Destinations: Swimming the Hellespont

For years I have been fascinated by the Hellespont, the dangerous strait in northwestern Turkey that joins the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara and separates Europe from Asia. There, so the story goes, a Greek princess named Helle, trying to escape her stepmother aboard a flying ram with golden fleece, slipped and plunged into the salty channel that has ever since borne her name. Young Helle probably had little chance of swimming to safety, even had she survived her fall. An overwhelming southwest current flows from the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean—treacherous going for any boat, let […]