This lady swam all the way across the Atlantic

[DENelson83]

Let's hope she wasn't thrown overboard by the Redwise crew on the Coastal Celebration... ;D

www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/02/08/atlantic-crossing.html

[BreannaF]

OK, so I'm trying to figure out what she actually did:

A 56-year-old American woman has fulfilled a dream she has had for nearly 50 years, and made history in the process, by swimming across the Atlantic Ocean.

Jennifer Figge has become the first woman on record to swim the Atlantic. Her journey of nearly 4,000 kilometres from the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa to Trinidad in the Caribbean took 24 days, from Jan. 10 to Feb. 5.

Her business manager, David Higden, told the Guardian that Figge swam 19 of the 24 days and that she never set out to swim the entire distance.

"Nobody could swim across the Atlantic. It's physically impossible," he told the Guardian. "It would take literally years."

...

The headline says she swam across the Atlantic Ocean. Her business manager says no one could possibly swim across the Ocean.

Her journey comes a decade after French swimmer Benoit Lecomte made the first known solo trans-Atlantic swim, covering nearly 6,400 kilometres from Massachusetts to France in 73 days.

Apparently someone has swam across the ocean, in 73 days. That didn't take years.

She did something for 24 days. But I'm not sure what, from the article. Whatever it was, it was more of a feat than anything I could ever hope to do. I'll give her credit for that. But, somewhere, I'm missing something here.

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The following WAS going to be my original response to this thread:

"In further news today, Washington State Ferries announced that they would propose some changes to their 'Plan B' for cutting services to tthe bare bones due to economic difficulties in the state. After reading an article about a woman swimming across the Atlantic Ocean, it seems that they have a new plan for getting commuters from Bremerton to Seattle using no ferry boats at all. ..." Reference was then made to the accompanying article.

[SS San Mateo]

Turns out it was a hoax...

sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/The-great-Atlantic-Ocean-swimming-hoax?urn=oly,140525

[Neil]

This wasn't a hoax. I recall reading about her swim before it began- either in the Globe & Mail, or the New York Times. It was made clear that she wasn't going to be swimming the whole distance, and I wondered what the point of it was.

That some media outlets reported this as a trans-atlantic swim in the proper sense is more a testimonial to incredibly sloppy reporting and are-you-smarter-than-a-first-grader math skills. There may also have been a bit of selective emphasis on the part of the people involved in this curious adventure.