Something doesn't add up.
...she's shown posing for a picture after her arrival to Chacachacare Island, in Trinidad, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009. Figge, of Aspen, Colorado, is the first woman to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, after leaving the Cape Verde Islands off Africa on Jan. 12, swimming roughly 2,100 miles (3,380 kilometers) to arrive in Trinidad.
She swam 2,100 miles in 25 days (January 12 - February 5, inclusive). That's 84 miles per day. At Erik Vendt's pace of roughly 15 minutes per mile, that's 21 hours per day of constant swimming.
Even if she was aided by current, the article said that she "...(battled) waves of up to 30 feet and strong winds..." That would imply that there were times when she was making much less progress.
??? :dunno: ???
Currents and winds favorable, the strongest, and most reliable in the winter. Water temps still in the 70s or 80s. The direction of those '30' ft waves would have been pushing her. Hurricanes run June through November, and will seriously mess up your day if you are out there on the ocean.
I wouldn't think the boat goes anywhere at night. If they took advantage of the gulf stream, she could get up to a three knot boost from the the current. If she was in the water for 15 hours a day, that's 45 miles a day from the current. Just a guess.
With GPS they could just reposition the boat to the point where she exited the water the previous day.
What I think is strange is that she would choose to do this during the winter. Maybe that's when the currents are strongest? Still 84 miles per day is hard to believe.
This should really be described as a person who took a 25 day eco tour of the Atlantic and did some swimming along the way. This in no way should be described as "swimming the Atlantic." She didn't even swim for 5 of the days.
