Record skinny dip raises €275,000
Howard Lake | 27 June 2018 | News
A skinny dip involving 2,500 women in Wicklow has raised €275,000 for charity.
A total of 2,505 women, aged from their late teens to mid-80s, took over a secluded beach in Co Wicklow at the weekend for the charity record bid, according to the Irish Examiner.
The organiser of the world record-breaking skinny dip has hailed it an empowering experience in the fight against cancer. Money raised will go to Irish cancer charity, Aoibheann’s Pink Tie.
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Organiser Dee Featherstone told the newspaper: “Half the people who were there either had cancer or were affected by cancer or were supporting somebody or remembering someone who had cancer – every woman had their own little story of why they did it”.
Ms Featherstone said a lot of women had been nervous about baring all, due to scars left by cancer operations. She added:
“On the day absolutely nobody cared and the people who would have been really scared and nervous about doing it – they were the ones who were in the water longest and naked longest on the beach.”
Collectively, the nude bathers broke the record previously held by Australian skinny dippers in Perth, despite the water temperature being about 10 degrees colder in Ireland.
Ms Featherstone, who led Saturday’s charge into the Irish Sea, said the numbers exceeded her wildest dreams.
“I thought we might get 1,500 euros but it just got bigger and bigger,” she said. “The whole beach was just awash with us – it was just incredible”.
Aoibheann’s Pink Tie is a national children’s cancer charity set up in 2010 by Mick Rochford and Jimmy Norman after the loss of Jimmy’s daughter Aoibheann to cancer aged 8.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.