Welcome to my 2016 swim website. For those of you who don't know me, I swam Lake Ontario the easy way in 1983 and the hard way in 1984. I “came out of retirement" to swim the English Channel (oldest Canadian woman) in 2011. In 2013, I was the oldest Canadian to swim the Catalina strait in California. After swimming around Manhattan Island (oldest Canadian) in 2014, I became the first Canadian to complete the Triple Crown of open water swimming (English Channel, Catalina Strait and Manhattan.) Last year I was the first to swim between three provinces: from Nova Scotia north to New Brunswick and across the Northumberland Strait to Prince Edward Island (34 kms). This year on March 18, I became the first Canadian and the oldest woman ever to swim the icy and turbulent Cook Strait between the south and north islands in New Zealand. (See links below for more detail.)

On August 11, 2016, I hope to become the first Canadian to swim from Plymouth to Provincetown, Massachusetts, across Cape Cod Bay. This “P2P” swim has only been accomplished by 6 people (all American), although the swim has been attempted numerous times since 1915. The swim from Manomet Beach in Plymouth to Herring Cove Beach in Provincetown is about 32 kilometers. The biggest challenge is the current which circulates in a counter-clockwise direction around the relatively shallow bay. The water temperature is expected to be between 16 and 21 degrees Celsius. The swim is officiated by the Massachusetts Open Water Swimming Association (MOWSA), whose rules are based on the English Channel rules. https://massopenwaterswimming.com/

I am pleased to be able to use this opportunity to raise money for Sashbear, an organization founded by Lynn Courey, whose daughter, Sasha, a swimmer with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), died by suicide in 2011. Sashbear funds education programs for therapists, families and in schools. I have dedicated my psychiatric career to the treatment and research of BPD, which has a suicide rate of 10%. More treatment programs and support for families are desperately needed in Canada. Please support my swim by donating to Sashbear. Thank you. http://sashbear.org/en/

Across Cape Cod Bay:

Across Cape Cod Bay:
Across Cape Cod Bay: Plymouth to Provincetown

Monday, 14 March 2016

CHCH TV tonight

   I did an interview for the 6 pm CHCH TV news today. The link is on the Sashbear website. www.sashbear.org.
  After the interview I went for an hour swim in 15 deg C water in Owhiro Bay. I think the Cook Strait temperature is going to be somewhere in between the 19 degrees of Oriental Bay downtown and Owhiro Bay, which is almost on the Strait. The winds have stirred up the near shore waters.
  Then we went to the Otari-Wilton's Bush gardens of New Zealand plants. The giant ferns and towering trees were amazing. It was like being in a jungle. There was even a ariel walkway through the treetops. An interesting story - the rata tree starts out in the branches of the giant rimu tree and sends dozens of roots down to the ground that surround the rimu tree and eventually kill it. The roots join up and make a pseudotrunk.
  No swim tomorrow. Thursday doesn't look too good either due to strong southerly winds but Friday here looks good.


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