Brazilian swimmer Mayra Santos (@mayrasantosswimmer) pioneered yet another marathon swim among the islands of Portugal’s Madeira Islands.
It was a tough 60 km two-way crossing between Santa Cruz and Deserta Grande that she completed in 20 hours 53 minutes. It was a fairly steady swim as her first leg was 9 hours 55 minutes and her second leg 10 hours 57 minutes. Deserta Grande Island is the main island of the Desertas Islands archipelago, a small chain of three islands in the Portuguese Madeira Islands archipelago, off the western coast of North Africa.
Santos said before her swim, “It is an incredible opportunity to raise awareness for the preservation of our oceans and marine life, especially the rare monk seal that finds sanctuary in Deserta Grande and help me in my preparation to swim the longest distance swimming in the ocean.“
After her swim, she described her marathon swim effort, “We started the race in Santa Cruz beach at midnight, as planned. The first 10 hours, going on the direction of Desertas, it went rather smooth – it was almost a straight line.
After touching land on Desertas, the conditions of the sea and wind took a turn to the worse coming back to Madeira Island, making it much harder on me to keep up with same rhythm. The current and wind were against the direction I wanted to go and I had to push a lot harder to overcome this.
We can see from the tracker that the trajectory was not a straight line on the way back, but a double arch. The inflection point was probably the hardest part, as I was being dragged by the current at a higher velocity than I could compensate for. This was the point where João Duarte, my husband and coach, gave me some directions and some hard truths, letting me know that if I didn’t pick up the rhythm, they would pull me out of the water, much like the second lap in Manhattan, when I found the worst current I had ever seen.
This is the point where I went deep inside and started to visualize the Santa Cruz beach and pier. I threw up all of the last feeding at that time, as my stomach was aching, but I found the last energy deep inside of me, and I knew then, that finishing this was the only thing that mattered at that point.
Slowly, I started picking up the rhythm, using all that I had left, and then some more that I didn’t know was there. But, sure enough I started seeing land getting close, then the beach, then the pier, then the people, and I knew right there, that I was going to finish with a bang.
Finishing was the best feeling ever, especially with all the people that were there waiting for me. The best feeling ever, although the pain was almost unbearable, the joy and happiness was so overwhelming. I cried, I laughed, I felt it, I lived it.
Her GPS tracker is posted here.
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