Who is planning on a polar bear swim tomorrow?
Our water is hardly cold enough for a true polar experince but we should have rain, runoff and big surf.
We just did a brief 25-30 minute swim in one of Puget Sound's smaller bays. I heard that the temperature was about 53 F and the weather was overcast without any rain. Although our neoprene laden bodies disqualified us as polar bear swimmers it was still frigid.
We'll bring in the New Year tomorrow with 106x50 on the minute. Perhaps next year we can run a movie or two at the same time.
San Francisco's legendary Dolphin & South End Rowing Clubs put 93 swimmers (sans wetsuits) in San Francisco Bay yesterday for our annual New Years Day Alcatraz Swim (water temp a balmy 55 degrees - up from 51 two weeks ago).
Winds were gusting to 25 knots from the south - the direction in which we were swimming - and there was a wonderfully wicked 3 foot chop.
And if that weren't interesting enough we were trying to beat the start of a 5.7 knot ebb (enhanced by another knot or two from all the rain runoff) that would surely have washed everyone out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.
Suffice it to say no one died (which is always a good thing) and we'll be talking about this one for a while!
Former Member
I was going to do one in Lake Tahoe, but the weather sort of put me off of the idea. It was windy and snowing...
Maybe this weekend. :)
Former Member
We did our first annual polar bear swim here in Ketchikan Alaska, water temp was about 45F. We had 6 participants, 3 in wetsuits and 3 in speedos. I hope to have one swim a month until May.
Former Member
I just saw a Polar Bear swim in Russia - I didn't hear what the water temperature was, but the air temp was -20 degrees Farenheit. Yikes!
