The goals of the swim are a simple point to point swim directly across the maelstrom, it has to be directly across rather than near or around. We will use the Onaruto Bridge as our guiding line and the shortest point across the maelstrom. Whilst the shortest point makes for the least distance it is also the area where the currents are most concentrated and dangerous (what a purist would call the eye of the maelstrom). The goal isn’t to swim in the whirlpool’s that form as this would likely kill us (the maelstrom is made up of countless whirlpools, eddies & vortexes which form and reform in various degrees of severity related to tide timings) but rather to make it across the maelstrom whilst it is in it’s least ferocious state. This is the critical part of the swim and the key to a maelstrom crossing, working out the timing window at the lowest ebb of the maelstrom. The Corryvreckan has been crossed over 200 times has a well established and known window but the challenge with an un-swum maelstrom is working this out. For example for the Saltstraumen in Norway, alongside our Ship Captain Knut, we calculated that the weakest point of the maelstrom was at 6.28pm every day, this weakest ebb lastest for 12 minutes before the maelstrom picked up again and would become life-threatening. Even within that safe timeframe, the currents are very strong and you can see small whirlpools as you swim,  the distance was only 300m across but because of the currents, the swim took us 10.40 mins, a slim margin of error.

Without a local ship captains knowledge and understanding of the precise timings of the Naruto tide it’s difficult to say whether we will swim from east to west or west to east, whether we will aim for a relatively straight line or curve/S shape and what timing window we will have. The language barrier amplifies these precise measurements but I am confident that if the Moskstraumen, Saltstraumen and Corryvreckan can be swum, then so can Naruto.