Go Overboard: Our Charity of Choice and the Swim That Started It All

Where It Began

In 2014, a group of nine swimmers entered the water between Albania and Corfu to attempt something that had not been done as a charity event before: a 3km open-water crossing of the channel that separates the two coastlines. Among them was Marcus Gondolo-Gordon, who would later found Pelagos Private Office. The swim raised funds for the Ionian Environment Foundation, and the experience of doing something physically demanding and genuinely purposeful in those particular waters left its mark.

The event was founded by Nick Cookson and Nick Lemis, two UK-based friends with long family ties to Corfu. They called it Albania Overboard. It was modest in scale and ambitious in spirit, and it worked. People came back the following year. Then more people came. Then their friends came.

What Go Overboard Has Become

By 2024, ten years after that first crossing, the same event sold out with over 100 participants from 19 countries. It was covered by the BBC. It raised €50,000 in a single year, surpassed 200% of its JustGiving fundraising target, and drew 468 individual contributors. In 2025, 100 places sold out in under a week. The charity has since rebranded as Go Overboard, reflecting its ambition to take the swim model beyond the Corfu Channel to new locations and a global audience.

Over 11 years and seven swims, Go Overboard has raised more than €200,000 for the Ionian Environment Foundation and conservation projects operating across the Ionian Islands. Those funds have supported monk seal protection, the Ionian Dolphin Project, Posidonia seagrass conservation, sustainable sailing initiatives and ecological education in remote island communities. Ninety-two per cent of the charity's growth over the past three years has come without paid advertising, purely through people sharing an experience worth sharing.

The Albania to Corfu Swim

The flagship event remains the original: a 3km open-water crossing from Albania to Corfu, fully supported, open to swimmers of all abilities. That last point matters. This is not an elite endurance event. It is a challenge that is genuinely accessible, genuinely meaningful, and genuinely enjoyable in the way that difficult things done together tend to be.

The channel itself is extraordinary. Those who have made the crossing describe the quality of the water, the visibility of the Albanian coastline receding behind you and the Corfu hills growing closer, the moment the green of the island becomes detail rather than impression. For anyone connected to the Ionian, it is hard to think of a more direct way to act in its defence than to physically cross it and raise money for the institutions that protect it.

The Global Swim Challenge

In 2026, Go Overboard launched its Global Swim Challenge: a six-month open event in which participants swim 3km anywhere in the world, ocean, lake or pool, and contribute to a shared fundraising effort for marine conservation. It is the logical extension of the original idea. The physical challenge and the communal spirit remain; the geography becomes optional. If you cannot get to Corfu, you can still be part of it.

Why Pelagos Supports Go Overboard

The connection between Pelagos Private Office and Go Overboard is not a corporate alignment. It is personal. Marcus swam in the first event. The waters that Go Overboard works to protect are the same waters that Pelagos clients swim in from their villas in Corfu and Paxos, anchor in on their yachts, and that their children grow up in. The Ionian Environment Foundation projects that Go Overboard funds are directly relevant to the quality and sustainability of the places where Pelagos operates.

There is also something about the way Go Overboard works that sits naturally alongside what Pelagos tries to do. It is independent, personal and rooted in genuine affection for a specific place. It has grown because the experience it offers is worth having and the cause it serves is worth supporting. Those are values Pelagos recognises.

We are proud to call Go Overboard our charity of choice. We encourage our clients, our partners and anyone who has found their way to this page to look at what they are doing, to consider taking part, and to support them if you are able.