Drew Nemetz wakes at 4 a.m., feeds the cats, drives to Oakland Beach in Rye, N.Y., and slips into Long Island Sound by 5 a.m. Two hours and thousands of yards later, he's behind the counter at Alpen Pantry, the specialty sandwich shop he co-owns with his wife, Frannie Willsey, in downtown Old Greenwich.

The pre-dawn routine is preparation for a solo English Channel crossing in October. Nemetz will attempt the roughly 21-mile swim from Dover, England, to Cap Gris-Nez, France, without a wetsuit, in water temperatures between 57 and 63 degrees Fahrenheit. He expects the crossing to take 12 to 16 hours.

The Channel Swimming Association has recorded 2,107 solo crossings to date. More people have summited Mount Everest.

Nemetz lives in Port Chester, N.Y., near the Greenwich border, but grew up in town. He swam on the Greenwich High School team and earned a college swimming scholarship. He stopped competing in 2001 and didn't return to the water until around the pandemic, when his twin daughters were born. He joined the adult Masters team at the YMCA of Greenwich, connected with open-water swimmers and started training at Oakland Beach year-round, including in water temperatures that dip into the low 30s.

The Greenwich Point One Mile Swim in 2023 reignited his competitive drive. He went on to complete the 20 Bridges Manhattan Marathon Swim in 2024, finishing the circumnavigation of Manhattan Island in eight hours and 24 minutes. That put him one leg into the open-water swimming "triple crown."

This spring, Nemetz secured a spot on the Channel Swimming Association's list and began training in earnest. He now logs up to 50,000 yards a week, splitting time between Long Island Sound and the Greenwich YMCA pool. In bed by 10 p.m., up again at 4 a.m.

"I chose Save the Sound because it's where I and a bunch of my friends all swim in the water," Nemetz told Save the Sound in an Aug. 22 profile. "It's pretty much our swimming pool that we want to see stay open. You don't want to be told that, 'oh, you can't go swimming because of high bacteria or there's trash.'"

Nemetz is raising money for the nonprofit through a JustGiving fundraising page. Save the Sound monitors water quality across the Sound and issues daily swim alerts that Nemetz and his training partners check before every session.

Peter Linderoth, director of healthy waters and lands at Save the Sound, will crew Nemetz's support boat during the crossing. Linderoth met Nemetz at Alpen Pantry during the Old Greenwich Merchant Association's annual First Light evening and will be responsible for feeding and hydrating the swimmer and keeping him on pace.

In late September, Nemetz and his crew will travel to London, take a train to Dover and wait in the village of Folkestone for a four-day weather window. He'll board the chartered boat Masterpiece, piloted by father-and-son captains Fred and Harry Mardle.

The swim falls near a milestone: Aug. 6 marked the 100th anniversary of Gertrude Ederle's 1926 Channel crossing, the first by a woman, completed in 14 hours and 39 minutes.

Residents can support Nemetz's swim at justgiving.com/page/drew-nemetz-1.

Coming up: Nemetz departs for London in late September; his four-day swim window opens in October. Save the Sound posts daily water-quality alerts for Long Island Sound beaches at savethesound.org.