Bartłomiej Kubkowski first attempted to swim across the Baltic Sea in 2021. He made it 71 miles (115 kilometers) before the sea stopped him. He came back in 2022 and got 73 miles (117 kilometers). In 2023, snow fell on him in mid-August and his team pulled him out at 81 miles (130 kilometers). In 2025, his fourth attempt, he swam for over 52 hours and made it 99 miles (159 kilometers), just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the Polish coast, before exhaustion and deteriorating conditions forced him out of the water.
Across four failed attempts, he had swum 324 miles (521 kilometers) of the Baltic Sea without ever reaching Poland.
He came back in 2026.
On Friday, July 31, Kubkowski entered the water at Kåseberga on the southern coast of Sweden. The rules were simple and brutal: no sleeping, no touching the support boat at any point, no stopping. Food and fluids were passed to him on a pole while he kept swimming. He had to reach the beach in Dziwnów, Poland, under his own power and remain standing without assistance for the achievement to count.
For the first day, he swam. For the second day, he swam. After two consecutive nights without sleep, the hallucinations started. His team later described moments when he lost touch with reality entirely, his mind going somewhere else while his body kept pulling stroke after stroke through cold Baltic water.
After Four Failed Attempts, He Finally Swam 100 Miles Across the Baltic Sea
