For roughly six hours the tide will take the swimmer ‘up’ the Channel, and then as the tide changes direction, the following six hours will take the swimmer ‘down’ the Channel. This up and down movement of the water is relentless and unavoidable.
When traversing the English Channel, the boat pilot pays respect to the aformentioned tides when heading for France, which means the tidal affect will be perpendicular to the direction of the swimmer. It is incredibly rare for a swimmer to ever be swimming with or against the tide.
The moon’s position relative to the earth and sun changes, creating different strengths of tide. The smaller tides are called neap tides, and the bigger ones are spring tides. Historically, swimmers have made their attempts on neap tides, as the belief is that this reduces the effect of wind against tide. It also reduces the risk of the swimmer missing the land target of Cap Gris Nez in France.
So she was swimming for roughly 18 hours? I’m impressed and terrified.
Savage feat of endurance. I wonder how many calories that burns.
At high intensity about 14k.
Damn, you can cross the English Channel on roughly 28 Belgian waffles?
Depends on how well you lash them together. They’re bound to get soggy though.
I have no source but I recall seeing a before and after picture. The before was fat. The after was skinny.
Tide comes in, tide goes out. You can’t explain that.
…when you remember that the moon influences Earthly rainfall…
Achshually… no I can’t. Something about the moon idk I’m not a sciontwist.
The curious thing is that from her perspective, she was only swimming straight the whole time, and only expending energy going straight. It was the ‘gifted’ energy of the tide that caused the oscillation (from our perspective).
Just struck me as interesting to think that from her point of view she was swimming as straight and as efficiently as was possible.
An aquadesic line, if you will
Because he’s swimming the English Channel and not the English Strait, duh.
They probably did swim “straight” but it took them a really long time and this was the tidal flow during her swim, ergo they went straight but the water they were in moved back and forth.
Correct
Because it’s not called “English Strait”
Her sexual orientation has no effect on swimming skill, sir!
when i was young and stupid i used to swim to an island only 1 Km from the beach (-11.80574, -77.18933), and had to stop to recheck my direction, often i was way off course. the English channel is going to be way harder, better have a good compass, or be mindful of the time of the day and the position of the sun
When I was young (also stupid) we were on holiday at Punta Verudela, Pula, (44.8348180, 13.8373873) and one day, that island in the distance (44.8312627, 13.8398307) looked too cool to not swim too it, and me, my dad and my brother decided to try and make it there. It looked pretty close, but I never swam so long in my life. Because we took our sweet time and had a pretty chill tempo, after about an hour, we made it! on our side it was all sheer and sharp cliffs though, so although the island was still cool and enticing, we had no idea if it was even possible to get up there somewhere, or how long it would take to swim around. Playing it safe, we swam back in about the same tempo and took another hour of relaxed swimming. Probably helped that the Mediterranean sea isn’t as tidally active. Checking it now, the swimming distance seems around 440m (we approximated 1Km back then :) ) I wasn’t scared at any point and just having fun, but thinking back now, so many things could have gone wrong. I think I would be a lot more afraid to try that again, without knowing what I’m getting myself into.
Support boat
support boat sucks then
These flat earthers are getting out of hand. The shortest path is this line because the earth is curved.
If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be 1 curve instead of zigzagging? You’re forgetting the ocean current.
I was joking since it’s a meme. Its because of tides. Someone posted her response below.
