Tag: cape cod bay

Pilgrim’s Regress

Today, I drove to Plymouth MA to pick up a Zodiac hull that I will be outfitting, over the next couple of months, with a new motor, new tubes, new electronics, and a customized top designed to store a variety of safety gear and facilitate the clear display of warning/caution/swimmer banners slightly above eye-level. This seems to be the logical progression for a swimmer obsessed… have boat; will/can travel. Of course, there is the tiny detail of needing willing/able/capable pilots… more on that plan soon.

Since I have been thinking about a swim from Plymouth to Provincetown for some time now, I decided to take a small detour to White Horse Beach, which would be the logical start for this swim. Taylor Road runs parallel to the beach and is fairly close to the high water line, but there are many beach cottages, at times crammed four deep between the pavement and the sand… some on stilts, and only a very few appeared to be set up for winter occupancy. To say the neighborhood was quiet on this Saturday in January would be an understatement. Still, there were a few dog walkers on the beach, and as I was on somewhat of a recon mission, I was determined to have a chat with anyone who might provide a bit of info. Mr. Black Lab – iPod was in a bit of a hurry, but did stop long enough to point in the direction of Provincetown. He was also kind enough to add that it would probably take days to swim that distance… thanks… you can go now… Fido is getting restless…

Cape Cod is a rather narrow and low-lying strip of land that extends from the mainland in a counter-clockwise sweep to the terminal fist that is Provincetown. As the horizon is somewhat less than the 19-20 miles between W-H Beach and P-Town, there was no visible land, but the Pilgrim Monument http://pilgrim-monument.org/monument.html , at 252 feet tall, is the only thing one can see in the distance.

HISTORY

I thought this was a stretch of water begging for a first crossing, but have just recently learned that it has, in-fact, been swum once successfully and attempted several times. According to my friend, (and director of the Boston Light Swim www.bostonlightswim.org) Greg O’Connor:

I did find that many people have attempted the swim from Plymouth to P-town or the reverse, but only Russell Chaffee of Sayre, PA has succeeded. Chaffee was known for his long river swims such as the Susquehanna River (250 miles). He would swim 30 or so miles during day light and get out at night, much like the 8 Bridges.

He swam from Plymouth because of the counter clockwise rotation of the current in Cape Cod bay.

Chaffee made his swim on Wednesday August 14, 1968. He started from Manomet Beach in Plymouth at 4:00AM. This timing coincides with the height of the ebb tide in Plymouth on that day. He finished at Herring Cove Beach just south of Race Point in Provincetown at 6:40PM, about 14 hour and 40 minutes. The distance is about 18.5 miles. He wore no cap, but just goggles and blue swim trunks (or a “skirt” as my friend Pam would say).
Before starting he ate a breakfast of eggs and ham (not green) and during the swim he drank 8 cokes and ate a box of sugar cookies. The tide was still going out when he got to P-town and he had to “work like mad” to finish. Chaffee was 41 at the time.

The first reported attempt for a bay crossing before Chaffee was in 1915. On a bet (most marathon open-water swims back then involved a lot of boasting and money to back it up) Henry Sullivan of Lowell (1st American to cross the EC!) and Samuel Richards of S. Boston left Nantasket way up in Hull and swam for P-town. Charlie Toth of Boston (3rd man to swim the EC) jumped in at the last minute. Richards quit after 5 hours, then Toth after 10. After 14 hour, with 9 miles to go, Sullivan got out.

There were several failed attempts in the 1950s to swim from P-town to Plymouth.

Now, I have to say that this bit of history really adds to the allure of the swim for me, and having a few more friends with an interest in reviving the route is exciting and reassuring.

How many days until summer?

Planning 2012

This is the season…. almost daily, reports are posted of “the last swim of the season” on blogs, tweets and FB. Photos of shivering swimmers under bare trees or skipping through the snow to a sacred splash site are popping up as well.

Though I haven’t been in the OW since Oct. 22, I have plans to get another couple of Coney Island swims in before December hits. Still…. thoughts are deep into the 2012 season.

Rondi and I have begun planning the 2nd annual 8 Bridges event, and we have an updated website.

Plans to open the stages to more swimmers this year will likely mean that I spend a few of the days on the water coordinating swimmer safety with our boaters and kayakers. I am excited to be able to offer OW swimmers the opportunity to experience the beauty of the middle and lower Hudson from our unique perspective.

So… not knowing exactly how much swimming I’ll get in during that week, I’ve started looking more seriously at a few things that have been on the back burner for a while. Logistically, its fairly easy to book a swim with a well established federation and approved pilot. There may very well be a long waiting period, but the process is a given, and one can draw upon the experiences of others to measure expectations. On the other end, planning a new route requires research and on site recon test swims and observations. Without the enthusiastic support of other swim-explorers, I couldn’t imagine spending all the time and resources necessary to realize these swims that have yet to be done.

PLYMOUTH TO P_TOWN

Though NYC Swim’s MIMS is a leg of the Triple Crown, the northeast of the US really doesn’t have a swim to compete with the English Channel. California has Catalina, and a bunch of other possible swims from the chain of islands that make up the Santa Barbara Channel, and so with that in mind I started to look for something that would be as challenging. After a little research, I think I found something that might work. The Cape Cod Bay sees water temps that might reach the mid 60’s in the summer, and from what I’ve read, a current that swirls in a counter-clockwise direction which could make the finish “interesting”. I have the enthusiastic support of two swimmer friends (both who spend a good amount of time on the Cape) Mo Siegal, and Eileen Burke. Both have been talking about about a swim across the bay, and so with our combined effort, I think we can make it happen this year. Though we haven’t formulated our plan yet, this mission will take at least a couple of slow boat rides along the planned route to measure current speeds at different stages of the tides. The good thing about this is we don’t have to wait for the water to warm up to “swimmable” temps, and I think late winter/early spring would be a lovely time to be floating around in a dinghy in the middle of the bay. As the “founders” of the swim, we will also have to decide where the start and finish should be. There appear to be a couple of more obvious options for the start: Whitehorse Beach to Provincetown is just over 19 miles, Gray’s Beach to Provincetown is 25+ miles. I think we are all leaning toward the latter which will put the start a few miles deep into Plymouth Bay and Kingston Bay. This might give the swimmer a couple of hours of tidal assist on an outgoing tide until they exit Plymouth Bay… then the whole anti-clockwise swirl will begin, and we might need to follow a heading due east in order to ride the sweep north to the “fist” for the finish. This is all speculative at this point, and I won’t really know how this all works until we spend a little time on the water.

SIX FINGERS

The number of Finger Lakes is either 11 or 12.

I’ve only swum in one of them… Canandaigua for a 2 mile USMS national championship a couple of years ago. Due to a lightning event, the race was cut short and results relied heavily on the honor system. A few revisions were made days after the event, but still, I’m pretty certain I was robbed… I won’t name names. Moving forward…..

Originally, I was trying to put together a plan to do all 11 (or 12) of them, but after last year’s 8 Bridges, I am pretty resolved to limit my efforts to just a week.

Luckily, there are 6 big’uns so my thoughts are to swim one per day with a break in the middle:

  • SKANEATELES – 16 miles
  • OWASCO – 11 miles
  • CAYUGA – 40 miles
  • ***rest day***
  • SENECA – 38 miles
  • KEUKA – 20 miles
  • CANANDAIGUA – 15.5 miles

I have a ton of legwork to do, including finding boat launches, training crews, water temps, prevailing wind directions, etc

There are a few other swims I’m looking at, but I’ll save them for another post. I’ve also been spending a lot of time looking at support equipment (boats), so stay tuned………….