Structure helped me.

Goals helped me.

Mind Sverige helps people who need support when life becomes overwhelming.

Finswim 150: 15/50/150 is my way of connecting the two, long, cold, honest miles for something bigger than myself.

NOTE:

All donations for my swim projects go directly to the official charity platforms, and I never receive, handle, or process any money at any stage. I do not accept Swish, bank transfers, PayPal, or private payments, and I do not intermediate funds on behalf of any organisation. This structure exists to ensure complete financial transparency, protect donors, and eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding or false accusations. Every contribution is made through the charity’s own secure system, and the charity manages all accounting, receipts, and financial reporting.