13° C (55° F) water temps, 40 knot winds, dolphins, whales, sea lions, sun fish... what else could you ask for? It was a great day in the Santa Barbara Channel for a swim. Dan Boyle and some of his friends swam from Santa Cruz Island, one of the "Channel Islands" off the coast of California, to Santa Barbara on the mainland today.
While adventurers have been swimming this channel for decades, it was only in 2006 that the Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association was founded and started to formalize/organize the event. Its growing in popularity with distance swimmers and will soon be in the ranks of the English and Catalina Channels.
"This is a great event," says Dan Boyle. "We saw tons of sea life. You can even hear the dolphins talking to each other under water. And the amazing, night-time, under water, light show of phosphorescence is very similar to that in the English Channel. I was very happy to join several of my San Francisco friends for this fun relay crossing."
On this day weather conditions dictated the course to be roughly 26 miles from Cueva Valdez on Santa Cruz Island to East Beach in Santa Barbara. Escorted by a sailboat and kayaks, the six-person relay team took 15 hours and 56 minutes for the crossing.
http://www.santabarbarachannelswim.org/
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