I'm getting more and more spooked by algae, seaweed, etc...

Despite all the worries worries about wildife encounters, other swimmers are still the most frequent hazard. I nearly broke my nose swimming into someone last night. Swimming into driftwood is a big fear of mine ever since I did that once. The idea of running into a 2 X 4 with rusty nails sticking out of it is pretty horrible to me.

When I did the double-crossing of the Ohio River last year, I couldn't help but think about a partially submerged log with my name on it.

The Ohio River is within the northern range of a lot of snakes you'd rather not know about. :afraid: And I'd be skeered of sunken stuff there. Too much history...bootlegging...Avast ye! Stuff overboard... Downed trees, assuredly. Home of copperhead, cottonmouth, and black water snakes. Gah! :) Otherwise, how was the swim? :D

Several years ago, I was swimming in Miami Beach and my husband and I saw--a leg. I know it sounds crazy but literally, foot to calf. Soooooo disgusting. And so close to me I would have hit it if my husband hadn't screamed to warn me. We've often wondered about the poor person who lost it. After that, any debris pretty much pales in comparison. It's actually quite amazing to me that I stuck with open water after that since I am incredibly squeamish. In Belize last year, there were some terrible silver fish that go after swimmers. They don't bite so much as nip, and especially if you have scars--their personal favorite. The first encounter resulted in me screaming and flailing a bit, which I stopped when I realized everyone on the beach was looking, and possibly getting ready for a rescue. After that, I sucked it up when they "attacked". I've also had a man-of-war sting. Not fun. Why do I do this again???

I only wish it had been a prosthetic. But let's just say the upper edges, near the calf section, were still quite, um, ragged. Yikes.

OMG I take it the leg was prosthetic? That beats anything I've encountered, except possibly the man in the thong at Barton Springs in Austin. :afraid:

My husband says we took it to shore to grill it. (Gallows humor reigns at our house.) We actually weren't quite sure what to do. We weren't interested in touching it and it wasn't like someone would have been able to find it again once the currents took it. As I remember, we talked to the hotel, to a slightly skeptical audience. Then, we pretty much focused on reading the paper for the next few days, trying to see if anything, ahem, surfaced in print. Our speculation was that it was someone who had fallen from an immigrant boat, either trying to get to the U.S. from Cuba or somewhere in the Caribbean. (Anyone read Continental Drift, by Russell Banks? Amazing book that covers some of this territory and is utterly compelling and tragic. Very gripping read.) That also would have accounted for a lack of anything in the news, either t.v. or newspaper. Also, it looked like it had been out there for longer than just a few days. It was not a new injury.

errrrr, did you take it to shore and report it? I wonder if the rest of the poor "missing" person was ever accounted for?

Interesting.. Did you read the feet that were washing up on the coast of British Columbia a year or two ago?

Whoa! I think I've had the urge for open-water swims scared out of me after reading this thread! And I'm reading it because I can't sleep! And I love the ads that accompany it at the beginning: nervous dogs! How, I wonder, do they integrate the ads with the threads? Perhaps if all you brave open-water swimmers went to nervous dog school you wouldn't mind finding part of a human leg. Aieeeee. I have swum in the Charles River and I have capsized while sailing in the Charles River exactly pretty much close enough to where they almost always find complete bodies that have washed downstream or emerged after the river thaws. At least three over the last few years. So I guess I'm braver than I think. But if I hit one! No, no, no. Now I'm all scared. That poor person. A leg. A piece of driftwood in the mouth. Pilings. Yah.