For roughly six hours the tide will take the swimmer ‘up’ the Channel, and then as the tide changes direction, the following six hours will take the swimmer ‘down’ the Channel. This up and down movement of the water is relentless and unavoidable.
When traversing the English Channel, the boat pilot pays respect to the aformentioned tides when heading for France, which means the tidal affect will be perpendicular to the direction of the swimmer. It is incredibly rare for a swimmer to ever be swimming with or against the tide.
The moon’s position relative to the earth and sun changes, creating different strengths of tide. The smaller tides are called neap tides, and the bigger ones are spring tides. Historically, swimmers have made their attempts on neap tides, as the belief is that this reduces the effect of wind against tide. It also reduces the risk of the swimmer missing the land target of Cap Gris Nez in France.
Here’s another question: how far did she swim?
Do you count the distance her body travelled relative to the land? Or do you only count the distance she travelled relative to the water, and it was the water that was moving.
If you count the distance relative to the land, she’ll have been measured to have travelled much farther and with a much faster average speed.
The curious thing is that from her perspective, she was only swimming straight the whole time, and only expending energy going straight. It was the ‘gifted’ energy of the tide that caused the oscillation (from our perspective).
Just struck me as interesting to think that from her point of view she was swimming as straight and as efficiently as was possible.
It likely was the most efficient energy-wise, why waste energy going against the current when it’ll undo itself anyways.
An aquadesic line, if you will
Tbh I think this is a perfect example of “there are no stupid questions”
Person didn’t know or didn’t think about currents, bet you he still got roasted though
How can I shit myself without shitting myself?
Edit: grammer
See, this doesn’t fall into that though does it? You’re asking a question maliciously with probably a pretty good idea that the question doesn’t make sense.
For someone who doesn’t know something, asking is the smartest thing you can do
Still technically a question though.
Sure, but “there’s no stupid requests for knowledge” doesn’t really roll off the tongue
I’ll give you that one.
They probably did swim “straight” but it took them a really long time and this was the tidal flow during her swim, ergo they went straight but the water they were in moved back and forth.
Since there are more than two full periods, it took more than 12h?! Wow I’m usually dead after 12 min swimming
29 hours and 4 minutes as reported in another thread
Ah right, I mixed it up. Had in my head that full tidal period is 6h, but that’s the time for one half. So something over 24h makes a lot of sense.
Correct
And I bet that actively going straight would require extra energy and be slower than getting carried by the current
Okay but why are the oscillations bigger on the English side than on the French?
She sobered up half way through.
Every day has two tidal flows, one usually being greater than the other. It’s science!
Because he’s swimming the English Channel and not the English Strait, duh.
Because it’s not called “English Strait”
Maybe that’s the wiggly motion you have to with your arm to get it through la manche.
English gay then?
English Mig-17.
Look up it’s NATO designation.
Her sexual orientation has no effect on swimming skill, sir!
when i was young and stupid i used to swim to an island only 1 Km from the beach (-11.80574, -77.18933), and had to stop to recheck my direction, often i was way off course. the English channel is going to be way harder, better have a good compass, or be mindful of the time of the day and the position of the sun
When I was young (also stupid) we were on holiday at Punta Verudela, Pula, (44.8348180, 13.8373873) and one day, that island in the distance (44.8312627, 13.8398307) looked too cool to not swim too it, and me, my dad and my brother decided to try and make it there. It looked pretty close, but I never swam so long in my life. Because we took our sweet time and had a pretty chill tempo, after about an hour, we made it! on our side it was all sheer and sharp cliffs though, so although the island was still cool and enticing, we had no idea if it was even possible to get up there somewhere, or how long it would take to swim around. Playing it safe, we swam back in about the same tempo and took another hour of relaxed swimming. Probably helped that the Mediterranean sea isn’t as tidally active. Checking it now, the swimming distance seems around 440m (we approximated 1Km back then :) ) I wasn’t scared at any point and just having fun, but thinking back now, so many things could have gone wrong. I think I would be a lot more afraid to try that again, without knowing what I’m getting myself into.
Support boat
support boat sucks then
These flat earthers are getting out of hand. The shortest path is this line because the earth is curved.
If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be 1 curve instead of zigzagging? You’re forgetting the ocean current.
I was joking since it’s a meme. Its because of tides. Someone posted her response below.
Oh, I looked up a bit more about this — apparently the woman who swam this particular recorded route is disabled. As in she cannot physically use her legs.
Really cool stuff, but it’s also a little misleading — look up Sophie Etheridge for more.
Terrifying
