Just giving: This is another – and very moving – piece of evidence of the relationships built between the Danish shipping line, Maersk and the communities in the vicinity of Loch Striven, where six Maersk container ships were laid up for almost a year.
This Sunday, 22nd August (2010), Tony Greener, Maersk Line’s Fleet Group Manager, is to swim Loch Striven from its head to a line off Inverchaolain, where the raft of ships was anchored.
Now 52, Tony returned to swimming four years ago and has become a rated contestant in wild swimming events – like the recent Derwent Water wild swim, where he came 3rd.
His job – technically managing Maersk Line’s UK-based container ships – meant that he led the complex layup of the six quite new ships laid up in Loch Striven, the first lay up of ships in which computer systems are so central to their operation.
This job saw Tony Greener spend a lot of time in Loch Striven. He got to know the local community with whom he has formed strong friendships.
Now, with the B-class ships returned to service all over the world, Tony Greener is coming back to Loch Striven on Sunday 22nd August to undertake his biggest swimming challenge in aid of a local charity – Calum’s Cabin – whose origins and whose work would soften the hardest of hearts.
Calum’s Cabin
In 2006, an 11 year old boy from Rothesay, Calum Spiers, was diagnosed as suffering from a brain tumour. 13 months later – on 16th February 2007 and by then in his first year at the town’s Rothesay Academy, Calum was dead.
During the short time he and his family had between his diagnosis and his so very premature death, Calum and they decided to raise money to build a house on the Isle of Bute for other families with children suffering form terminal cancer to come and have a holiday together out of time and in a beautiful and tranquil place.
The project became a registered charity – named Calums Cabin, needing first to raise £100,000 to build the ‘cabin’ and then, endlessly, to keep raising money to pay for the fully funded holidays there which are given to families in the same heartbreaking situation.
Calum was buried on 21st February 2007. Three months later the project had raised £50,000, half of what it needed to create Calum’s Cabin. Two months later, on 30th July, they had reached £75,000, by the end of October that year the fund was at £140,000 and still going.
In early February, just short of a year since Calum’s death, the Marquess of Bute – known as Johnny Bute and, earlier, as race driver Johnny Dumfries – and the Mount Stuart Trust, agreed to lease the charity, rent free, a piece of ground at the Straad.
The fundraising for the build saw the community hold an astonishing range and frequency of events from parties to triathlons. It is an enduring tribute to the affection in which Calum and the Spiers family were and are held, that effort at this intensity just never stopped.
People not known to the family were moved by what they were doing and found ways of helping. One girl dropped favours from her wedding plan, gave the money to Calum’s Cabin and put a card for the charity at every guest’s place at the wedding feast.
On Monday 1st September, 80 weeks after fundraising began and less than 18 months after Calum died, work to build Calum’s Cabin began. In addition to paid contractors, people gave their labour, their skills and some materials. If ever a local charity was fully locally ‘owned’, it is this one.
The roof was on by October, by the end of December all it had left to do was tiling, painting and exterior work and by early February 2009 it opened, under two years since Calum’s death and with, as its patrons, two men who were centrally responsible for the design and fitting out of the beautiful building – architect Brian Stewart (who has since designed the award-winning Portavadie Marina) and Interior designer well known to television audiences, John Amabile.
Fundraising for this project can never stop. Families who come to Calum’s Cabin have everything to do with their holiday there paid for and, of course, the building itself needs maintenance.
Its design and layout are everything Calum Spiers would have taken delight in himself. It brings relief, togetherness and happy positive memories to families suffering a coming loss most of us can only guess at and the Spiers family know at first hand.
On Sunday 22nd August, Tony Greener will swim for Calum and for the Spiers family as well as for their charity. The rest of us can give in support of every aspect of this occasion and it is a giving that the charity will continue to need.
Tony Greener has set up an account for his epic challenge in the chill waters of Loch Striven – he has never swum this distance in his life – at the online donation site, Just Giving (http://www.justgiving.com/TonyGreener10kSwim). You can donate there, safely and straightforwardly. Your contribution will be at work within weeks, supporting another family in the situation the Spiers family and their inspirational son turned to the common good.
Maersk, Calum’s Cabin and Tony Greener
Tony was on board the raft of container ships in Loch Striven when Maersk hosted a reception for local charities and good causes to whom they presented cheques sharing the location fee the BBC paid the company for filming the new children’s sci-fi series, Mission 2110, on board the ships.
The principal local charity chosen to benefit was Calum’s Cabin and the photograph above records the presentation, by Captain David Johnstone to Duncan Spiers, left and his supporters Stephen Neilson and Andrew Horn.
The commitment of the Spiers family and all of the helpers and supporters of the Calum’s Cabin facility is profound.
The Swim – come and cheer him in
The challenge Tony Greener has set himself is to swim from the head of Loch Striven to the midway point, where the Maersk Line vessels were moored for 12 months in 2009/2010, a distance of 10km (6.2 miles).
The finishing line will be marked by Mary Lamb’s house (the Clan Lamont manse) and she’s going to have a BBQ to celebrate the (hopefully) successful swim).
This is the longest distance that Tony has ever undertaken and is a considerable challenge. The water will be around 12C degrees and he’ll be wearing a wetsuit in order to complete the swim.
Stephen Burt – the BBC Production Manager for Mission 2110 – will lead the support boat.
The man who had the idea of using the laid up ships for this series and a former prawn fisherman from Mallaig, Stephen Burt has become pretty well an honorary member of Maersk Line, having lived on the ships with the crew for many months before, during and after the filming.
As well as Stephen, the support team includes Neville (local from Rothesay employed on the ships during lay up as chef), Paul Bowman (friend of Tony’s and fellow open water swimmer) and supported in spirit by Kate Sanderson and Cpt Davy Johnstone who are involved but can’t be there on the day unfortunately.
Cheerleaders and well wishers on the beach at Inverchaolain to clap him to the line and welcome him ashore will be very welcome – we’ll add an ETA here shortly – as, of course, will donations to Just Giving for Calum’s Cabin (both linked below). Tony has already raised over £1,500 and many of his colleagues at Maersk have made donations – including the Captain David Johnstone and the crew of Maersk Brooklyn, one of the Loch Striven six and now plying the warmer waters of the Mediterranean.
Tony’s swimming background
Tony first took up competitive swimming in his teens and officially ‘retired’ in his 20’s. Four years ago, at the age of 48 and looking for a sporting challenge, Tony decided to take up the sport again and in June 2006 took part in a charity event in lake Windermere over a distance of 2.5km and came in 4th. Since then, he’s been hooked.
In 2008 – 2 years after returning to the sport, he entered the 1500m Freestyle at British National Masters Championships at Sheffield and won the National title. Recently he has done:
- Great North Swim, Lake Windermere, 1 mile, Sept 2008 – position 44/2000 overall – won age group 1/280.
- Great North Swim Lake Windermere 1 mile, Sept 2009 – position 82/6000 overall – 2nd in age group 2/290.
- This summer, Tony came 3rd in a 3.8km Lake swim in Derwent Water in Cumbria. He has also been taking part in local triathlon swimming events and came 3rd in two 3km swims in July 2010, even sharing a podium with one of 2012’s Olympic hopefuls on one occasion.
Tony trains at least 5 times a week, covering 3km a night in the pool. This is supplemented by one sea swim of around 5km each week in the summer.
The photographs accompanying this article show Duncan Speirs of Calum’s Cabin with Captain David Johnstone of Maersk, Stephen Neilson, Rothesay Harbour Master and Andrew Horn who, with his wife, runs Calum’s Cabin new-and-nearly-new shop, by photographer Alan Peebles and reproduced by permission of Maersk; Calum’s Cabin, copyright Calum’s Cabin; and Tony Greener entering the water for the Derwent Water swim of summer 2010, in which he came 3rd – copyright Sport Sunday.
Wonderful coverage and please give with all your hearts this kind of thing dosent happen often and should be applauded for all it’s worth, people doing people stuff withour corporations getting in the way
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Tony has now raised £2000 but there is still time to contribute on the Just Giving website.
We will be leaving Rothesay harbour at 11am on Sunday and hope to reach the finish line at about 3pm. We expect to be back in Rothesay harbour around 5pm. Anyone who wants to donate on the day please feel free to come and see us. Look out for the little white boat we call the “Baby B” after the ships it served on Loch Striven.
Well done Tony, you have inspired a lot of people to give to this worthy cause.
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