Choppy Water, Jelly Fish Stings Notwithstanding, Greenwich Native Completes English Channel Swim

Many people in Greenwich know Drew Nemetz who grew up in town and graduated from Greenwich High School in 2000.

Others know him for his popular sandwich shop and market, Alpen Pantry in Old Greenwich. In fact, that is where we first met Nemetz in 2022 when he created a specialty vegetarian sandwich for the First Selectman.

Having been a member of the swim team at GHS with Terry Lowe as his coach, Nemetz earned a swim scholarship to college.

From there, he said he took a 20-year hiatus from swimming.

Today, the unassuming 44-year-old who lives in Port Chester with his wife and twin daughters has resumed swimming and become a serious distance swimmer.

It wasn’t until the birth of his daughters in 2021 that Nemetz returned to swimming.

As he explains it, he got used to being awake at odd hours of the night for feedings, so he joined the Morning Masters at the YWCA Greenwich with Nick Cavataro, swimming recreationally in the early mornings.

Then, Nemetz said a friend suggested he participate in an open water swim event in Bermuda called Round the Sound. He did and he came in second in the 6K event.

In another major feat, Nemetz completed the 28.5-mile “Manhattan 20 Bridges Swim” in June 2024, with a finish time of 8 hours, 24 minutes.

Friends then suggested he swim the English Channel, but when he realized he had missed a 2025 deadline, he continued training and returned to Bermuda where he participated in the Round the Sound 10K event.

As he ramped up his training for the 2026 English Channel swim, Nemetz swam with Simon Hill who had completed that swim in 2022, and Jake Dolce who had completed both the English Channel swim in 2024 and the Manhattan 20 Bridges swim in 2023.

“The last six months of my life were focused on swimming the channel – getting up at 4:00am, and in the water by 5:00am, doing a two- or three-hour swim in Long Island Sound,” he recalled.

Swimming in the water off Manursing Island Club and Playland Park, Nemetz said he got in as many swims as possible, and his last one was a 10-hour swim.

“I just enjoy it,” Nemetz said of being alone in the open water. “It’s peaceful. You’re not attached to your phone or your problems. You’re out there, in the moment. It’s about being free. It’s fun and there is a nice swim community.”

A swim community for a solo open water swimmer?

Yes.

Nemetz explained that in addition to training with people like Simon Hill and Jake Dolce, the channel swim requires assembling a crew to lend support, get the swimmer fed, provide water and make sure the solo swimmer is “safe, sane and healthy.”

Nemetz had a crew in place before the English Channel swim, but when one person had to drop out, the swim community came together.

“I found two people who said they would do it, and now I consider them my close friends,” Nemetz said. “They drove three hours by car to the coast of England in Folkstone.”

The crew were on a boat alongside him for over 14 hours.

 

The boat that piloted Nemetz and carried his crew was called the Masterpiece, run by a father and son team who have been piloting swimmers across the English Channel for decades.

“It was a beautiful purple boat, and I swam next to it the whole time,” Nemetz said.

At 2:52am on Oct 3, Nemetz set off from Dover, a ferry port on the south shore of England known for its white chalk cliffs. 

He swam 21 miles to Cap Gris-Nez in France, arriving at 5:08pm, completing  the roughly 21-mile English Channel crossing in 14 hours, 16 minutes.  

Nemetz said that during his training he’d imagined completing the swim and finishing on a sandy beach, but when he was close enough to the shore all he saw was rocks.

He described spotting a patch of pebbles on the shore, and swimming toward it.

 

“I got out of the water, crawled on my knees, got up on my legs and stood up,” he said. “You have to be completely out of the water to finish. They honked the horn and I kissed  the coast and ended up at Cape Blanc-Nez.”

 

The swim posed numerous challenges.

Nemetz was given a window of Oct 3-7 to complete the crossing, allowing for some leeway to wait for the right conditions.

“You could be ready to go at 2:00am, but if the weather changes, the captain could call and say stand down. It can be an emotional roller coaster. You have to wait, and some people don’t get a swim in their window.”

Nemetz was lucky.

“We had great weather, there was not a rainy day.”

A challenge took place at the beginning of the swim when the water was rough and Nemetz swallowed some salt water, resulting in vomiting.

“I basically got sea sick,” he recalled.

Yet he persevered.

“I got stung by jellyfish a few times,” he said. “And they are pretty big – the size of a softball or handbag. You just swim through it.”

And of course Nemetz had to eat and stay hydrated while swimming.

“I kept my feedings under a minute to 30 to 40 seconds,” he said. 

Another challenge was factoring in the currents. Nemetz described the moment he could see the coast, but knowing that if he swam toward it, the current would have taken him out.

And for swimmers, when the water is too rough or too cold, there is the risk of hypothermia.

“It’s both a mental and physical event,” he said. “You’re alone in the water with your thoughts. You play mental games. You count, you try to figure out the meaning of life. I say to myself, I’m here, this is what I chose to do. You get into a rhythm. But you never ask how long you’ve been in the water or what time it is, because when that happens you start to break down.”

Swimming for an Important Cause: Save the Sound

Nemetz’s choice of Save the Sound as beneficiary of his fundraising made sense.

He learned to swim as a child in Long Island Sound at Tod’s Point. In the lead-up to swimming the English Channel, he trained in the waters off Manursing Island Club and Playland.

Who would be more aware of water quality in Long Island Sound than an open water swimmer?

“One year the water got so dirty, my parents joined a summer club, and that’s where I started to compete,” he recalled.

As for the importance of learning to swim, Nemetz said “Swimming is free. All you need is a suit, goggles and a cap.”

However, he said access to open water has become harder to come by, and amires the New York-based non profit Dawgpatch Bandits for their work with local municipalities to preserve, mark and promote public water access points on Long Islands East End.

To date, Nemetz had successfully raised over $20,000 to protect the Long Island Sound. It’s still possible to donate to further Nemetz’s cause, Save the Sound.

Save the Sound‘s mission is to mission is to protect and improve the land, air and water of Connecticut and new York communities around Long Island Sound.