Ridgewood teen seeking record with swim across English Channel

Ridgewood teen seeking record with swim across English Channel

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014, 1:19 PM    LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014, 3:08 AM
BY CHRISTOPHER MAAG AND JIM NORMAN
STAFF WRITERS
THE RECORD

She spent the night alone with the water and the moon. Somewhere behind her in the darkness was a small boat, which carried food, and her parents, and a captain hired to keep her safe.

But nine hours into her swim across the English Channel, this is what 16-year-old Charlotte Samuels experienced as she lifted her mouth from the water to breathe:

Wind hitting her in the face at 8 miles an hour. Waves nearly a foot tall. The lights of the Nord de Calais, a 520-foot passenger ferry, passing at 20 miles an hour directly in her path.

And the water, always the cool salt water, pushing and tugging her in a zig-zagging S-curve across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

If she crosses the Channel successfully, Charlotte won’t simply break a world record. She’ll shatter it. At 16 she hopes to become the youngest person ever to complete the Triple Crown of open water swimming, coming in two years younger than an 18-year-old Australian who broke the record just last month.

Click here to follow Charlotte’s swim in real time (via her guide boat Anastasia’s GPS) https://www.lovechannelswimming.com/swims

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/update-ridgewood-teen-seeking-record-with-swim-across-english-channel-1.1082700#sthash.fOEx55Qy.dpuf