Benoît Lecomte

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Benoît Lecomte (born 1967) is a French long distance swimmer who was the first man to swim across the Atlantic Ocean without a kick board in 1998. Benoit did this to raise money for cancer research as a tribute to his father. During his 3,716 mile journey in 73 days, he was followed by a support boat that had an electromagnetic field for 25 feet to ward off sharks. He did, however, still encounter sea turtles, dolphins, and jellyfish.

The feat, performed in 1998, took him 72 days, with 6-8 hours spent swimming each day in sessions of about two hours length. He was accompanied by associates in a boat, where he could rest and eat between each swimming period. The swim extended from Hyannis, Massachusetts to Quiberon, Brittany, France. He stopped for 1 week in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. He achieved the goal in 72 days, and took lots of practice to get across. He had many fans once he reached land. Lecomte is now looking forward to swimming across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines.

[edit] Google Maps

When asking for driving directions in Google Maps from the USA to Europe the instructions once included "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean," in a tribute to Lecomte. The directions would always have the start and end points of the swim be the wharf at Hyannis and Quinberon respectfully, or the other way around if asking for directions from Europe to the US. ^[1]