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Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 3:38 pm
by Captain Seafort
Beeb
Woman scores Atlantic swim first
A 56-year-old American athlete has become the first woman on record to swim the Atlantic.
Jennifer Figge took 24 days to swim from the Cape Verde islands off Africa to Trinidad. The exact distance she covered has yet to be calculated.
She swam inside a cage to protect her from sharks.
Figge, who had originally planned to make landfall in the Bahamas, now plans to finish by swimming from Trinidad to the British Virgin Islands.
She first dreamed of swimming across the Atlantic Ocean as a little girl.
The swimmer finally moved nearer her goal when she left Cape Verde Islands on 12 January, facing waves of up to 9m (30 ft).
Each day she would spend up to eight hours in the water at a stretch before returning to her support boat.
Crew members would throw the athlete energy drinks as she swam along, if it was too stormy divers would deliver them in person.
She saw pilot whales, turtles, and dolphins, but no sharks.
"I was never scared," she told the Associated Press news agency.
"Looking back, I wouldn't have it any other way. I can always swim in a pool."
Jennifer Figge's journey comes 10 years after a French swimmer, Benoit Lecomte, made the first known solo trans-Atlantic swim covering 6,400km (4,000 miles) in 73 days.
Figge had planned to swim 3,380km (2,100 miles), but she was blown off course and reached Trinidad rather than the Bahamas.
Bloody hell.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 3:40 pm
by Sionnach Glic
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 4:48 pm
by Tsukiyumi
Meh. Call me when someone jumps the English Channel.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 6:22 pm
by kostmayer
Or the underground rail tunnel?
90 minutes from New York to Paris - what a wonderful world it would be.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 6:24 pm
by Lt. Staplic
I can't wait for the space elevator to be built, b/c there's going to be someone that's going to want to climb it
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 10:18 pm
by RK_Striker_JK_5
Lt. Staplic wrote:I can't wait for the space elevator to be built, b/c there's going to be someone that's going to want to climb it
And succeed.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 10:22 pm
by Captain Seafort
They'd better be able to hold their breath for a while.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:05 pm
by Sionnach Glic
By "for a while" you do mean several days, right?
Although, once you get about halfway up, wouldn't you be able to float?
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:37 pm
by Teaos
Wow, didnt think this would ever happen.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 1:37 am
by Deepcrush
I'm impressed.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:44 am
by Lt. Staplic
Rochey wrote:Although, once you get about halfway up, wouldn't you be able to float?
idk about floating, but the gravity would be significantly less.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:13 am
by SteveK
Lt. Staplic wrote:Rochey wrote:Although, once you get about halfway up, wouldn't you be able to float?
idk about floating, but the gravity would be significantly less.
Not really. The force of gravity is equal to G(m1 *m2) /r^2
Even though the force of gravity would decrease, it would still be quite significant. Remember that there is still gravity in space (actually every single particle in the universe exerts a gravitational force on every other particle in the universe . . . ) but objects have an apparent weightlessness due to being in freefall.
If there wasn't gravity in space . . . how would the moon orbit the Earth?
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 7:05 am
by Foxfyre
Wow, I will have to give this women props. And of course in the finest tradition of DITL some booze and stripers as well.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 10:09 am
by Thorin
SteveK wrote:Lt. Staplic wrote:Rochey wrote:Although, once you get about halfway up, wouldn't you be able to float?
idk about floating, but the gravity would be significantly less.
Not really. The force of gravity is equal to G(m1 *m2) /r^2
It would be almost insignificant - half way up a space elavator is about 18,000 km from the ground - ie half of the 36,000 km of the distance from the ground to a geostationary orbit. That's a 24,000 km orbital radius and so equivilent to 4r, making gravity 16 times weaker there.
Re: Woman swims the Atlantic
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:21 pm
by USSEnterprise
You guys need to stop using such big words, my brain hurts
,
Anyways, how the hell do you swim inside of a cage?