Atlantic City Around-the-Island Marathon Swim

Country

$150

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$100

$100

Conditions 7/24/04: The 8:00am start had a moderate N wind of 5 kts. (see chart below for the wind record for the day). The forecast from the major forecasters was wind direction of SE to 5-10 kts becoming Easterly. The wind did increase in the afternoon to about 10-12 kts. The city streets funneled the wind more like NW and the ocean was extremely flat. No chop at all. The northerly wind pushed the current and the row boats towards Longport and we saw record race times coming into Longport. We did not have the thunder storms that were so widely predicted. The swimmers and coaches at the medical meeting were all concerned about it and engaged in an extended circular discussion about it. Fortunately for us, we never had any precipitation at all.  It turned out to be really great day with overcast skies to protect us all from the sun and cool us much more than the high heat and humid days of the last week. The ocean water temp. reduced to 73 degrees in the ocean and surprisingly REDUCED to 72 degrees in the back bay. The swimmers fought the incoming tide of the Absecon Inlet but caught a very strong incoming tide at Longport.  The lead men swimmers rounded the Longport Jetty about 10:30am, with the first woman (Angela Maurer) rounding the jetty around 11:00am. The incoming tide at Lonport was strong and carried them all swiftly into the back bay. Even the Longport jetty area was smooth with very little chop. Swimmers enjoyed the incoming tide lift all the way until the Dorset Ave. bridge where it was slack. Current was slack until they passed the rail road bridge in which the current started to ebb. As they swam closer to the finish, the ebb tide was stronger and stronger. The swimmers reached their peak ebb tide at Harrah's Casino and the Brigantine Bridge. Tides: 

(Data taken from the Coastal Monitoring Network, The Ocean Life Center, Atlantic City, NJ web site http://cmn.dl.stevens-tech.edu/cgi-bin/cmn3.pl )