The world-record setting Ventura Deep Six Relay Team is the home stretch of its 202-mile nonstop Pacific Ocean swim.
At around 10:30 a.m. Monday, the swimmers were 3.74 miles from the end of their long, arduous, courageous, body-numbing journey that started at Ventura Harbor, went to Santa Barbara’s Stearns and continued on to La Jolla Cove in San Diego.
They are expected to arrive in La Jolla Cove at around 1 p.m. A post-swim celebration is slated later in the day at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Mission Bay.
The team of masters swimmers Jim McConica, Jim Neitz, Dr. John Chung, Mike Shaffer, Kurtis Baron and Tom Ball have spent the last four nights and five days swimming one-hour long intervals down the Southern California coast to establish a new record for the longest continuous open-water swim relay. The previous record was 78.2 miles, set on a triple crossing of Lake Taupo in New Zealand. The Ventura Deep Six surpassed that record on Friday night at 11:45 p.m.
Their journey has captured the attention of people around the world. As of Monday morning, they had 1,008 visitors to the Facebook page.
The team members swim for the Ventura County Masters program of the Buenaventura Swim Club.
