Bell who marked his 70th birth anniversary by crossing the Tinian channel last month, wants to swim around Saipan this time.
His friends on Saipan will drive him at 8 a.m., tomorrow at Wing Beach where he will start swimming all the way to the Bird Island.
He started braving the waters of Saipan last July 4 at the Sugar Dock in Chalan Kanoa for the first segment of his around-the-island swim the same way he did on Guam shoreline during his active tour of duty in US Navy in 1980.
Doing it clockwise, Bell started swimming 5.37miles from Sugar Dock to the Hafa Adai Hotel Beach aiming to complete the challenge in the next few weeks before he would prepare himself for another one—to swim from Papua New Guinea to Australia.
In his second segment on July 9, he crossed the lagoon and the channel as he swam from Hafa Adai Beach to Managaha.
Without getting out of the water, he kept swimming around the small island before heading north swimming along the channel all the way to Charlie Dock in Lower Base to complete 4.67 miles.
On July 12, he went to the exact point where he landed on Charlie Dock to swim again all the way to Paupau Beach in Tanapag to finish 4.62 miles in less than five hours.
Having reviewed Saipan’s map, Bell did not want to swim just around the visible land mass. He wanted to cover even the elongated reef that extends from the island’s eastern shoreline to Managaha.
On July 19, Bell’s friend, Daniel Villegas drove him to Wing Beach where he started swimming outside that reef all the way to Managaha then, swam back to Wing Beach.
Starting at 9: 40 a.m., he finished the 6.18 miles and was back on Wing Beach at 5:30 p.m.
While he was doing that, Bell mentally recorded salient sights and experience in the water so that he could write them down his notes when he gets off the water afterwards.
“If something worth-recording happens or I see something very interesting, I’d look at my watch and kept those in my mind,” Bell said.
In his younger years, he said he could record at least 15 items in his mind. He can still do it now but not as much as he could before. “I’m 70 years old now.”
So every time he saw shark come by, or spotted a hotel building on the island or got excited about thorny starfishes, “I kept track of them, look at the time and put them on notebook at home.”
Bell swam from Tinian to Saipan last month to complete what he started when crossed the channel from Saipan to Tinian marking his retirement from US Navy in 1981.
