MAN TO SWIM ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN

Ben Lecomte was the first man to swim across the Atlantic Ocean – a feat he accomplished in 1998 – and now he’s going to attempt the same thing with the Pacific Ocean. That’s 5,500 miles of water from Tokyo to San Francisco. The attempt will be documented on the Discovery network and will include live streams, mini documentary episodes and eventually a full-length feature documentary. The swim is expected to take approximately six months in total, with Lecomte spending roughly eight hours per day in the water and the rest of the time on a sailboat with his support crew. The boat will be where Lecomte sleeps and eats, but it won’t make the swim any shorter for him. Lecomte hopes to draw attention to the plight of the world’s oceans, as mankind’s unceasing production of pollution and global warming continues to cripple aquatic ecosystems. No starting date for the swim has been announced.
* It was going to be Thursday, but the weather forecast called for rain so they postponed.
* He gets to take breaks to eat and sleep? Oh, puh-LEEZE!
* This is great ’cause nobody has any idea of the plight of the world’s oceans.
* Especially viewers of the Discovery channel. That channel NEVER shows nature stuff.
* The good news is, after he swims across, we’ll all stop polluting the oceans.
* Of course, in the anti-pollution spirit of the trip, Ben won’t be peeing in the ocean at all during his six-month swim.
* He’ll leave just as soon as his fingers finish de-pruning from that 1998 Atlantic swim.