SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land for the first time in almost a month.
Reaching a beach in Trinidad on Thursday, the Aspen resident became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean.
The 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa’s western coast on Jan. 12, swimming about 250 miles through strong winds and waves of up to 30 feet. She now plans to swim from Trinidad to the British Virgin Islands, ending her odyssey at the Bitter End Yacht Club in late February.
Then it’s home to Aspen — where she trained for months in an outdoor pool amid blizzards — to reunite with her Alaskan Malamute.
“My dog doesn’t know where I am,” she told The Associated Press. “It’s time for me to get back home to Hank.”
The dog swirled in her thoughts, as did family and friends, as Figge stroked through the chilly Atlantic waters escorted by a sailboat. She saw a pod of pilot whales, several turtles, dozens of dolphins, plenty of Portuguese man-of-war — but no sharks. The Associated Press
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, the Associated Press story incorrectly stated the distance Jennifer Figge of Aspen swam across the Atlantic. Figge swam only a fraction of the 700-mile journey.
The rest of the time, she rested on her crew’s westward-sailing catamaran. Her spokesman, David Higdon, told AP on Tuesday that her
total swimming distance has not been calculated but that due to ocean hazards, including inclement weather, he estimates she swam
about 250 miles.
