Guy Delage claims he is the first person to swim solo across the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

 (with the help of a kick board, from the Cape Verde Islands to Barbados

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

). 16 December 1994.
Logging six to eight hours a day behind a 15 feet (4.6 m) raft that carried his communications gear and food supply, Delage ate and slept on the craft when not in the water. After 55 days he had covered 2100 nmi (3,889.2 km).

Doubts about accomplishment

Delage's swim was not supervised. The New York Times published an article expressing several concerns that had been voiced:

• The possibility that, since he was unsupervised, he was lying about some aspect of his accomplishment.

• When not swimming, he slept on a raft which, all by itself, would have carried him across the ocean due to currents. The more he slept, the less distance he would have swum. There is no way to verify his log's claims about hours swimming.

• Since Delage could not have towed the raft, it must have had a sail or other propulsion. French newspapers observed that the raft could have been towing him.

See also

• Benoît Lecomte
  Benoit Lecomte
  Benoît Lecomte is a French long distance swimmer who has received wide credit for being the first man to swim across the Atlantic Ocean without a kick board in 1998. He did this to raise money for cancer research as a tribute to his father...
  
  , the first person to swim across the Atlantic without a kick board