How It All Began
Sometimes I do weird things. And this time, you can thank JustAbout.com for challenging me to recreate the biggest tribute to EVE Online in the real world.
I wasn’t planning to make a post about it at first, but somewhere along the way, it started to feel like a thriller. So I decided to document it as a journal: how it started, how it went, and what I learned along the way.
“You’re not just building a tribute; you became part of it.”
– Somewhere between day 5 and complete madness
But before we dive in, here’s an important disclaimer:
⚠️ Swimming in open sea is always dangerous. Do not attempt anything like this unless you are 100% sure of what you’re doing. I swim as a sport and was prepared. I knew the local currents and always did my attempts with another person watching from shore, ready to react in case anything went wrong. Rip currents are one of the most dangerous and underestimated hazards. Learn more on Wikipedia. Safety first—always.
The Challenge
Alright, so the challenge is quite open-ended: Create the largest real-life tribute to EVE Online.
I started thinking about what I could do. I have a DIY 3D printer, but the build plate is only 20 cm wide. Even if I printed parts of a ship, there’s no way it would qualify as “the largest”. Next, I considered wood or cardboard, but again—at best, I’d get something a few meters wide.
And then I had an idea: what if I created something on a real map, something visible to others through GPS services? A tribute that could be discovered by other local athletes. Maybe they’d wonder what it is… or maybe, just maybe, one of them is a capsuleer and would instantly recognize the shape.
Imagine me, a human pencil, drawing something in the real world—but also virtually. This tribute would last as long as GPS services and the internet do, and it would be visible to the public. With that in mind, I started to plan the project.
Picking the Ship
First, I needed to pick a silhouette. I decided on a titan due to their massive size. I tried several and eventually picked the Avatar—it’s iconic and familiar to most capsuleers.
The Avatar in-game is about 13,700 meters long, so if I wanted to stick to scale, the tribute would stretch over 32 to 35 kilometers. That’s a total joke for a cyclist like me. But honestly, I can’t even remember when I shifted from “It should be authentic scale” to “Whatever, size doesn’t matter—let’s just make it more challenging.” And I switched from cycling… to swimming. 😄
The Challenge Log
Day 1: Picking the Place and Scale
The first problem I needed to solve: how big should the tribute be, and where can I fit it?
As mentioned, the Avatar is ~13,700 meters long from head to tail (or whatever it’s called on ships). I decided to go with 1:48 scale, like a typical diecast model. That gave me a final length of around 300 meters, with a width of about 120 meters—roughly a 1-kilometer signature radius.
That sounded reasonable. And doable.
I started to look for a proper place where the currents wouldn’t threaten my life. Eventually, I found a great spot between a marina and a nearby cape. Here’s the design picture:
Day 2: Drawing the Actual Path
I took a side screenshot of the ship, and my wife (the digital designer) traced it into a clean silhouette. Then, using mapping software, I started reproducing the shape by planting coordinate points. The result was a .gpx file with a full series of GPS coordinates I needed to follow. Sounds easy-peasy, right?
Well, first issue: my Galaxy Watch 7 doesn’t support GPX file uploads!
After googling for solutions and even trying to enable developer mode on the watch for a few hours, I gave up. I decided to just go out and swim by memory and see how it goes.
Day 3: First Attempt
The Cyprus sun has a UV index of 10 or even 11+, so despite being partially submerged in water, I could only do this either early in the morning or after 5 PM—but before the sun went down. I brought a snorkel mask and tube, intending to navigate by memory. But…
Total disaster. This isn’t a swimming pool with helpful lane lines. I got disoriented almost instantly. And I couldn’t even pull my head up easily—the mask kept fogging up due to the temperature difference.
Here’s how it went:
Day 4: Second Attempt
This time, I swapped the snorkel for regular swimming goggles, which let me see both above and below the water. No breathing pipe. I also decided to cheat a little and use flippers to move faster. Turns out it was a bad idea! My legs kept cramping, which is both painful and extremely dangerous in open water. I stopped instantly and returned home. No to flippers for me.
Day 5: Third Attempt
Gear: just swim goggles, oh, and swimming trunks, of course!
That day, the current was noticeably stronger. After completing about 50% of the route, I felt a heavy sideways drag and decided to end the session. Still, it wasn’t a complete failure. I reviewed the GPS track and saw that my blind navigation was getting better—still bad, but much better than the first try.
Day 5: Fourth Attempt
Everything was going great—until I got pulled over by a lifeguard.
Apparently, my Avatar titan was drifting slightly outside the designated swimming zone. It was a public beach, and the lifeguard wasn’t too thrilled about me swimming beyond the safety buoys.
Still, I started recognizing underwater features (like large rocks and algae clusters) as turn points. Above water, I used palm trees, a local café, and the shoreline to gauge distance. Progress!
Day 6: Fifth Attempt
I didn’t change the path. Instead, I simply arrived early in the morning, before the lifeguard showed up (do not try this at home!).
That day brought noticeable waves—around 70 cm high. Not critical, but they required proper technique and made some swimming styles less efficient. I decided not to risk it. You definitely don’t want to get tired 150 meters from shore.
Day 9: Sixth Attempt
I skipped two days. Swimming around 6 km, especially after repeated attempts, put real strain on my muscles. Most of my training is in cycling and running—so my arms were the weak link. At that point, I realized: I’m not just building a tribute—I’ve become part of it.
After some proper rest, I returned to the water and completed what felt like a nearly perfect session—or at least I thought so, until I got home and discovered the GPS had glitched. It failed to record about 20% of my track, simply teleporting me in a straight line to cover up its failure. Thanks, technology…
Day 15: I Stopped Counting Attempts
At this point, it started to feel like a roguelite game—you keep retrying the level, and each boss fight gets a little easier.
I’d learned the path. The “drawing” became better and more consistent with every attempt—except for a few when GPS clearly glitched and didn’t record properly.
It might sound like I was suffering (fifteen days to draw one ship?), but honestly, it became a routine: Swim a 1 km loop. Draw the Avatar. And I didn’t just want to finish—I wanted it to be perfect. Otherwise, why bother, right?
Operation Avatar: Docking Achieved
So here it is: a final result of 300 x 112 meters, or roughly 1:48 scale Avatar titan, permanently docked off the northwest coast of a Cyprus beach.
Here’s the full GPS track on Strava, recorded on the final successful run:
If you ever find yourself on the northwest coast of Cyprus, swim the tribute Avatar loop and grab a fantastic gelato from the local café while watching the sunset. You earned it, capsuleer.
Cheers. 🫡
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