Swimming the Strait of Gibraltar!!!

Some of the details of our July 1, 2012, attempts to swim across the Straits of Gibraltar.  I know it’s kind of long.

South End Rowing Club members Andrew McLaughlin, Dan Nadaner, Craig Coombs and Danielle Ruymaker had been in Tarifa, Spain for several days when we got the call that the conditions would support a crossing attempt on Sunday morning (July 1).

Dan and Andrew were on a side trip in Seville when they got the news, so they headed down to Tarifa again early on Sunday morning.

At 7:45am Rafael, the President of the crossing association (ACNEG) met us at the dock and confirmed that the swim was on, proclaiming “In four hours you will touch Punta Ceres (Morocco)!”

We put on our swim caps, ear plugs and greased up, and got on the boat for a 10 min ride to the jump spot.  Danielle’s husband, Eric, was in the main boat, and her daughter, Noah, along with Andrew’s son, Brandon, were providing additional support in the accompanying zodiac.  We received our feedings from the zodiac.

We put on our goggles and jumped into the blue, 64 degree water and swam to a rocky point on the south side of the Tarifa military installation.  The captain took a picture of us touching the point at 8:15am, blew the ship’s horn, and the adventure began.

The seas seemed relatively calm, and all four of us were swimming at a comfortable pace, but the crew seemed anxious. At each 1/2 hour feeding they told us not to feed too long (we were taking only a minute!) and to Go!, Go!, Go!,  like we had forgotten what we were doing.

All 4 swimmers with Rock of Gibraltar in center background.

At the 2 hour mark we were clearly entering the Strait’s shipping channel.  A very busy place (~300 tracked ships per day) with some of the largest ships in the world passing through.  At 2:30 the crew started yelling at us “Sprint, or get out! Sprint, or get out!” 

We thought a ship was bearing down on us, so we all moved as fast as we could for the next 30 min, and towards the end of that time saw a ship pass behind us.  What we didn’t know is that the Straits ship traffic had been diverted around us.  There was another reason for their urgency.

The reason for their urgency was the currents were strongly against us, rather than being to our advantage, as usual.  For those of you that like the numbers, we were swimming on a bearing of 180 deg (due south).  Typically the currents are on a 90 – 110 deg bearing (E to ESE).  We were swimming against 2 knot currents with a bearing of 58 – 65 deg (ENE).  Trig fans can do the math.

It turns out that just before the boat captains yelled “Sprint,” we had made no southward progress for 30 min.  For nearly 90 min we made trivial progress to the south, but as we were moving eastward, the Africa coast was receding southward at a faster pace.  At the rate we were going, we were going to land somewhere in Egypt.

Those of you that swim long distances know that you need to save some gas for sprints at the END of the swim.  Using that reserve in the middle left us all tired.  At that point (3 hours) Andrew pulled himself out of the swim.  At 4 hours Dan’s asthma had caught him and he pulled himself onto the big boat.

I was seriously demoralized that such strong swimmers were out.  Danielle and I were both getting tired as the 5^th hour approached.  No dolphin or whale sighting, just relentless hammering at the hardest pace I had ever maintained towards a goal that seemed to be moving away. 

I told myself I wouldn’t quit, but several times I wished that the crew would cancel the swim.  I didn’t know that they had been close to stopping the swim since the 2^nd hour.  Only the intervention of the guys on the boat saved the swim.

Unbeknownst to Danielle and myself, the guys on the boats were repeatedly begging the captain to let us keep swimming until the last possible landing spot was impossible.  Repeatedly the captain only gave us another 10 minutes to show some progress, and then relented.

All Danielle and I could do is keep going, even though she was getting sick in the 6 ft seas.  We kept seeing landmarks move off to our right, and wondered if we could hit the broad side of a continent.

At 5:30, I got a second wind and saw that we were getting closer (we finally were close enough to Africa to get a more favorable current). I yelled to Danielle that we were going to make it.  She said that she was completely tired.  I said, “I can finally see windows in the buildings.”  We then gave up on our feedings since we knew we could be done in another 15 – 20 minutes and did the best we could to power on.

An hour later we were approaching a beautiful beach full of sunbathers.  About 50 yards from the beach the Zodiac ran in front of us and redirected us over to a rocky landing spot.

We crawled up some rocks in Morocco at one of the last possible landing spots.  The people on the escort boats hooted their joy, and the boat blew its horn.  The people on the beach comprehended what had happened and all stood and cheered for us.

We swam back to our escort boat.   On board Danielle muttered, “That was harder than childbirth.”

We found out that we were sent to the rocks because the crew had noticed that the Moroccan police were waiting for us on the beach to potentially arrest us for illegal immigration.  Since we were only a few kilometers west of the Spanish colony of Ceuta, the captain called the Spanish Coast Guard for protection against any water pursuit by the Moroccan authorities.

In the end what should of have been a ~5 hr swim of 12 miles was instead 6 hours, forty minutes and 25.5 km (15.8 miles).  Danielle and I became the 352 and 353 people to have swum the Straits (without wetsuits) in the last 112 years.  The captain said we suffered the worst currents he had ever seen anyone succeed against.  The currents continued to be so adverse that the captain could not return to Tarifa that night, and instead took us to Ceuta to catch a ferry back to the port (Algeciras) next to Gibraltar.

GPS monitoring of escort boat location.  Markers ~ 10 minutes apart 

When we went through immigration, the officer asked how we got to Ceuta.  Danielle said, “Craig and I swam here from Tarifa, and the others followed us on a boat.”  The officer looked at her and asked again how we got to Ceuta.  Danielle repeated her story with more emphatic gestures.  The officer rolled her eyes and just handed us back our passports.  She couldn’t understand “this crazy thing we do.”

Danielle and I are so thankful for the support that we received on this swim.  We extend our thanks to Dan and Andrew, our families and our South End Rowing Club family.  We also want to thank our Masters Swim Coach, Marcia Benjamin, who continually worked us to be ready for this swim.  Thank you all.

Craig Coombs