[DAY 114] A difficult and frustrating swim

Last night we moved our clocks one hour forward to allow me to swim more at the end of the day. At sunset, jellyfish come up and yesterday I stopped half an hour earlier, so many of them were near the surface and kept on stinging my nose 🙁

Today was really a very difficult and frustrating swim day because of the northern current. Every forecast we got did not predict this type of current. I was sucked by it and had a very hard time progressing east. Staying in the current would mean taking a 100 plus miles detour, I really needed to get out of it.

We tried different headings and I swam faster for two hours but nothing changed much. I was in the thick of it and it would take me more than a day to get out. I hope to cross the 1000 miles marker soon.

On the plus side, we got very close to two whales but not close enough to identify them. From the dinghy, Paul and Maks spotted them at three different locations during their breaches but we could only get to about 20 meters away before they would dive. I could never see them underwater, I just saw their back at the surface and tails up in the air when they dove.

Yesterday morning I put on Mypatch, a small waterproof EKG recorder, to monitor my heart activity. I still had it and today was a very interesting day to get data on my EKG. For my first 3 hour swim of the day, it was business as usual (regular pace), followed by a very slow hour when we spotted the whales and waited on their breach, then a very intensive 2-hour swim to finish by 3 more hours of swimming back at my regular pace.

Ben

Swam: 14.06 NM
Weather conditions:
Sunny (could coverage 4/8)
Wind speed: 5 kts
Wind direction: N
Waves height: 0.2 m
Waves direction: E
Water temperature: 27.8°C