Long Distance Feat in Fathoms Deep
By Ann Powell
Photos by Larry French
Swimmers wait on the shore of Sandy Point State Park for what's known as the "Cuisinart Start" of the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim.
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Imagine swimming across the Chesapeake Bay. Would you survive the 4.4 miles of cross
currents, chop, extreme water temperatures, seasickness, nettle stings, and maybe even
collisions with the barnacle-covered Bay Bridge supports? And could you endure the
flailing arms and legs of your competitors during the “Cuisinart Start”—the jam-packed
launch of the popular Great Chesapeake Bay Swim?
One of the country’s premier open-water challenges, the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim
(GCBS) charitable fundraiser takes place annually on the second Sunday of June. The
beach start at Sandy Point State Park, just outside of Annapolis, occurs in two waves, with
the fastest qualifying half of the 650 valiant swimmers starting in the second heat. The
course extends eastward between the two Bay Bridge spans and finishes on a sandy Kent
Island beach near Hemingway’s Restaurant.
Becoming a GCBS swimmer is no small commitment. Would-be participants must
document their recent completion of an open-water swim event or their success at a timed
three-mile pool swim. These athletes are not all spring chickens—the average age of the
swimmers is 42. Since the early nineties, 10,000 gutsy swimmers have completed the cross-
Bay swim, but this grand achievement is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many. Less
than half of these hearty souls return in later years to try this daunting undertaking again.
The camaraderie among those who do come back for more crosses generations, gender,
and skill levels. Annapolis resident and accountant Andy Grannell, 62, participated in
his 24th swim last summer. Bill Shipp, 49, an attorney from Mitchellville who completed
his third swim last summer, calls himself “a newbie in the scheme of things.” Grannell and
Shipp are part of the Arundel Breakfast Club, a colorful, informal group of open water
junkies, pool swimmers, and triathletes.
Sporting, in jest, their fish-shaped Arundel Breakfast Club (ABC) press-on tattoos, the
club members prepare by swimming together seven days a week. “We are a social club with
a swimming problem,” laughs Al Gruber, a 53-year-old member who completed his 13th
Chesapeake Bay Swim in 2009. The group swims together indoors for 80 minutes each
weekday morning before heading to their day jobs as lawyers, engineers, doctors, and “IT
guys.”
Club member John Avallone, an Annapolis pediatric ophthalmologist, completed his
fourth swim last summer at age 51. “The challenge forces me out of my comfort zone—
the trial and hardship help me to know myself better and to grow. The swim is a mental
game, an effort to stay positive and focused,” John observed afterwards.
As soon as the Bay water reaches a barely tolerable temperature in May, the Club
members are on the dock at Sally and Jack Iliff ’s home on Crab Creek, where they work
out on Saturdays and Sundays in open water conditions. Iliff, an attorney who has completed the Bay Swim 10 times, was celebrating her 64th birthday as she
donned her wetsuit for the 2009 swim. Her husband Jack is an ophthalmologist
by profession and a Severn River native who has 13 Bay Swims, an
English Channel relay, a Manhattan Island relay, and numerous top-10
swimming awards under his belt.
Swimmers complete the grueling challenge, finishing near Hemingway's on Kent Island.
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Shipp noted before last summer’s race, “After the melee at the start,
you find your own space and settle into a pace. You have to be mindful of
the current because if you drift outside the pylons of either bridge, they
yank you out. I try not to think about 4.4 miles. Just get to the next pylon,
then the next, then the one-mile buoy, then the two-mile buoy.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) helps
to select the optimal start time for the race by collecting high-tech information
on weather, tides, wind, and currents. In the event’s early years, most
participants could not finish the swim and were plucked from the Bay
because of overwhelmingly strong currents. Due to NOAA’s involvement,
approximately 80 percent of the swimmers now complete the swim.
Brian Earley founded what is now the GCBS with a solo swim in
1982. Nowadays, the point-to-point race is professionally organized by
New Jersey-based Lin-Mark Computer Sports, Inc., which manages
swims, cycling races, and triathlons up and down the east coast.
Owners Linda and Mark Toretsky handle registrations, swimmer identification,
and race time reporting. The 2009 squad of 650 swimmers
drew from 39 states and ranged in age from 14 to 74. While the Bay
crossing is underway, the organizers also manage a one mile circular
swim off the Hemingway’s Restaurant beach in which about 360 swimmers
participate, some as young as 10.
But the real heart and soul comes from Swim Director Chuck
Nabit. A real estate developer with three Bay Swim completions of his
own, Nabit has led the swim for 18 years, helping to raise over $1.5
million for charity. The proceeds go to the March of Dimes, the
Chesapeake Bay Trust, and other local charities.
Nabit and the other GCBS nonprofit leaders give countless volunteer
hours to ensure the safety of the army of athletes. “For 18 years,
I’ve been standing on this beach sending people off to a great experience.
It’s controlled insanity,” he notes between radio communications
with “RaceCom”—one of the fleet of safety vessels. “We put a lot of
time and energy into making the swim’s organization as crisp as possible.
My job here today is to account for each and every one of the
swimmers with the Coast Guard.”
Like a school of fish, the first wave of swimmers is tight at the race's start.
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Each swimmer wears a computer chip ankle band that records the
start and finish times to the second as the wearer crosses an electronic
mat. The 2009 men’s fastest swimmer was 38-year-old Brian Benda of
Parkton, Maryland, while 20-year old Erin Luley of Mechanicsburg,
Pennsylvania earned the women’s fastest time. Seventeen-year-old
Taylor Smith of Arnold made the fastest crossing in the youngest age
group. These winners finished in just over an hour and a half.
As the swimmers mill around the Sandy Point beach awaiting the
race start, it is clear that sheer athleticism is the order of the day Muscular, fit, tall, and broad-shouldered in their black body-length wet
suits, goggles, and colorful swim caps—this is no ordinary sampling of
humanity. New Jersey’s Mike Doyle completed his 23th Bay Swim in
2009. Doyle’s muscular shoulders and extreme fitness make up for his
loss of one leg—his other passion is sled ice hockey.
The tawny colored sand is hot underfoot as the 2009 Great
Chesapeake Bay Swim is about to begin. A warm breeze blows steadily
from the northwest, bending the tall beach grass against the temporary
green mesh fence that encloses the start area and holds back the cheering
spectators. A serene blue sky dotted with cotton-ball white clouds
and circling police helicopters shimmers over the waves rolling onto the
beach. A never-ending ribbon of cars streams westward across the near
span of the Bay Bridge, and the water surface glints off the hulls of vessels
scattered along the swim course to ensure the athletes’ safety.
Seagulls squawk overhead as Chuck Nabit takes up his megaphone for
the countdown.
Rolling on the waves in the distance are two multi-colored mooring
buoys marking the entry to the swim lane between the twin spans of the
Bay Bridge. Any swimmer who inadvertently leaves the lane defined by
the inner bridge pylons is automatically disqualified and pulled from the
water. In the pre-swim meeting, Nabit warns the swimmers to avoid the
“dangerous sharp rocks, barnacles, and trash” lurking around the bridge
piers. “Do not get yourself hung up on the piers or you will be pulled
from the water—don’t get lulled into some nether-region where you’re
not concentrating on what you’re doing.”
Indeed, the swimmers talk of “finding a rhythm with the chop” and
finding a new muscle group to use when their shoulders tire of the endless
stroking. The slower swimmers who cannot reach the one, two, and
three mile points within specified times are automatically disqualified.
They are pulled from the water by a fleet of volunteer boats and taken to
the “DNF pier—the Did Not Finish pier”—at Hemingway’s fuel dock on
the Eastern Shore. In 2009, a hundred swimmers turned in their computerized
ankle bands at the DNF pier. Nabit advises in his pre-swim
meeting, “No shame, no harm, no foul if you decide you want to exit the
course.”
The swimmers’ health and well-being is of the highest priority for
Chuck and his team of 600 volunteers on land and sea. The Chesapeake
Bay Power Boat Association provides over 60 volunteer vessels. The fleet
also includes 50 kayakers and 20 jet ski operators, who are the first
contact for any swimmer in distress. Swimmers are permitted to hold
onto these smaller vessels to rest without advancing. Two food boats
offer water, saltines, vanilla wafers, and bananas—“not a luxury accommodation,”
Nabit chuckles.
Professional support includes two State Police helicopters, four
advanced life support vessels, two dive teams, six Coast Guard vessels,
and two Natural Resources Police boats. The Coast Guard closes the
commercial shipping channel and prohibits recreational boat navigation
under the bridge. Before the countdown to the start, the athletes are
advised that the flood current will pull them to the left and then the ebb
tide will push them to the right as they near the finish line.
Climbing out of the water on the far shore as volunteers quickly
unzip wet suits and offer food, the fatigued but gratified swimmers find
a festive atmosphere. There is an infectious esprit de corps among the
swimmers as they mill around the pen, congratulating one another
regardless of speed or ability. Scarfing down Subway subs, orange slices,
and chocolate donuts, the sea of athletes with wetsuits shed to the waist
is exhilarated with accomplishment. And they should be—this event is
not for the faint of heart. The war stories are plentiful, and the training schedule is daunting.
Many of the competitors are perennial open water swimmers. ABC
member Liz Fry, age 50, has completed three English Channel swims, circumnavigated
Manhattan Island, and completed the Catalina Island
Channel swim five times. Her fitness training includes nine completions of
the New York City Marathon. Fry, who fights asthma as she swims and
runs, is one of the rare swimmers wearing no wet suit for her Bay swims.
Wet suits are a big deal for these open-water swim aficionados because the
suits maintain their body temperatures and keep their legs buoyant. There
is a special award for the winner of the “non-wetsuit” category.
Hundreds of spectators wait on the far shore, well equipped with lawn
chairs, umbrellas, and coolers. A fun-loving disc jockey leads children in
the hokey pokey. A fire department truck stands ready to provide freshwater,
outdoor showers for the Bay-weary swimmers. The cheering from the
animated crowd resounds anew as the first five swimmers emerge from
between the bridge spans in the hazy distance.
Stroke after stroke brings them closer along the jetty wall, yellow swim
caps bobbing above the swells, arms churning as the competitors realize
they have a chance at the coveted number one spot. The crowd cheers as
the athletes crawl one by one from the sea onto the sandy runway landing,
some bounding and others dazed and disoriented.
Scraps of overheard conversation tell it all. “Mile three was terrible.”
“Mile four was horrible.” “The chop this year was the worst ever.” But
there is jubilance in their voices as they mill around the pen waiting for
the awards ceremony, their fans once again pressing against the mesh
fence enclosing the finish area. Pride and relief exude from the swimmers,
who are without a doubt, now members of an elite swimming guild with a
unique qualification—the word “obsession” comes to mind.
Ann Powell is a former practicing attorney-turned-freelance writer living in
the Annapolis area.
Tags:
Cuisinart Start
Great Chesapeake Bay Swim
swim race
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