[DAY 42] The World Cup and The Swim

“Ben, do you want to eat?” Are usually the first words I hear in the morning. Most of the time it is Yoav who ask me, he is up early to sail the boat back to our waypoint

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The first thing I do in the morning is eat, then very often I fall back asleep. I never have a straight night, I always wake up to change locations and I toss and turn a lot. I am a light sleeper, and unfortunately on a boat, there are always noises and motion to wake me up. So anytime I get a chance I try to sleep.

This morning it was Lauren our doctor from the UK who prepared me my breakfast, a big bowl of oatmeal with raisins and all kinds of nuts. It was very tasty, she really knows how to improve the taste, I think powder milk and coconut were some of the ingredients.

I swam next to the kayak, Maks, our doctor from the Netherlands paced me for the entire day. Each time I stopped for my feeding breaks he had a new question for me about French grammar. Apparently, he was going through his French lesson as he was paddling. Maks is the type of person who enjoys learning and discovering. So we had a quick French lesson in the middle of the ocean every hour. Going through his French lesson didn’t stop from picking up plastic, at the end of the day he had quite a catch.

Here is an interesting fact about France (soccer) and my swims; in 1998 when I swam across the Atlantic a couple of days before my departure France won the soccer World Cup for the first time. Twenty years later, I am swimming across the Pacific and today France won the World Cup for the second time!

On a sad note, our new resident, the rescue bird Jun Ju died, she was too weak and couldn’t regain her strength.

Ben