Endurance athlete attempts to swim between Caribbean islands

Endurance athlete Cameron Bellamy will attempt an unprecedented 150km swim from Barbados to St Lucia on Friday in an effort to complete the longest ocean swim in history.

The attempt, which is dependent on ocean currents and the weather, has been hastily arranged after he had to abandon a planned 166km swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys, which he said was stopped by American authorities.

“I was denied the licence for my support boat to make the trip, the U.S. government is very hawkish on Cuba right now and declined everything,” Bellamy told Reuters in a telephone interview from Barbados.

Instead he has arranged an equally testing alternative.

“We’ve managed to put the planning for this one together in just a matter of weeks. Last year I did a 41-hour swim around Barbados of 100km — the fourth longest unassisted swim ever — which has me mentally confident about tackling the longer distance and I’ve been training pretty hard for the last six months.”

Read Reuters