Cocos Crossing

This Memorial Day weekend was the 16th annual Cocos Crossing. This is a chance for a couple hundred slightly masochistic people to get on a ferry way too early in the morning and ride two and a half miles out to Cocos Island off the southern coast of Guam. Then, get in the water and swim back to Guam. Perhaps I am doubly so, because it was the second year I did it. 🙂
Here’s the island and the approximate swim route.

Anna stayed on the big island and hung out waiting for us to return. The winner made the trip in 42 minutes. He was a swimmer from Japan. I, on the other hand, took an hour and eight minutes to make the crossing. That’s a couple minutes faster than last year, so I was pleased. Especially since I hadn’t been in the water since April 1st at the Saipan X-Terra triathlon.
Here I am coming in and getting out of the water.



This year, we even had Miss Guam Tourism on hand to congratulate the finishers. Of course, Anna made me get a picture with the girl in the tiara. 🙂

It was a fun race, and the really only issue was about 400 meters from the finish, I got a little jellyfish sting. Don’t worry, it was no worse than a bee sting and went away relatively quickly. 🙂
Here are a few of the ladies from the base who also did the swim.

It was a good morning, and I didn’t feel bad at all having a large fried breakfast!
Until the next adventure…
–Jim