Some useful tips from Jaimie and Arik
Arik and Jaimie have very kindly put together a few useful tips to pass on to you and your crew.
1. If you use warm liquid feeds, invest in a stainless steel 3 liter thermos that you can fill. For us this lasts 6 hours and keeps the team from constantly having to mix the feeds. We purchased the Oggi pumpmaster stainless steel 3L beverage server (https://www.amazon.com/Oggi-102-Ounce-Pumpmaster-Stainless-Action/dp/B000I1WJPU) but anything like that will work. DON'T get anything glass lined, made that mistake once and I broke it on the boat.
2. Set and try to stick to a sleep schedule with your other crew mate. I went the full time and you get a little loopy, some sleep would have been nice.
3. If you want to keep people updated through social media on your phone, you need a Swiss AND a French sim card. I only had a Swiss one and therefor did not have service for about 1/2 the swim. I'm guessing that if you have a French card you can have service but maybe there are just not any towers in that area.
4. When lighting the boat at night it is nice to have a couple of colors on your lights or glow sticks. Discuss with your swimmer beforehand what color will mark the middle of the boat so they can sight off that light in the night.
5. Also when lighting the boat, discuss how you want to light the bow. The bow curves toward the middle of the boat and the swimmer can get confused thinking the bow light and the next light back are a straight line. This leads the swimmer directly in front of the boat - not good!
6. We like to do an ibuprofen right at sunset. Since this is an anti-inflammatory it helps ward off some sunburn. If your swimmer is already taking a lot of painkillers or having kidney problems I would not do this.
7. It can get surprisingly cold at night as the air is very damp. A waterproof rain jacket over a fleece is nice, a winter hat can come in handy too, and I rarely go anywhere without my wool socks.
8. We broke the swim into 3 stages so we could track our progress. Looking at the map it was the 1st major bump, then past the corner so it's a straight shot to the finish, and finally the finish. Each stage is a bit shorter than the previous one but we were expecting a drop-off in speed which kept the times in each section similar.
9. In the final section of lake we don't know if there was a slight counter current, dead water, or if the outcropping was deceptively far away but approaching Collonge-Bellerive TOOK FOREVER. If it is a current thing, maybe they will have figured out a better way to navigate. If it's an optical illusion - stay strong, you'll get there!
10. At the finish, there is a current that will push the swimmer left, into the shipping lane. At the start of the swim the swimmer would have no trouble with this push but after swimming the lake it can come into play. Aim far right, the farther you are away from the opening of the shipping lane, the less powerful the current.
11. Figure out how you are getting home after the swim. There are bike cabs, and regular cabs. We walked to our hotel but this may not work if your hotel is not close or the swimmer/crew are very tired.
12. We wanted to bring all of our own water for the feeds as we didn't know what was available on the boat and if there was a water tank, would there be any bacteria that we were not used to that could lead to issues. Use a rolling suit case - that stuff is heavy.
If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'd be happy to help. It is a challenging swim, a beautiful lake, and some wonderful people. Good luck, I'll be rooting for you.
Arik Thormahlen and Jaimie Monahan
Find out more about Jaimie’s amazing swimming exploits on her website jaimiemonahan.com