15 January, 1927, in temperatures of between 11-13°C, 102 swimmers entered the waters off Catalina. Of this number, only one would finish – 17 year old George Young from Toronto, Canada. The race was successful for Wrigley and his Santa Catalina Company, but more importantly for the history of Marathon swimming, it sparked an interest in the Catalina Channel that to this date has continued to grow. In 1981, the Catalina Channel Swimming Federation was founded. This non-profit organisation is in charge of observing and authenticating swims, and its current president is Forrest Nelson, a four-time Catalina Channel swimmer who has seen a remarkable increase in atempts from only a few years ago. At the turn of the millennium, there may have been only five atempts in any year, but in 2010 the Federation dealt with over 50 crossings. Nelson says that the Catalina Channel is oſten compared to the English Channel, and although they are of a similar distance and water temperature, there are some marked differences. “The weather in the Catalina Channel is a lot more consistent,” he says. “When a swim is scheduled for a specific date it is very unusual not to be able to swim on that date.” David Barra from New York successfully completed Catalina in 2010 and is directing a 120- mile swim down the Hudson River in 2012 (8bridges.org). He says: “The big difference between the crossings is the unpredictability of the currents in the Catalina Channel. In the English Channel, you know that for six-and-a-half hours the tide will go one direction and then turn to the opposite direction for the same time. In Catalina, the currents don’t work like that at all and are unpredictable.”


THE TRIPLE CROWN The Triple Crown includes: ○ The Catalina Channel, near Los Angeles, California (21 miles) ○ The English Channel, between England and France (21 miles) ○Around Manhatan Island, New York, USA (28.5 miles, tidally assisted)


Todd Robinson set a new men's Catalina Channel time, completing his 2009 swim in 8 hours, 5 minutes and 44 seconds


David’s expected swim time of between 9-10 hours turned into a 15 hour 37 minutes endurance effort, as he got shoved around by tides that even his experienced pilot had to admit he couldn’t predict. Suzie Dods, a San Francisco swimmer who trains regularly with the Dolphin Club in Aquatic Park opposite Alcatraz, also completed Catalina in 2010. She suggests a further difference between the two channels. “In the English Channel there is a gradual and consistent increase in water temperature from the English to the French coast. In Catalina, the water is generally coldest on the Californian coast, caused by upwelling water roughly three miles out to sea. And also during the swim itself, the temperature can vary considerably.” The vast majority of crossings are from Catalina Island to the mainland. Due to the unusual conditions during Dods’ crossing it was decided to reverse her route. Aſter 18 hours and 36 minutes of batling against the currents she arrived at Catalina Island. She said that if it had been her first open water swim “it would undoubtedly have been my last”, so tough was the crossing. Embarrassment was almost added to exhaustion upon her completion of the crossing. “To avoid chafing I rolled my swim costume down to my waist, and when I arrived at Catalina Island I landed at a beach used by a troop of boy scouts. Just before I walked up onto the beach I remembered to pull up my costume!” Nelson adds that the wildlife off the California coast is a tad more exotic that that encountered between France and England. “Dolphins, blue whales and even some species of sharks have been spoted alongside swimmers. Hank Wise, who was keen to set a fast time, was within half a mile of the mainland when up popped a dorsal fin of a leopard shark. No one on the boat told him, and Hank went on to complete the crossing in a remarkable 8 hours 7 minutes.” But she says shark sightings are “prety rare” and encounters


even rarer. In the past 100 years, there have been no shark fatalaties on Los Angeles beaches, which are home to millions of year-round surfers, paddleboarders, scuba divers, and swimmers. For Nelson, the ever-rising appeal of the Catalina crossing is the history associated the Wrigley Ocean Marathon in the 1920s. To Barra it’s the sense of “swimming over the abyss, as the average depth of the Catalina Channel is 1,300 metres” – which dwarfs the relatively shallow English Channel, which is around 50 metres deep. For Dods, meanwhile, the appeal is that fewer swimmers have completed the crossing than its English counterpart – she was only the 175th person to swim it at the time. ○


19


Photo © Paula Selby


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