A Maidenhead resident has embarked on a paddleboard fundraising challenge as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of ankle leashes.

In August 2020, Sam Foyle lost his best friend Simon Flynn at the age of 42 in a paddleboarding tragedy in Cornwall, after his board got stuck around a mooring post and he became trapped due to his ankle leash.

“I was with him and his girlfriend and my family down on Rock Estuary,” Mr Foyle said.

“He went out on my paddleboard with his girlfriend.

“I helped them set off and I put my ankle leash on him, which is a safe thing to do, so that if he fell off his board, he wouldn’t move away from his board.

“But what happened was, when he was paddleboarding, the water was moving... and he fell off the board by a mooring of a boat.”

The board got stuck around the mooring post and he was trapped because the water was ‘pushing him away from his ankle and he wasn’t able to lift his body up out of the water’, Mr Foyle said.

“By the time people were able to get to him he had drowned,” he added.

“It was a really horrific, tragic situation.”

Following Simon’s death, Mr Foyle did ‘lots of research’ to try to understand how it happened.

The 49-year-old found an ankle leash can be ‘very dangerous’ in moving water with potential obstacles for paddleboarders.

During his research, Mr Foyle learned about quick-release waist leashes, which can be used as an alternative to the more commonly-used ankle leashes.

Used by professionals such as white water paddleboarders, the waist leashes allow an individual to pull a toggle to quickly release the paddleboard if it gets trapped around an obstacle.

“But that wasn’t being sold with paddleboards to the mass market,” he said.

Mr Foyle started a campaign to promote quick release waist leashes in the industry ‘and a number of the paddleboard companies then started selling these waist leashes’.

He and fellow campaigners also held an event at Parliament in March 2021 and were supported by the then Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk.

Six years on from Simon’s death, Mr Foyle still believes more needs to be done and has started a fundraising challenge, paddleboarding the River Thames from Lechlade in the Cotswolds to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

He kicked off his challenge yesterday (Thursday) and will be coming through Maidenhead as part of it.

Mr Foyle will have supporters cheering him on at different points throughout and at the finish line, and he will be joined by Stewart McLean, who lost his wife in similar circumstances.

Mr McLean will paddle with Mr Foyle for the day from Maidenhead, through Windsor to Wraysbury.

Simon was a teacher and Mr Foyle has so far raised more than £24,200 on his JustGiving page for The Simon Flynn Educational Foundation.

He said the total was ‘phenomenal’ and extended a ‘huge thank you’ to supporters.

“It’s to prevent another death and it’s been frustrating to see that there have been other deaths since Simon. So, it shows the campaign’s got to continue raising the awareness of wearing waist quick release belts.

“People need to not forget about it and this could happen again, and we need to make sure the message is out there that there is still a risk and a danger and it needs pushing,” Mr Foyle added.

To view the JustGiving page at: https://www.justgiving.com/page/sam-foyle-5?utm_medium=FA&utm_source=WA#sharePage