Three has always been the number associated with ‘charm’, but for Bartłomiej “Foka” Kubkowski’s, it was five, as that is how many attempts it took to swim across the Baltic Sea.
On Sunday at around 8 pm local time, the swimmer came ashore at Dziwnów beach in Poland, which was a condition for completing the challenge.
In total, he swam 160 km in 55 hours. His feat helped the Cancer Fighters Foundation raise nearly 850,000 zlotys (€197,421) for the fight against cancer, and the fundraising campaign is still ongoing.
Several previous attempts to swim across the Baltic Sea ended for the record-holder almost at the final stretch. He came closest to breaking the record in 2025, when he swam 159 km, falling just 11 km short of his goal.
As Kacper Dereń, a member of the swimmer’s support team, said in an interview with Polish media, the record-holder was well aware that the greatest fatigue sets in after the 50th hour.
“By then, the body is so exhausted that it demands an end to the effort. It was much the same this time. At one point, Bartek began, quite unexpectedly, to change the direction of his swim. Then he’d stop and ask where on earth we were heading,” Dereń was quoted saying.
Kubkowski swam without being able to touch the support boat, and his meals were served to him on special booms. He also had to contend with high waves and low water temperatures, which were as low as 16 degrees Celsius off the Swedish coast.
Another member of the athlete’s team, Marcin Cieślak, spoke about the “brutal training sessions” the record-holder undertook before setting off on his fifth expedition.
“Bartek decided to swim at the start of the year and since then has been undergoing gruelling training sessions, which sometimes lasted as long as a day and a half. He pulled all-nighters, swam at night, and covered dozens of kilometres in the pool,” said Cieślak.
‘Hallucinations and a bottle of Coca-Cola’
Kacper Dereń also revealed that, during the final stretch, Kubkowski began to experience hallucinations. However, the swimmer, well aware that he was losing control of his body, quickly informed the support team for intervention, such as receiving additional meals to power his body.
“As for the hallucinations, towards the end of the swim Bartek (a nickname derived from the swimmer’s first name Bartłomiej) told us he was seeing all sorts of strange things,” said Dereń.
“What worried me more, though, was the loss of consciousness and those odd questions. “From previous attempts, we knew that something like this could happen and we knew how to react. Today we laugh about it,” Dereń added.
Kubkowski was also said to have lost his bearings and asked crew members where he was swimming. As the team members emphasised, this is a natural bodily reaction after such a long, uninterrupted effort.
The record-breaker was also helped on the final leg by a bottle of Coca-Cola thrown into the sea by the support team. When Kubkowski came across it, he asked the team members if he could really have a drink of it.
“When he got the go-ahead, he was over the moon,” Kacper Dereń told the media.
After coming out of the sea, the record-breaker was immediately taken to a local hospital for a full medical examination. Asked shortly after coming ashore what it felt like to swim across the Baltic Sea, he replied that he was “so tired that he doesn’t know yet”.