Martyn Webster - Lake Zurich

Zurich to Rapperswil

26.4 km (16.4 miles)

8 hours, 8 minutes on 19 July 2020

Observed and documented by Charlie Masding

Contents

Swimmer

  • Name: Martyn Webster
  • Gender: male
  • Age on swim date: 53
  • Nationality: Great Britain
  • Resides: Rapperswil, Switzerland

Support Personnel

  • Cat French - crew / feeding
  • Tom Webster - comms & general support
  • Marco Tschannen - pilot
  • Charlie Masding - observer

Escort Vessel

Name Type Port
SZ4006 powerboat Lachen, Obersee

Swim Parameters

  • Category: Solo, nonstop, unassisted.
  • Rules: MSF Rules of Marathon Swimming, without exception or modification.
  • Equipment used: textile swimsuit, cap, goggles, GPS watch.

Route Definition

  • Body of Water: Lake Zurich
  • Route Type: one-way
  • Start Location: Tiefenbrunnen, Zurich (47.352407, 8.554509)
  • Finish Location: Strandbad, Rapperswil (47.227225, 8.812321)
  • Minimum Route Distance: 26.4 km (16.4 miles) (map)

History

LongSwimsDB: Lake Zurich solo.


Swim Data

  • Start: 19 July 2020, 07:48 (Europe/Zurich, UTC2).
  • Finish: 19 July 2020, 15:56
  • Elapsed: 8 hours, 8 minutes, 52 seconds.

Summary of Conditions

Feature Min Max
Water Temp (C) 21 24
Air Temp (C) 15 28
Wind (knots) 0 0

GPS Track

Trackpoint frequency: 30 minutes. Download raw data (CSV).

Click to expand map.

Speed Plot

Nutrition: Ucan and Sponsor Long Energy alternating every hour for the first 2 hours and then half hourly. Occasional banana


Observer Log

Download PDF


Narrative

by Martyn Webster

Many of my early swims had been cancelled – I had planned to swim SCAR this spring and a newish swim in Antibes and had been doing my normal training pretty much up to this point. I still had the vague possibility at that time that I might be able to make my main target swim for 2020 of Molokai in October so needed to step up the distance and do a longer swim that 4hrs.

I had a tentative got a place on the Sri Chinmoy swim in August (my local swim), but that had just been cancelled too. So I decide to go for my home patch swim – lake Zurich. However, as I had swim Rapperswil to Zurich 3 times already I thought it would be interesting to swim in the other direction and swim back to Rapperswil.

Charlie Masding, a seasoned obsever had offered her services together with my wife Cat and son Tom as crew. So, we had a team. Just needed to find a boat. Dario Tschannen has provided his boat and services on one previous swims and said he was happy to help out again, together with his father – so we were now all set to go.

Living on the lake we have the luxury of choosing our dates and one week out we could see that either Saturday or Sunday were great weather wise. Sunshine and no wind for both days. We opted for Sunday a marginally better day.

The swim went according to plan. No real major challenges occurred during the swim. It is a psychological advantage to know all the landmarks along the way and to have swum many of the sections before. So I knew exactly where I was and how far I had to swim at any one point.

At Meilen – 12km a couple of my regular swim buddies were in the water to wave me as I passed by and a few friends were on the side of the lake at certain points to cheer me on. Hitting Meilen felt like I was on the home stretch. Even though there is 14km to go.

Lots of boat traffic during the swim. Its sunny and its Lake Zurich….so always going to be a hazard to watch out for – that and the Meilen -Horgen Ferry and the Zurich Rapperswil Ferry that weaves its way up and down the lake.

5km out at Uerikon I reached my local training area so got a huge psychological lift at that point and picked up my pace for the run into Rapperswil

Somehow at the end I missed the exit point so had to swim and extra 25m of so and climb out over stones before the end was sounded.

Great day and a beautiful, enjoyable swim. 4th time swimming the lake for me and a PB - happy with that – time for a beer!


Photos

Click to enlarge.


Video