fossilesqueWater Snek
BennyIncIs it the tides?
Sure looks like it to me
Can’t explain that
Like that block said to Caesar. Beware the tides of march.
Should have just gone in April.
Wait, I'm dumb. Is it water currents or map projection, or what?
InternetCitizen2Perhaps even losing orientation
Unless they’re a heaving idiot looking to be arrested and sectioned under the mental health act, they swim next to a support boat, who give them directions and are in communication with other vessels. The Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world.
I think the path would be more erratic if that was the case
It’s just really hard to follow google maps navigation when there’s no roads and waves.
No, there were probably waves.
+1 for pedantry.
I’ve edited my comment to add an Oxford comma, because I know everyone likes those.
teftThat's not an Oxford comma. Oxford commas (also known as serial commas) are for lists that contain more than three terms.
“waves and no road”
Now it’s worse.
“Waves and no road” is what you’re looking for.
Cat_Daddy [any, any]Could also be currents from tides. This trip would have taken hours, and the tides around great britain are weird.
It’s the tidal current throwing the swimmer around. They swam along the same heading the entire time.
I’d like to know what map projection bends a straight line into that
I said I was dumb.
Me too, but now I want that wavy map projection
AdmetusBeing parabolic, it looks like some significant drift current.
JohnnyCanuckI think you mean “sinusoidal”.
Don’t say that, you have so much to live for.
Nah don’t worry, he’s just being hyperbolic
Not to get off too far on this tangent, but I hope OP comes back and cosines your statement.
For roughly six hours the tide will take the swimmer ‘up’ the Channel, and then as the tide changes direction, the following six hours will take the swimmer ‘down’ the Channel. This up and down movement of the water is relentless and unavoidable.
When traversing the English Channel, the boat pilot pays respect to the aformentioned tides when heading for France, which means the tidal affect will be perpendicular to the direction of the swimmer. It is incredibly rare for a swimmer to ever be swimming with or against the tide.
The moon’s position relative to the earth and sun changes, creating different strengths of tide. The smaller tides are called neap tides, and the bigger ones are spring tides. Historically, swimmers have made their attempts on neap tides, as the belief is that this reduces the effect of wind against tide. It also reduces the risk of the swimmer missing the land target of Cap Gris Nez in France.
So she was swimming for roughly 18 hours? I’m impressed and terrified.
khannieSavage feat of endurance. I wonder how many calories that burns.
All of them
atomicorangeAt high intensity about 14k.
Damn, you can cross the English Channel on roughly 28 Belgian waffles?
Depends on how well you lash them together.
No man is an island, but if you lash enough dead bodies together, they make a pretty good raft.
I have no source but I recall seeing a before and after picture. The before was fat. The after was skinny.
A quick google shows people estimating 500-750 kcal/hour when swimming the English Channel. And another big range, but it looks like ~15 hours is a decent estimate for a one-way crossing, so that’s ~7,000-11,000 kcal, which assuming 3500kcal/lb of fat, that’s 2-3 lbs. This is all ignoring the fact that most of the energy burned is actually glycogen and food consumed during the swim, not fat reserves.
29 hours and 4 minutes actually.
mercHere’s another question: how far did she swim?
Do you count the distance her body travelled relative to the land? Or do you only count the distance she travelled relative to the water, and it was the water that was moving.
If you count the distance relative to the land, she’ll have been measured to have travelled much farther and with a much faster average speed.
Her sexual orientation has no effect on swimming skill, sir!
Because he’s swimming the English Channel and not the English Strait, duh.
when i was young and stupid i used to swim to an island only 1 Km from the beach (-11.80574, -77.18933), and had to stop to recheck my direction, often i was way off course. the English channel is going to be way harder, better have a good compass, or be mindful of the time of the day and the position of the sun
Support boat
support boat sucks then
She went straight, the tide carried her back and forth as mentioned in other comments
my comment was about navigation, the reply said “support boat”, which can only be interpreted as it supplied navigation, but it either didn’t, so the reply was wrong, or sucked at it
I was excited that you provider the coords. Thanks!
When I was young (also stupid) we were on holiday at Punta Verudela, Pula, (44.8348180, 13.8373873) and one day, that island in the distance (44.8312627, 13.8398307) looked too cool to not swim too it, and me, my dad and my brother decided to try and make it there. It looked pretty close, but I never swam so long in my life. Because we took our sweet time and had a pretty chill tempo, after about an hour, we made it! on our side it was all sheer and sharp cliffs though, so although the island was still cool and enticing, we had no idea if it was even possible to get up there somewhere, or how long it would take to swim around. Playing it safe, we swam back in about the same tempo and took another hour of relaxed swimming. Probably helped that the Mediterranean sea isn’t as tidally active. Checking it now, the swimming distance seems around 440m (we approximated 1Km back then :) ) I wasn’t scared at any point and just having fun, but thinking back now, so many things could have gone wrong. I think I would be a lot more afraid to try that again now, without knowing what I’m getting myself into.
ZagorathI fucking hate the way Facebook changed how the site works so that clicking on an image no longer puts it in your browser history. Earlier today I saw a post where the swimmer whose track was shown in this specific image responded to the comments. It was actually quite an amusing interaction and I wish I could go back and share it here.
But also: the swimmer was a she, not a he.
edit:
wait I found it:
Sophie’s link: sophie-adaptive-athlete.com/…/2023-channel-swim-i…
Text transcriptionA series of Facebook comments. Claire Fletcher: He didn’t make it. Is he ok or he still swimming? [attached is a close-up of the path, showing that it ends some distance away from the coastline] Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete: Claire Fletcher I did make it, the GPS transponder was on my pilot boat but the beach was too shallow for it to come in close enough so instead my pilot launched the small RIB boat to accompany me to shore 🙂 Melissa Dupree Haws: Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete wow! The real swimmer here! I’m so amazed at this feat of athleticism. Claire Fletcher: Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete omg the actual swimmer is here AND a she not a he! That’s amazing! What made you want to do it? Was it a personal goal or for charity? Full respect to you by the way, well done!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Robert Mothersole: Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete so while you’re here, if you dont mind me asking…Why didn’t you go straight ? Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete: Robert Mothersole I did, in the English Channel the tides move up and down rather than across so you get 6 hours up, then 6 hours down. I swam on a Spring tide, which is a bigger tide to start with and I’m not a super fast swimmer (around 2 min 15 per 100m). So i was pushed up the channel for 6 hours, then down the channel for 6 hours twice…so i was swimming forwards but going sideways, if that makes sense? Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete: Claire Fletcher its a long story…it was a personal, life changing goal, it raised money for charity and that money went to training swimming teachers to become specialist disability swimming teachers. If you want to know more then I write a blog and during the year of my channel training I documented my training each month. This is the first one explaining about me/how I got to where I was at the time - https://sophie-adaptive-athlete.com/…/2023-channel…/ If you scroll through my other blog posts I wrote multiple blogs about my actual swim too 🙂 Claire Fletcher: Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete that’s truly amazing! Well done you! Should be very proud of yourself! I am going to binge read your blogs now with a cuppa lol Robert Mothersole: Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete it does make sense, it’s a bit different from the local swimming baths, thanks for your answer and congratulations on swimming the Channel. Brilliant achievement 👍 Sophie Etheridge - Adaptive Athlete: Claire Fletcher hope you enjoyed them and your cuppa!
Also, there was this hilarious comment under the original image:
There’s a sports scientist, I’ve forgotten her name but she wrote a book called Women are Not Small Men.
In her book she says that long distance swimming is one sport that women actually outperform men in.
“They’re replacing the internet with something else” is literal. It’s harder and harder to find what you want because you’re not allowed to have what you want anymore. You’re allowed to work hard till you die and hope Big Tech shares its merciful bounty with you. You can’t spell “social media” without “soma.”
kazernielthanks for finding the source, pretty interesting!
Why are you using Facebook?
Imma go on a limb here and guess it’s because they want to.
That only creates additional, trickier questions.
Facebook has lots of interesting groups for hobbies and other interests. Yes, you can find groups like that outside of Facebook but they’re often much smaller and less active (unless you go to Reddit).
TheReturnOfPEBhobbies that fund Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian bunker
Hawaiian bunker hobbies!
I’m still in it for niche hobby groups. Unfortunately the kind of information I’m looking for is hard to come by elsewhere. Even Reddit was not as good a source of community knowledge for these activities.
Why are you being judgy about what websites someone uses?