CHARLIE WITTMACK

DOVER, England Charlie is nervous. With his right arm wrapped around Cate’s shoulders and both feet in the sand at Dover Harbour, he silently stares at the crashing blue waves of the English Channel. He can’t see France.

It’s Aug. 7, and though it’s a cloudless, sun-soaked afternoon, none of the flabby channel swimmers training in front of him dare to venture beyond the concrete seawall. Not on a day like this, when the crashing breakers on the horizon make the violent channel waters look more white than blue.

The expression on Charlie’s face foreshadows the battle that will rage in his head in less than 24 hours: fear versus determination. A day earlier, at a tiny cafe in nearby Deal, Charlie was in one of those “nothing will stop me” moods in which he boasted that he doesn’t know what it’s like to be scared. “It’s simply an emotion that I don’t feel,” he said.

But now, the bravado is gone. Charlie just stands there, staring at the water, barely saying a word.

“I almost died the last time I was here,” Charlie says.

“I almost died the last time I was here,” Charlie says.

In the 134 years since Capt. Webb first crossed the busiest shipping lane in the world, fewer than 900 people have swum the English Channel successfully. By comparison, since 1953, nearly 3,000 have stood on the summit of Everest.

At its narrowest point, the channel is 21 miles wide. But changing tides force swimmers to complete 25 to 30 miles for a successful crossing. It’s the physiological equivalent of running some 140 miles. Nonstop. In 63-degree water. No one understands the pain better than Kevin Murphy, the self-anointed king of the channel. Murphy has crossed these waters 34 times, more than any other man. On this day, he coaches a group of aspiring channel swimmers a few steps from where Charlie and Cate look on.

“You get really, really ill. Just brutally sick,” Kevin Murphy says.

“You get exhausted. You get really, really ill. Just brutally sick,” Murphy says of the feeling during a swim. “You spend about half the time out there thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ and the other half asking yourself, ‘When is this going to stop?’ And the only answer is, ‘When you get to the other side.’”

For Charlie, even getting to Shakespeare Beach, where his channel attempt will begin early tomorrow morning, has been a chore. Since stepping into the source of the Thames more than a month ago, he’s twice been plagued by amoebic dysentery, an intestinal illness that has sent him to the ER with bouts of uncontrollable vomiting, diarrhea and a body temperature of 104. He’s collided with an underwater pier, required an escort to help him avoid a sunken battleship, been stung by jellyfish and needed a coast guard rescue when shifting tides left him and his support kayak stuck on a mud flat.

He’s constantly exhausted. His skin is nearly raw from spending 10 hours a day in the water. And two days ago, his dad dropped the support kayak on Charlie’s right foot, ripping the nail from his big toe. It’s the fourth nail he’s sacrificed on the swim.

“He wasn’t making any sense. His speech was slurred. It wasn’t good,” says friend David Murphy.

What’s happened between his ears has proved just as difficult. Spending each day with his head buried in dark, murky water leads to mind games. One day he stews about an email fight with Cate. The next he worries what college James will get into. And the day after that he fantasizes about Thanksgiving dinner.

Major national sponsors have not yet materialized. Nor has much national media attention. And for the past week, Charlie has been traveling with Cate and James as well as his divorced parents and his stepmom. It’s made each night’s family dinner feel like some sort of Lifetime reality show.

But tomorrow, when Charlie tries to cross the channel, he’ll want family there. He’ll want Cate leaning over the side of the support boat blowing him kisses. He’ll want his dad pumping his fist and cheering should he make it to the other side. And he’ll want James waiting for him at the house they have rented.

Before that can happen, Charlie has to conquer the ghosts of 2008. That year, 15 miles into his journey across the channel, Charlie became hypothermic and his body began to shut down. His legs stopped working; he could barely lift his arms out of the water; and his body drifted farther and farther from the support boat.

“Why not just get into a boat and sail across?” Kevin Murphy asks.

“I remember the pilot asking what was my son’s name,” Charlie says. “And it was like, ‘Oh yeah, I have a son.’ And then I yelled ‘JAMES!’”

Seconds later, Charlie’s father-in-law, a doctor, made the decision to end the swim.

“It was scary,” says close friend David Murphy, who was in the boat that day. “He wasn’t making any sense. His speech was slurred. It wasn’t good.”

On the boat, Charlie fell unconscious. The crew wrapped his body in blankets. After Charlie woke, they began forcing warm beverages down his throat. In four hours, he said he was back to normal.

“That was a lesson in what we did right,” Charlie says now. “The fact that I could push a swim that far and have a team in place that could make the right decision and stop me at the point when I couldn’t go any further, that’s a success story.”

Tomorrow, a repeat of that tale would mean failure. But this time, Charlie has one major asset in his corner: He’s wearing a wet suit. For a man who constantly seeks the extreme, the decision wasn’t easy. But Charlie’s 5-foot-7, 145-pound frame won’t keep his body warm in the icy channel water. And gaining enough weight to provide natural insulation would make the imminent bike ride a grueling nightmare. So Charlie decided to wear the suit. It’s a decision the king of the channel critiques with one word: cheating.

“Why not just get into a boat and sail across?” Kevin Murphy asks. “It’s like if I went in a triathlon and said, ‘Well, I can’t run real well, so is it all right if I wear roller skates?’ Or, ‘I’m not real good at cycling. Can I use my motorbike?’ They would say no way because it makes it easier to finish. He’s doing the same thing with that wet suit.”

When told later of Murphy’s comments, Charlie says very little. But in a couple of days, while having dinner with Cate at an Indian restaurant, he reveals

…just how much it bothered him.

Before visitingMount Mitchell, the highest point in North Carolina, Charlie, Cate and James stop for lunch. Dad encourages James to finish his sandwich so he has energy to make it to the top.

“And so nobody dies,” the 3-year-old responds.

The path from the parking lot to the observatory atop the 6,684-foot mountain is paved asphalt. It’s a simple walk. Charlie insists nobody will die. But like any curious, chatty toddler, James isn’t finished.

“We need oxygen?” he asks.

“No,” Charlie answers, “this isn’t that big.”

“Ropes?” James asks. “I don’t want to fall.”

“You don’t need ropes, James,” Charlie tells his son.

“We need oxygen?” James asks.

Six months ago, in the middle of the World Tri, Charlie said he hoped James would not follow in his footsteps. But now that he’s returned home, Charlie wants to take his son to the five highest points in the United States, maybe even before James is 10.

“If he’s ready, if he has the desire, I’d love for him to experience that feeling,” Charlie says. “I’ve gotten so much out of seeing the world. I want him to have that.”

Cate, who loves to travel, shares Charlie’s sentiments. To a point.

“Hiking to Everest base camp is incredible, and I want him to do that,” she says. “We will take him someday. But we go to base camp, we look at the mountain, say ‘Hey, isn’t that cool?’ and then we come home. You don’t need to climb over that crevasse.”

Charlie notes that James already is learning to swim. He bikes around a circular track near his grandparents’ home in Charlotte. And he runs everywhere. When Charlie jokes at dinner one night that the boy might be ready for a World Tri, nobody laughs.

“They were all pretty pissed about that,” he says.

Two weeks after returning to the U.S., Charlie combs his hair, wipes the dust off his briefcase and heads out the door. But something isn’t right. It’s the suit. He hasn’t formally buttoned up in more than a year and a half. But today he’s heading back to the law firm. He needs the money. There are loans to pay, preschool tuition to save for and health insurance to secure.

His lack of comfort in the situation is yet another example of the constant tension between his two professional lives -- Charlie the adventurer vs. Charlie the lawyer. It’s the reason he had that breakdown on Everest and made that emotional phone call to Cate -- whom did she marry, the lawyer or the explorer? The answer, essentially, was Charlie. In an email she sent her husband after he reached the summit, Cate’s answers were simple. She wants to continue to live in Charlotte and pursue her writing career. She wants to have another baby. And she wants Charlie to find a lifestyle in which he can be happy and present with his family while happy and inspired by his career. The expensive materialistic nonsense doesn’t matter.

“She needs her husband. She needs her family. She doesn’t need a goddamn ring,” Charlie says.

As Charlie read the email, he thought back to that $25,000 ring he picked out the day before he left.

“That’s Charlie the lawyer,” he says. “I thought that if I died, that would be the biggest regret in my life is never getting Catie an engagement ring. And then I almost died and realized how f---ed up and backwards that was. It wasn’t what mattered at all. What matters is my physical presence. She needs her husband. She needs her family. She doesn’t need a goddamn ring.”

When Charlie arrives at the office for his first day back, he’s told there isn’t work for him. The firm has hired new attorneys and frankly didn’t expect him back. Especially this soon. Charlie takes it as a sign, and the two sides agree to meet again after the summer. But more than likely this is the last day for Charlie Wittmack, attorney at law. Sure, he owes $100,000 in bank loans and his $60,000 life savings has vanished, but he now says he would have spent “10 times” that to have the same experience.

“I just know I have to try,” Charlie says.

“When I look down the road 10 or 20 years, that’s the regret,” he says. “That I didn’t continue to chase that feeling. I know if I practice law I’ll definitely never find it again. So I think it’s better to chase it. I don’t know what it is. And I don’t know how we’re going to do it. I just know I have to try.”

For now, there are plans to write and speak about his experiences on the World Tri. But anyone who knows Charlie knows that will placate him for only so long. After all, this is a man who, less than 24 hours after completing his 12-hour swim of the English Channel and complaining he would never do something so miserable again, told Cate the exact opposite.

“I think I could put on a few pounds and come back here and do it without the wet suit,” he said that night.

No matter how hard he tries, he can’t help himself. It’s in his DNA. On Everest, Charlie told Brian that he planned to stop climbing and, like famed New Zealander Russell Bryce, would start a career planning and managing Everest climbs for others. Brian laughed.

“The fire always comes back,” Brian says of Charlie.

“No way he stays at base camp,” Brian said later. “He’s got that fire, that addiction. You can put a huge bucket of wet water on it, but it never goes away. The fire always comes back.”

Cate knows this. He might not be the same man she met in in that D.C. law firm a decade ago, but he’s the man she married. Charlie can promise this or that, he can profess a newfound commitment to being there for his family, but she knows the addiction that breathes inside him. She knows there will be a day in the not-too-distant future when Charlie walks in the house and begins a sentence with, “I have an idea.”

“I expect it,” she says. “This year, I spent a lot of time thinking how this is it. Forget it. I’m never going to let him do anything like this again. It’s the stupidest thing he’s ever thought of. I can’t believe I went along with this. But now that we’re through the process, if he feels he has opportunities to do other types of adventure travel or expeditions, I want to support that. But there will be parameters that very clearly protect our family and his safety.”

“I need to find the next thing,” Charlie says.

The day Charlie arrived in Charlotte, he and Cate agreed they wouldn’t make any major decisions for six months. They will continue to live with her parents in North Carolina, where James is enrolled in school this fall. But a few days later visiting family and friends back in Iowa, Charlie’s bug is back.

“I can’t do it,” he says. “I’ve only been in Des Moines for 24 hours and I’m freaking out. I need to find the next thing.”

And that’s when the ideas start flowing. He talks about heading to Everest next year and completing the run from Calcutta that he quit. He tells the story of driving over the Mississippi River in December and fantasizing about swimming or kayaking the entire 2,320-mile waterway. He mentions the Iditasport Extreme, a 350-mile walk/run/ski/snowshoe/bicycle race that follows part of the path of the famed Iditarod dogsled race.

“I just ordered the bike,” he says.

Then he starts talking about a mini World Tri, an American “sprint” version.

“What are the biggest events in the U.S.?” he asks. “The biggest swim is the Manhattan Island swim. And the biggest run is the Badwater Ultramarathon, from the bottom of Death Valley to the top of Mount Whitney, 135 miles. If you connected the two of them with a cross-America bike ride …”

Charlie pauses. He lets his brain further absorb the idea that just came out of his mouth. He smiles.

“And I think the dates line up,” he says.

A few weeks later, Charlie’s story takes one final twist. And of course it’s yet another test of his never-ending quest to find balance between the two Charlies -- dangerous and addictive vs. stable and traditional.

“Cate’s pregnant,” Charlie says.

The baby is due in February. Three months later is the beginning of the next Everest season. So there’s no way Charlie will be heading back to the Himalayas, right?

“It’s 50-50.”