They have travelled between 1km and 55km a day, averaging about 28km and swimming up to six hours in a day. “It’s going to drop because we’re losing the Agulhas current,” added Houston.
The warm stream that is fed by the Mozambique current has assisted her. The men’s world record for the 100m freestyle in a pool is 46.91 sec, but at times Ferguson has cruised around 30 seconds per 100 metres.
“I swim two-thirds faster with the current, about five minutes a kilometre, and my usual average is 15 minutes a kilometre.”
Her endeavour costs R12,000 a day
Ferguson, a former competitive swimmer, merged her passions for the sport and environment into ocean swimming. “I’ve always hated litter and I’ve always loved the environment and animals, so it was a good combination.”
In her first serious outing in 2017, doing the Molokai swim in Hawaii, she was on track to break the record when a current knocked her sideways. Having averaged 24 minutes a mile for 12 hours, she took three-and-a-half hours to complete one mile.
“That pushed me 18km off course,” recounted Ferguson, who in 2019 became the first person to swim around Easter Island, a 19-hour, 8-minute, 63.5km trek that earned her a Guinness world record.
The One Ocean endeavour costs R12,000 a day, excluding food and accommodation, much of which had been sponsored, said Ferguson, adding they were about to end for the season, resuming in the summer.
“We were supposed to go until the end of April, but we’ve hit some weather issues and funding issues.”
She initially budgeted R4m for the trip and to date had spent more than R500,000, far less than expected.
Turtles mistake clear plastic for jellyfish
“We’ve had to drop our team size to smaller ... I don’t know how we’ve got as far as we have on the budget we have. On off-days our skipper has reduced his rate by 50%.”
She had commissioned an agency to raise money, but the Covid-19 and July riots had made it difficult.
“We were told that we would potentially have funding just before we start swimming so I kind of relied on that and then it hasn’t come through. I put in R150,000 of my own money, which was all I had. So we’ve relied on the public. We put up a Backabuddy campaign.”
On Saturday she swam 13.5km, encountering seals and more plastic waste, which has included bits of chip packets and clear plastic that looks like jellyfish and gets mistakenly eaten by turtles, sometimes proving lethal to them.
She’s also come across big plastic drums, bottles, slip slops, ropes and debris from Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs), built by game fishermen to create artificial reefs which attract bait fish for their prey.
Ferguson was unable to swim on Sunday because of strong winds.
TimesLIVE
Litter stings worse than jellyfish and bluebottles for ocean swimmer
Sports reporter
Image: SUPPLIED
Environmental activist Sarah Ferguson was stung by jellyfish and bluebottles for the first 23 days of her One Ocean odyssey from Durban to Cape Town — and that was preferable to the cold water that’s embraced her in the Eastern Cape.
Ferguson, raising awareness against single-use plastics which are consumed faster than they can be recycled, has been hampered by weather and funding issues.
“I’ve seen a lot of plastic,” said the 39-year-old physiotherapist who left Durban on February 21. “We’ve had some encounters with dolphins, pilot whales, squid. The main thing I’ve seen are jellyfish and bluebottles up until a week ago.
“Up until this week I’ve been stung every single day by something — jellyfish, bluebottles. Until we hit the cold water I got stung every single day ... 23 days, every day.”
Then coach Sarah Houston interjected: “The blessing of cold water.”
“I’d rather be stung,” quipped Ferguson. “The water is cold and green ... Now I’ve seen nothing except litter,” she told TimesLIVE in Gqeberha, where she popped into the national swimming championships at the Newton Park pool.
Current helps her swim faster than world champions
Ferguson is backed by a team of two skippers, one who travels on land to help pilot his colleague on the boat safely to land, Houston and a kayaker who helps her to maintain course in the swells.
“We feed her every half an hour on a rope,” said Houston, who sometimes swims with Ferguson to keep her company.
“She follows international Channel rules, which means she can’t hold onto anything. No aids, no flippers, no wetsuits — goggles, caps, cossie [costume].”
Swimming into sea to celebrate Sarah’s 476km swim was its own little victory
They have travelled between 1km and 55km a day, averaging about 28km and swimming up to six hours in a day. “It’s going to drop because we’re losing the Agulhas current,” added Houston.
The warm stream that is fed by the Mozambique current has assisted her. The men’s world record for the 100m freestyle in a pool is 46.91 sec, but at times Ferguson has cruised around 30 seconds per 100 metres.
“I swim two-thirds faster with the current, about five minutes a kilometre, and my usual average is 15 minutes a kilometre.”
Her endeavour costs R12,000 a day
Ferguson, a former competitive swimmer, merged her passions for the sport and environment into ocean swimming. “I’ve always hated litter and I’ve always loved the environment and animals, so it was a good combination.”
In her first serious outing in 2017, doing the Molokai swim in Hawaii, she was on track to break the record when a current knocked her sideways. Having averaged 24 minutes a mile for 12 hours, she took three-and-a-half hours to complete one mile.
“That pushed me 18km off course,” recounted Ferguson, who in 2019 became the first person to swim around Easter Island, a 19-hour, 8-minute, 63.5km trek that earned her a Guinness world record.
The One Ocean endeavour costs R12,000 a day, excluding food and accommodation, much of which had been sponsored, said Ferguson, adding they were about to end for the season, resuming in the summer.
“We were supposed to go until the end of April, but we’ve hit some weather issues and funding issues.”
She initially budgeted R4m for the trip and to date had spent more than R500,000, far less than expected.
Turtles mistake clear plastic for jellyfish
“We’ve had to drop our team size to smaller ... I don’t know how we’ve got as far as we have on the budget we have. On off-days our skipper has reduced his rate by 50%.”
She had commissioned an agency to raise money, but the Covid-19 and July riots had made it difficult.
“We were told that we would potentially have funding just before we start swimming so I kind of relied on that and then it hasn’t come through. I put in R150,000 of my own money, which was all I had. So we’ve relied on the public. We put up a Backabuddy campaign.”
On Saturday she swam 13.5km, encountering seals and more plastic waste, which has included bits of chip packets and clear plastic that looks like jellyfish and gets mistakenly eaten by turtles, sometimes proving lethal to them.
She’s also come across big plastic drums, bottles, slip slops, ropes and debris from Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs), built by game fishermen to create artificial reefs which attract bait fish for their prey.
Ferguson was unable to swim on Sunday because of strong winds.
TimesLIVE
Anti-plastic swimmer Ferguson bowled over by Eastern Cape support
Champion swimmer unsure if she can go the distance after funding delay
“We were told that we would potentially have funding just before we start swimming so I kind of relied on that and then it hasn’t come through. I put in R150,000 of my own money, which was all I had. So we’ve relied on the public. We put up a Backabuddy campaign.”
On Saturday she swam 13.5km, encountering seals and more plastic waste, which has included bits of chip packets and clear plastic that looks like jellyfish and gets mistakenly eaten by turtles, sometimes proving lethal to them.
She’s also come across big plastic drums, bottles, slip slops, ropes and debris from Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs), built by game fishermen to create artificial reefs which attract bait fish for their prey.
Ferguson was unable to swim on Sunday because of strong winds.
TimesLIVE
“That pushed me 18km off course,” recounted Ferguson, who in 2019 became the first person to swim around Easter Island, a 19-hour, 8-minute, 63.5km trek that earned her a Guinness world record.
The One Ocean endeavour costs R12,000 a day, excluding food and accommodation, much of which had been sponsored, said Ferguson, adding they were about to end for the season, resuming in the summer.
“We were supposed to go until the end of April, but we’ve hit some weather issues and funding issues.”
She initially budgeted R4m for the trip and to date had spent more than R500,000, far less than expected.
Turtles mistake clear plastic for jellyfish
“We’ve had to drop our team size to smaller ... I don’t know how we’ve got as far as we have on the budget we have. On off-days our skipper has reduced his rate by 50%.”
She had commissioned an agency to raise money, but the Covid-19 and July riots had made it difficult.
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