Congratulations to Jennifer Figge. She swam across the Atlantic form the Cape Verde Islands to Trinidad in 24 days. Way to go, girl!
Something’s not right with this story. She would have to have swum almost 100 miles a day. NO WAY!
i was reading about her and this swim, so very impressive!
Something’s not right cuz it’s not entirely true. They won’t say how far she actually swam (prob. because they have no idea)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/jennifer-figge-atlantic-swim
I read about that yesterday at breakfast. It was a wonderful story. She characterized the ocean as such as sensational environment. She painted a picture of a benign and benevolent wilderness. I like that imagery, and the idea that this was a dream she held for many years until she finally realized it. Impressive. Wonderful story.
“Her journey comes a decade after French swimmer Benoit Lecomte made the first known solo trans-Atlantic swim, covering nearly 4,000 miles from Massachusetts to France in 73 days. No woman on record has made the crossing.”
If my math is correct, for a person to swim 4,000 miles in 73 days, the person would have to cover 55 miles per day. If you say someone “could” go and swim for 20 hours and sleep only 4 every day (you can see where this is going). The only way you can cover this distance would by swimming 1:15/100’s (for 20 hours every day, for 73 days) in the Atlantic.
I don’t know about the currents between MA and France, but the whole things sounds way too much for a human being.
I think the distance was less than 4000 as her entry point was Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa - but what a fantastic achievement.
I haven’t read this story but I have been following her on facebook…
regardless of the actual distance this is pretty damn impressive. Especially some of the weather she had to go through. They had spent a ton of money and built her a special shark proof cage (minus top) that would be attached to the boat and surround her for the trip.The weather damaged the boat and prevented the use of the cage.
Google maps has it at 4,096km, or about 2,500 miles. For 73 days that’s an average of 35 miles/day. Still pretty hard to believe those numbers
Do the numbers make sense if you consider they’re using things like monofins or similar things? One article I found briefly mentioned that a guy who swam across the Atlantic had fins in his bag o’ tricks.
Something’s not right cuz it’s not entirely true. They won’t say how far she actually swam (prob. because they have no idea)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/…-figge-atlantic-swim
~700 miles. Pardon the Interruption did a spot on her tonite.
More like 250 miles total according to this report.
I’ve heard the headline should really read … Shark Cage Towed Across Atlantic Ocean, Woman Occasionally Swims in it.
You got that right. Tim
AP posted a correction to the story here:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gz5onO54L7F9F4caYnDSM9VgYHyAD9693UO82.
From the second I heard this story, I knew it was a croc of shit. First of all, the numbers never matched up, even the lowest ones, and secondly, there are strict rules for open water swims, and she would have broken every one of them…Just a publicity stunt, that the papers didn['t bother to check out. I mean, if any real swimmer on those papers saw that story, they would have called bullshit right away… Even if she got in and swam everyday, what is the boat doing that she is sleeping and eating on doing during that time??? I’ll tell you what, motoring or sailing with the current towards the shore…By her standards, I have swam the pacific to Hawaii, or even Japan…Started out in CA, and ended up in Hawaii, of course a short plane ride inbetween…
Glad this finally got myth busted, hope she catches some shit for it…
AP posted a correction to the story here:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gz5onO54L7F9F4caYnDSM9VgYHyAD9693UO82
ahahahah
hahahahahahahah
.
A couple of things from yahoo sports:
The real issue stemmed from the fact that swimming 2,100 miles in 25 days is impossible. (Some newspapers picked up on this.) It’s infinitely more impossible when somebody only spends 21 minutes swimming during one of those 25 days. Michael Phelps swimming his *fastest *would take about 20 days to cover that distance. And that’s his fastest pace, sustained for three weeks, without ever stopping. Impossible.
Yet, somehow, the AP ran the story even though a few seconds of thought and a pocket calculator was enough to disprove it. They ran a correction yesterday that read, in part:
Figge swam only a fraction of the 2,100-mile journey. The rest of the time, she rested on her crew’s westward-sailing catamaran. Her spokesman that her total swimming distance has not been calculated yet, but that due to ocean hazards including inclement weather, he estimates she swam about 250 miles.
Swimming 250 miles is nothing to scoff at; but it’s not 2,100. To go back to the running-across-America analogy, this would be like driving cross country with a friend, and getting out of the car every ten miles to run one mile for the entire trip. That’d be an impressive feat, but nobody would ever confuse it with running across the United States.
In an interview yesterday with the AP, **Figge avoids discussing the validity of her swim and instead says she “never intended to swim the Atlantic.” That may be so, but she didn’t do much to prevent most American news outlets from reporting that she did. **
A bit OT but this horse has been beaten…
Does anyone know the longest anyone has swum continually? By continually, I am not necessarily referring to the official rules for swims like the English Channel (e.g. no wet suit) but more along the lines of rules similar to USAT (i.e. you can wear a wet suit but no fins, you can hang onto a boat but can’t use it to advance your progress, etc).
Swimming 250 miles is nothing to scoff at; \
About all I will give her, is that she was in the water when 250 miles on a GPS were covered… I bet that distance includes going with currents, using the shark cage’s current, and holding on, the the cage while in the water…This whole thing is utter bullshit, and is the equilevant of taking a taxi ride during Ironman, to the last few miles of the run…(Which has happened, and the guy took 10th place)…