It is difficult enough to swim the English Channel when conditions are perfect. It is an incredible feat to swim the Channel under water. Fred Baldasare, a 44-year-old frogman from Cocoa Beach, Florida, did exactly that using scuba gear.
Baldasare did not attempt the swim without some previous experience. He had tried before and failed both times. He had learned about the Channel and its currents. On July 11, 1962, he made a third attempt.
An underwater swimmer does not know where he is going. In order to maintain some sense of direction, Baldasare had someone in a boat topside tow a cage that he could follow.
A normal swim across the Channel is 22 miles. Since the currents kept tugging Baldasare north, he traveled about twice as far.
Baldasare started his swim off the coast of France. He reached the other shore, near the greens of the Royal Cinque Golf Course in Kent, England, exactly 18 hours and 1 minute later.
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
I thought this was going to be something TOTALLY different. I don’t know who started it, it was either Brian Keaulana, Laird Hamilton or Buzzy Kerbox, but they would carry rocks and run underwater. The training gives you the ability to hold your breath longer when you get nailed surfing big waves. Now it has taken on a whole life of its own if you look on Youtube. I was always afraid of stepping on a stingray so avoided it.
In fact, Buzzy & Laird paddled the English Channel on surfboards in 1990.
While Fred’s achievement is certainly a big deal, it seems he made a habit of crossing a bunch of bodies of water while scuba diving–the embedded link gets into it a little bit.
The current world record holder for swimming the channel belongs to Sarah Thomas who swam it FOUR TIMES IN SUCCESSION. It took her 54 hours. My thing is this: I’ve never been able to even stay awake for 54 hours. How the hell did she keep swimming that long?