Night Train at the English Channel
Cortez the conqueror burned his ships so that his men could not turn back from mainland Mexico. Night Train Swimmers of San Francisco will conquer the Sea of Cortez by swimming towards mainland Mexico. Unlike Cortez, Night Train's motives are altruistic. The team is using this event to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project , a non-profit organization whose mission is to honor and empower wounded veterans.
According to Night Train swimmer Matt Davie, much of this epic achievement will depend on the boat pilot's knowledge of the tides. "You're a swimmer in the water and the force of the moon is pulling on the ocean. Who's going to win? The moon pulling on the ocean is going to win. You'll have to fight the tide some at the beginning and at the end. At the beginning you have a specific direction you have to go to get away from shore. And at the end you have a specific point to aim for when you are narrowing in on the landing point. When you are out in the middle and you are 80 miles from shore in one direction and 80 miles from shore in the other direction, you have a whole swath of land you are aiming at. Maybe you aim for the middle of that and you get curved to the left by the tide. You know that daily there's four tides and its going to pull you back, it's going to pull you forward, it's going to pull you back, you just try not to fight it. We learned that really well in the English Channel. There were a lot of teams that left before us but we passed them because our pilot picked a better line. Our pilot knew better what the tides were going to do. A lot of people swam too far to the left and swam big "S" shapes because they were banking on a bigger tide to pull them back. Our pilot knew the tides better because he had been doing it for 25 or 30 years. He took us on a much tighter S. So we swam a shorter distance and we beat them because we had a much smarter pilot.
Where will Night Train find a boat? Stay tuned.
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