Courtesy of Paul Lecomte, Pacific Ocean.
After the first 29 days of The Swim by Ben Lecomte, he has swum 469 nautical miles (869 km) off the coast of Japan.
His planned 8,721 km transoceanic stage swim across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to California is nearly 10% finished after one month on the Pacific Ocean.
Via satellite telephone, crew chief Paul Lecomte reported that marine life has been abundant: pods of whales, dolphins and turtles as well as jellyfish and sharks have been encountered on the swim.
The distance swum has been recorded while getting back to the precise location of the previous day’s last GPS point has occupied much of their time and efforts to date:
June 5th – 10.08 nautical miles
June 6th – 17.12 nautical miles
June 7th – 0 nautical miles
June 8th – 0 nautical miles
June 9th – 0 nautical miles
June 10th – 0 nautical miles
June 11th – 0 nautical miles
June 12th – 0 nautical miles
June 13th – 0 nautical miles
June 14th – 4.14 nautical miles
June 15th – 5.56 nautical miles
June 16th – 0 nautical miles
June 17th – 7.09 nautical miles
June 18th – 5.53 nautical miles
June 19th – 3.84 nautical miles
June 20th – 0.95 nautical miles
June 21st – 1.01 nautical miles
June 22nd – 13.27 nautical miles
June 23rd – 18.87 nautical miles
June 24th – 24.78 nautical miles
June 25th – 16.81 nautical miles
June 26th – 32.79 nautical miles
June 27th – 0 nautical miles
June 28th – 0 nautical miles
June 29th – 23.21 nautical miles
June 30th – 20.62 nautical miles
July 1st – 25.75 nautical miles
July 2nd – 28.33 nautical miles
July 3rd – 43.6 nautical miles
July 4th – 5.37 nautical miles
July 5th – 0 nautical miles
July 6th – 4.82 nautical miles
July 7th – 26.84 nautical miles
July 8th – 21.3 nautical miles
July 9th – 21.57 nautical miles
July 10th – 19.17 nautical miles
July 11th – 24.09 nautical miles
July 12th – 16.28 nautical miles
July 13th – 26.21 nautical miles
July 14th – 1.74 nautical miles
July 15th – 23.26 nautical miles
July 16th – 27.49 nautical miles
On July 3rd, Lecomte was able to travel the furthest of any single day, 43.6 nautical miles (80.7 km riding the Kuroshio Current). He described the day as follows, “The high-pressure system was still with us, bringing with it great weather conditions for the day. Within the first hour I was in the water, Lauren [Horner] and Maks [Romeijn] screamed, ‘Ben, there is a shark!’
I very quickly lifted up my head out of the water and looked into the direction they were pointed. I couldn’t see anything. Maks told me it just past us about 50 meters behind us and kept on its course. They could see its fins and approximated its size to 2.5 meters, a good size.
We stayed a couple of minutes at the same location and I tried to look below me for any sign of it, but I didn’t see anything, so I decided on resuming swimming. At hour 4, I started to experience some pain in my right ankle and removed my fins for a couple of hours to give them a rest. During those hours Lauren joined me for 2 hours. After that, I put my fins back on and didn’t feel any more pain.
I swam almost until the sunset, our skipper Yoav [Nevo] asked us to stop to make sure we had enough light to come back on Seeker and secure the RHIB in place.
Today the water was the warmest it had ever been.”
For more details, visit benlecomte.com. The daily logbook is posted here.
Copyright © 2008-2018 by World Open Water Swimming Association