Internet Desk: Rohan More, a software engineer from Infosys Ltd, Pune has succesfully swam across the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco. He covered the 16km distance in just 3hr 55min. With this fabulous achievement Rohan completed his 6th channel amongst 7 most difficult challenges in Ocean Seven swimming and made the nation proud once again. With one more channel to go, Rohan is the only Asian as well as Indian Open Water Swimmer to achieve this success.
Rohan started his swim from Tarifa, Spain at 1pm on Friday 4th Nov. with very unpredictable weather conditions. He was supposed to swim on Wednesday, 2nd November but the weather conditions were not good , wind became very strong and Rohan’s Pilot Anatanio said he cannot swim in such conditions so they cancelled his for that day. Even on Friday , his Pilot was not sure about swimming, so he took multiple weather calls as weather was changing very quickly, with go or no go conditions, Finally Rohan started his swim by 1pm in the afternoon.
At the beginning for first 2 hrs the wind was little strong and sea was very choppy but the water temperature was good about 18-19C. Rohan covered more than half distance in first 2hrs of swim and was doing very good. After that weather conditions become perfect, no wind and calm sea. 100% perfect condition for swim but as he progressed towards Morocco, water temperature suddenly dropped by 3-4C. It is at this point where cold water from Mediterranean Sea enters into Atlantic Ocean which makes swimming even more difficult. He started to shiver with cold with this sudden drop in temperature. But with 5km more to go Rohan swam in spite of all the obstacles as he saw the tri-colour waving high on boat. That gave him a positive energy for crossing the remaining distance. He successfully reached Morocco 4.55PM in evening.
Rohan was the last swimmer this season to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar. Usually nobody dare to swim channel without wetsuit after October due to start of winter. Water as well as air temperature dropped significantly in Europe. Rohan took a brave decision and swam across the Strait of Gibraltar at Start of Winter in Europe.