Santa Cruz County Supervisor Mark Stone completed his swim across the English Channel on his first attempt, taking a reported 13 hours, seven minutes to cross the salty body of water.
Stone started at about 3 p.m. local time from a beach in Dover, England, on Monday, July 13, and completed the swim at 4:04 a.m. the next day near Cap Gris Nez, France.
The crossing is known as the Mount Everest of open-water swims, and roughly 1,000 people have completed it. Stone stopped for a minute or so every half-hour to eat and drink, but after about nine hours of swimming, he began stopping every 20 minutes, according to the Twitter account.
Stone, who lives in Scotts Valley, could not be reached for comment —he and his family are on vacation for the month celebrating his son’s graduation from high school.
However, according to his Twitter feed, Stone was back in the water the day after the swim, feeling the effects of the trek.
“Swam about 1,000 meters this a.m. Still a bit stiff with a sore left shoulder. The harbor was a bit rough,” Stone reported.
Training for the channel swim included swimming 20,000 to 30,000 yards a week and completing open-water ocean swims in Santa Cruz and in the San Francisco Bay. He was coached by University of California, Santa Cruz, Masters coach Joel Wilson.
Before the swim, Stone noted that the channel swim was his goal, and he does not yet have his sights on any other long-distance swims.
Follow Stone on Twitter at twitter.com/ChannelSwim.
