German professor to swim Tennessee River, test its waters.
Andreas Fath hopes his swim down the Tennessee River goes a little better than one he took down the Rhine River in Germany in 2014.
“I was almost dead when I finished,” said Fath, 52, a professor at Furtwangen University in Germany.
You come close to the river and you speak to the people there.” More than 650 miles to go Fath finished all 766 miles of the Rhine is 28 days.
Although the Tennessee has fewer miles at 652, it has other issues that have him thinking swimming it will take 30 to 35 days.
On the Rhine, there was just one lake, Lake Constance.” Fath, a lifelong competitive swimmer, said he is confident he can complete the swim.
Hopefully, he’ll finish a little more than a month later at the river’s mouth in Paducah, Ky. He’ll swim about eight hours a day and hopes to cover 20 or more miles each day.
“One thing many people don’t understand is that when you’re in water you don’t have to carry your own weight,” Fath said.
American vs. European river “It will be interesting to compare what we find in an American river to what there was in a European river,” he said.
We’ll also want to know if that technology is good enough to protect the water.” Knoll said some of the tests will yield results on the spot, while others will take shipment to labs and several weeks before results are received.