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

Wednesday, 16 March 2016

Wet, cool and windy

  It "sprinkled" and out right rained on and off all day. The wind was gusty, making the windchill 9 deg. C. Not a fine summer day. Colleen and I braved the water for half an hour; the water was warmer than the air.
  Today we went to the New Zealand Parliament for the tour. Their system of government makes lots of sense to us. No Upper House and citizens get 2 votes - one for their local representative and one for the party they want in government. We went to see the Dreamworks exhibit about the creation of animated movies like Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda.
  No swim tomorrow. We are packing for a Friday a.m. departure (Thursday noon at home) and hoping Philip gives us the go ahead tomorrow night. All my bags are packed, including my angel.
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2 comments:

  1. Solo Swims16 March 2016 at 07:02

    I had one very cold training swim like that in 2014 in Dover harbour with no one else in the water.
    And then . . . 3 days later . . . it dawned with clear-blue sky, flat water, sunny and . . . George Brunstad became the oldest swimmer to cross the Channel.
    Wishing you the best of weather.
    Bryan.

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  2. Solo Swims17 March 2016 at 12:07

    Marilyn has just passed along the link for the SPOT Tracker on Philip Rush`s boat that they will be using today for her Cook Strait swim.
    Don`t expect to see any points or traces until they start.
    Note that the link has to be entered as one continuous line of text:
    http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0I4vTknmXY0A4NVmUcYpRK73PF1njTax0

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