A 16-year-old from New Jersey who swam from Catalina to the mainland last August successfully swam across the English Channel on Tuesday.
The swim from England to France by Charlotte Samuels was the third jewel in the open-water “Triple Crown,” making Samuels the youngest swimmer ever to win the honor. Besides the English Channel and the San Pedro Channel, the Triple Crown includes a circumnavigation of Manhattan Island, which Samuels completed last July.
A 16-year-old from New Jersey who swam from Catalina to the mainland last August successfully swam across the English Channel on Tuesday.
The swim from England to France by Charlotte Samuels was the third jewel in the open-water “Triple Crown,” making Samuels the youngest swimmer ever to win the honor. Besides the English Channel and the San Pedro Channel, the Triple Crown includes a circumnavigation of Manhattan Island, which Samuels completed last July.
The crossing of the English Channel—which she completed in less about 10 hours—began at 7 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m. local time on the shores of France. By completing the Triple Crown, Samuels broke the previous age record set just last month by an 18-year-old Lachlan Hinds of Australia.
Throughout the night, one of the greatest challengers she faced was a drop in sea temperature to 64 degrees.
At the same time, the air temperature dropped to 60 degrees. She also faced headwinds of up to 15 miles per hour.
A tracking boat, the Anastasia, accompanied her the entire trip. Her parents, Suzanne and Steven Samuels, were on board cheering her on.
It was on August 4 that Samuels swam the San Pedro Channel, slipping into the waters of Catalina’s West End just after midnight. She reached the shores of the Palos Verdes Peninsula at 7:45 p.m. that evening.
The Catalina swim took just about 20 hours to complete. Last July, she completed the around-Manhattan swim in 9 hours and 55 minutes, a distance of nearly 29 miles.
Besides Manhattan and Catalina, she also swam a 15-mile course around Cape May, New Jersey, as well as the grueling 17.5 mile crossing from Manhattan to Sandy Hook, New Jersey.
Samuels’ exploits have been written up in Sports Illustrated magazine and she claims that her long-term goal is to swim “all of the world’s seven oceans.”
