Water Snek

I fucking hate the way Facebook changed how the site works so that clicking on an image no longer puts it in your browser history. Earlier today I saw a post where the swimmer whose track was shown in this specific image responded to the comments. It was actually quite an amusing interaction and I wish I could go back and share it here.

But also: the swimmer was a she, not a he.

edit:

wait I found it:

Sophie's link: https://sophie-adaptive-athlete.com/2023/01/18/2023-channel-swim-introduction/

Also, there was this hilarious comment under the original image:
"They're replacing the internet with something else" is literal. It's harder and harder to find what you want because you're not allowed to have what you want anymore. You're allowed to work hard till you die and hope Big Tech shares its merciful bounty with you. You can't spell "social media" without "soma."
In case you are interested, facebook now opens links in a site of thier's, but it contains an embedded window of the site you were linked to. This means that facebook can follow any other links you follow while on that site. It has the site effect of you not visiting that site but instead facebook's "hidden window" shows in the history.
It has no practical reason to exist other than allowing them to gather more data.
Some mobile browsers might have an add-in to auto-break you out of the window.
- I'm not actually sure what you mean, but if I'm understanding it correctly, uhh, what? No they don't. If you click an external link on Facebook they send you to it with a redirect, so they know you went to that site, but they don't know of any further links you might click.
  But anyway, that's not relevant to this here, because it was a photo shared on Facebook, not an external link.
There's a sports scientist, I've forgotten her name but she wrote a book called Women are Not Small Men. In her book she says that long distance swimming is one sport that women actually outperform men in.
Edit: her name is Stacy Sims
Why are you using Facebook?
- I'm still in it for niche hobby groups. Unfortunately the kind of information I'm looking for is hard to come by elsewhere. Even Reddit was not as good a source of community knowledge for these activities.
- Imma go on a limb here and guess it's because they want to.
- Why are you being judgy about what websites someone uses?
- That was Sophie's choice.
AND a she not a he! That's amazing!
It would be more amazing if it were a he, not a she; all the best long-distance swimmers are women. Women have a significant advantage at this level.
- Eh, not really. It's more that at this level the difference in performance between men and women closes significantly, with some ultra swim records being held by women. For the English Channel specifically, the current record for speed of crossing is held by a man. So it's not particularly amazing that it was a woman (though it is amazing that it was a physically disabled woman!), but neither would it have been amazing had it been a man.
Can someone explain the "I did it for charity" angle? I never understood why would someone do a sporty thing, that they clearly wanted to do and would probably do anyway, motivate me or anyone else to donate money to a charity. To be honest it always felt quite performative and self serving to me.
- Think of it the other way around, doing extreme athletic feats (even for fun) is a great way to attract attention, and using that momentum to attract sponsors for charity is a nice extra to do some good
- You get people to "pledge" donations. It's partly about raising awareness for the charity and partly because a lot of people are more likely to donate to these types of drives versus donating just because.
thanks for finding the source, pretty interesting!

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.

Source: Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation

So she was swimming for roughly 18 hours? I'm impressed and terrified.
- Savage feat of endurance. I wonder how many calories that burns.
- 29 hours and 4 minutes actually.
  https://sophie-adaptive-athlete.com/2023/09/25/sta-channel-swim-2023-part-4/
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.

Tide comes in, tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

- ...when you remember that the moon influences Earthly rainfall...
Achshually... no I can't. Something about the moon idk I'm not a sciontwist.
- Oh shoot, i just realized i am, but i didnt have my oil changed in the last 60,000 miles, so im probably not gonna be of much more use getting you to the moon.

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
You could imagine a coordinate system in which she took the shortest path, yet the projection in our system doesn't look like a straight line
- Non-euclidian swimming, my favorite

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

She had to go around all the minefields we laid to keep the French out.

Do you still have the galleons filled with gunpowder or is the isle ripe for Spanish invasion?
- The Spanish couldn’t possibly get in as we’re behind a red locked door and the red keycard is safe in Gibraltar.

Because he’s swimming the English Channel and not the English Strait, duh.

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
And I bet that actively going straight would require extra energy and be slower than getting carried by the current
Correct
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!

Wait, I'm dumb. Is it water currents or map projection, or what?

It's the tidal current throwing the swimmer around. They swam along the same heading the entire time.
It’s just really hard to follow google maps navigation when there’s no roads and some big waves.
edit: ffs :)
- No, there were probably waves.
- Could also be currents from tides. This trip would have taken hours, and the tides around great britain are weird.
Perhaps even losing orientation
- Unless they’re a heaving idiot looking to be arrested and sectioned under the mental health act, they swim next to a support boat, who give them directions and are in communication with other vessels. The Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world.
- I think the path would be more erratic if that was the case
I'd like to know what map projection bends a straight line into that
- I said I was dumb.

Because it's not called "English Strait"

English gay then?
- English Mig-17.
  Look up it's NATO designation.
Maybe that's the wiggly motion you have to with your arm to get it through la manche.

Her sexual orientation has no effect on swimming skill, sir!

Is it the tides?

Like that bloke said to Caesar. Beware the tides of march.
Should have just gone in April.
Can't explain that
yes
Sure looks like it to me

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

I was excited that you provided the coords. Thanks!
Support boat
- support boat sucks then
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.

Being parabolic, it looks like some significant drift current.

I think you mean "sinusoidal".
- Don’t say that, you have so much to live for.

These flat earthers are getting out of hand. The shortest path is this line because the earth is curved.

earth is wrinkly because of all the water

So, given that the line is the tides? currents? If they adjusted their swimming angle to make the GPS line straight, I wonder if it would affect their time or energy expended. I think it wouldn't but whatcha think?

Swimming against the current, I assume.

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