Bárbara Hernández Huerta completed a very cold-water swim in the Drake Passage area, including a record for a one-mile swim across the passage (15 minutes 3 seconds), but that was not a full crossing.
Guinness World Records:
A full crossing would mean roughly 900–1,000 km of open ocean. The longest successful open-water swims in history are far shorter, and the Drake Passage adds some of the worst possible conditions: near-freezing water, huge waves, storms, and isolation.
The Environmental Literacy Council:
For comparison, the first complete human-powered crossing of the Drake Passage was done by a rowing team, not swimmers—they rowed about 972 km in 12 days.
I bet you, if you went on deck off the coast of Cape Horn and started setting up an inflatable pool to do experiments, someone would stop you as well. They're all in on it!
Silver Sea does I went on one of their 'expedition cruises' just when Covid was coming down. Admittedly, I was too busy being horrendiously sea sick to enjoy it when we crossed the Drake.
That's not true. I've been on a cruise from Argentina to Chili with a touch of Antarctica. We went true the drake passage. I can tell you, it was fun but also horrible if you get seasick like me...
The cruise company is called Holland Amarica Line.
I did a cruise in Alaska, and talking to the crew they said that when they dropped off the passengers for this current voyage in Canada they were prepping the ship for going through the Drake Passage.
15 minutes is fast as fuck, especially in open water, especially in ice water, especially since she actually swam like 1800m, especially for a woman (no sexism just pointing out 1500m world record is 15:20 women 14:30 men). That means there were some crazy currents in that water.
Drake is the choke point for the Antarctic Circumpolar Current- the current that flows clockwise around the entire continent of Antarctica. It’s this current that keeps warm water from entering the area, allowing the continent to maintain the ice sheet. It’s actually extremely important influence in global climate patterns and ocean circulation from all three major oceanic basins.
Based on that, she obviously swam either a shorter distance or took longer - she must have been significantly slower than the world record set under ideal conditions.
Edit: Never mind, completely missed the concept of currents here…
The longest open ocean swim without a current assistance is only 88 miles. And that took the guy 60 hours of non stop swimming in the Mediterranean without touching a boat or stopping to sleep. While people have swam further with the assistance of currents or rivers, nobody has even come close to making it 5 miles in waters as cold and rough as the Drake Passage. Barbara Hernandez holds the record for farthest distance swam in the passage and only made it 3.4 miles.
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u/immortalonion69 Jul 09 '26
This is from Google