The Saltstraumen Crossing 2016
After the River Eden adventure the brothers split up and went back to their respective cities. Robbie left for Berlin to work on his new exhibition. Calum returned to the lidos and juddering trains of London. And Jack went back to Newcastle and began to write about the Eden swim…
A few months passed before the brothers felt the lure of the world map again. This time they scanned the globe and pored over charts and maps and picked out unexplored waters. They wanted to do something on a bigger scale. It had to be something that scared them. Something that pushed them and tested their bond. Keeping all this in mind, Calum dreamed-up the ‘Into the Maelstrom’ expedition, in partnership with WWF-Norge. And soon it was suddenly agreed - they would be heading up into the Arctic Circle to attempt a swim no one had ever done before.
Into the Maelstrom was a world-first attempt to swim across the planet’s biggest and most powerful maelstroms: the Moskstraumen and Saltstraumen. Swirling violently off the Norwegian coastlines, these cauldrons of turbulent water possess the strongest and fastest tidal currents in the ocean. The Moskstraumen was made famous by Edgar Allan Poe's A Descent into the Maelstrom and Jules Verne's ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’. But this was uncharted territory. No one had attempted to swim these whirlpools before. It meant the brothers were bound for unknown waters and untested currents. They would also have to contend with the icy (5-9C) waters of the Arctic Circle, as well as over 600 orcas rumoured to be roaming the Lofoten Islands - not to mention the infamous lion’s mane jellyfish, capable of growing bigger than a human.
The first swim was across the Saltstraumen - a frantic sprint across a 0.25km tidal split with the world's fastest currents. The submerged seamounts funnel up to 400,000,000 cubic metres of swirling seawater through a 3km long and 250-metre wide strait every six hours. Within this frantic wash of currents the water can reach speeds of up to 25mph.
The brothers completed this swim in a chaotic 10-minute window. They dodged red jellyfish and fought vagaries of bubbling pressure that jolted them onto disorientated courses. But they made it to the other side under the supervision of their loyal team (Luke, Beth, James, Dave and ship captain Knut Westvig).
As it turned out the margin between success and failure had been less than one minute. The central current suddenly turned as they clambered into the boat! It was an experience none of them would ever forget.
