# Swimming Across the Atlantic

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swimming-across-the-atlantic/419793>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 19, 2007, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swimming-across-the-atlantic/419793 "2007-09-19T21:53:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2007, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swimming-across-the-atlantic/419793/21 "2007-09-20T12:41:02Z")

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[QUOTE=Edward The Head]  
I asked about this guy a couple of years ago. I still don’t believe it. He would have to average 51 miles a day, every day. That’s just over 2 miles an hour, for 24 hours. Even if he swam for 12 hours a day that’s 4 miles an hour, as fast as the fastest Olympic swimmer in the 1500. Even the best swimmers in the world couldn’t do that much swimming that fast, I would say most don’t even do that in a year.

I think there’s something really fishy about the guy as I’ve never heard of him doing anything else. Nor does he get talked about on any swimming boards or magazines.  
[/QUOTE]

He was also riding the Gulf Stream, that peaks at about 4 knots at its fastest areas.

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**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2007, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swimming-across-the-atlantic/419793/22 "2007-09-20T12:52:45Z")

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And the water in the Gulf Stream is warm – Lindbergh noted that if _Spirit of St Louis_ had crashed in it, he’d have been able to stay alive a longer time than in other parts of the north Atlantic.

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**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2007, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swimming-across-the-atlantic/419793/23 "2007-09-20T14:20:50Z")

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Tangent:  
Several people have kayaked from California to Hawaii. Ed Gillette did it without a support boat. It took him 63 days. He ran out of food near the end of his journey, resorting to catching fish and scarfing them down raw. When he landed on a beach in Hawaii, his legs had atrophied, so he could not walk.

> [@](#):
>
> After only a few days at sea, my butt was covered with salt water sores and I could find no comfortable position for sitting or sleeping. Within a week. the skin on the backs of my hands was so cracked and chapped that I took painkillers to make paddling bearable.

Things went down hill from there.  
[Ed Gillette’s story](http://www.legendinc.com/Pages/MarbleheadNet/MM/Articles/EdGillette.html)

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