Indonesian Digital News Archive

British television personality and adventurer Ben Fogel has announced his plans to swim across the Atlantic Ocean and he intends to do it in record time. Fogel, who has also visited the South Pole and spent a year as a castaway on a Scottish island as part of a reality television show, says that he hopes to make the 3000 mile (4828km) journey in just 100 days.

The epic swim isn't scheduled to begin until next year, and Bogel has only now started to train in open water. But sometime in 2013 he intends to set out from the U.S. and continue swimming until he reaches cornwall in the U.K. In order to cover that distance in his target time, he'll need to average about 30 miles (48km) per day. He estimates he may need to spend as much as 12 hours per day in the water.

To date, only one other person is credited with swimming across the Atlantic. That was Benoit Lecomte who accomplished that feat back in 1998. There are some questions about the legitimacy of Lecomte's claims however as he his efforts were not strictly tracked by GPS. He did finish the swim in 73 days and went 3716 miles (5980km) in the process. He is also planning on swimming across the Pacific as well.

Also ramping up his efforts to swim the Atlantic is Dan Martin, who will attempt it as part of his Global Triathlon. He is expecting his crossing of the ocean to take upwards of six months and he'll be starting in the Hudson River and ending somewhere along the coast of France. He is currently in the States and preparing to begin his massive undertaking, which will also see him cycling and running around the world. Logistics have delayed the start, but he hopes to be underway very shortly.

Sometimes rowing an ocean isn't enough I guess, and you just have to jump in an start swimming. More power to these guys. I can't even imagine the effort required to swim these distances day in and day out.

Thanks To Julian Monroe Fisher for the tips on Ben's swim!

The Olympic Atlantic Row (OAR) project was scheduled to get underway this weekend, but the departure date is a bit up in the air at the moment thanks to dodgy weather. As you may recall from a previous post in March, OAR will send ocean rowers Roz Savage and Andrew Morris on a 60 day, 2587 mile (4163km) odyssey across the North Atlantic and is scheduled to culminate in London in time for the start of the Summer Olympic Games.

Roz and Andrew are currently in Newfoundland preparing for the start of their journey and keeping a close eye on the weather. It currently appears unlikely that they'll be able to start this weekend but they are hopeful for a departure sometime early next week. When they do set out they'll be in the newly overhauled boat the Bojangles, which was previously used on a 4350 mile (7000km) Pacific Ocean crossing.

Neither Roz nor Andrew are strangers to ocean rowing. Andrew rowed across the Atlantic with his friend Mick Dawson a few years back and readers of this blog are well aware of Roz's resume, which includes solo crossings of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. They'll both need to draw on that extensive experience in the North Atlantic as it will present some unique challenges of its own, not the least of which is the unpredictable, and sometimes ferocious, weather.

I'll keep an eye on the team's progress. Hopefully they'll be able to launch soon and start their voyage to London. Good luck to both Andrew and Roz. Enjoy the journey!