33-year-old Karolina Szczepaniak, a Polish 2008 and 2012 Olympic swimmer, fought valiantly for reportedly 60 hours, swimming 140 km in the Baltic Sea from her native Poland to the Swedish island of Öland in a charity swim to raise money for prosthetics for three children born without arms, Emilka Piłat, Joasia Jaszczołt, and Daniel Cebula.
The water started at 21°C near the Polish shore and was gradually dropping to 16°C close to Sweden, but Szczepniak kept swimming until her stroke count fell below 50 spm, aided by her illuminated navigation lines in the darkness of the night.
Her swim was livecast on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/live/XeiE299Pb4w.
Her charity page is here [https://pomagam.pl/kraulem-przez-baltyk].
The Last 10 Hours
During the last 10 hours of her 60-hour swim, Szczepaniak were painfully slow and it sounded like she was crying during her live webcast. For more information on her course tracker, visit here courtesy of Evan Morrison of the Marathon Swimmers Federation.
Similarly on the opposite side of the European continent, the swim tracker above captures the last 10 hours of Noam Yaron’s swim in which he progressed only 2 kilometers. The last part of the tracker shows where Yaron was finally placed in his escort boat and sped off to shore. For more information on Yaron’s course tracker, visit here courtesy of Evan Morrison of Marathon Swimmers Federation.
Both Yaron and Szczepaniak were seeking a Guinness World Record for the Longest Wetsuit Swim.
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