August 12th, the Furthest North open water swim in North America! Located in Sitka, Alaska.
Men's and women's age group and Relay divisions will be awarded trophies and ribbons.
Solo or relay 10k, 5k and 1k open water swims in Sitka Sound, with a water temperature range in the mid 50’s. The course will start at the Mount Edgecumbe High School ramp on Japonski Island. The course will then take the swimmers north out of Sitka Channel and westward along the Fort Rousseau Causeway State Historic Site and loop back to the Mt. Edgecumbe ramp to finish. A turnaround point in course will be available for those swimming the 5k and 1K distances.
Sanction pending with USMS.
Visit www.changeyourlatitude.org for more information.
Former Member
Sitka, Alaska
Northernmost US Masters Swimming sanctioned open ocean race
28 swimmers for 2012 from "from all over the US, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Minnesota and California"
56 awesome photos by Angela McGraw:
www.facebook.com/.../
swimmer times:
http://changeyourlatitude.org
Congrats on the nice work Kris, Kevin and organizing crew!
Evmo,
No skin swimmers, but one used a farmer john wetsuit, so he got a bit more skin in the game. As you well know, we would welcome skin swimmers into CYL if they have a solid track record of being cold-acclimated.
Race day conditions were perfect. Water temp 57 degrees--same as our latitude--fancy that! Almost glassy calm water for 5K'ers, with a bit of ground swell making for a fun ride around the outter rocks on the 10K course, but no wind generated sea. Broken skies with a few light showers. Several out of staters went home with drawing prizes of local seafood, in addition to the salmon bake BBQ overlooking the new course. Our Texas swimmer claims she is bringing back her whole 20-person masters club next year!
As our first go at this venue and even though we considered it a resounding success, there are going to be a few adjustments to next year's event to make things smoother and more convenient for everyone involved--especially our out of town guests.
We really want you and the others who have participated and followed this discussion thread to be there too.
Kris
Kris: sounds like a resounding success indeed -- congrats! I'd love to get up there next year. And I'd be excited and honored to be first (or among the first) skin swimmers for the CYL. I did 2 hours / 6-ish miles at 54F in SF Bay earlier this year, and hardly a shiver afterward, so I think I'm ready :)
Former Member
I attended from the east coast this year and CYL was an *awesome* event. I'm not sure if they can do this for everyone in the future but they picked us up at the airport and put up many of the out of town swimmers in great, low cost accommodations. I've never been so welcomed at an event. I highly encourage everyone to make the commitment to attend next year. I'm not sure of another ocean water race where you see this much snow in the mountains from the course. In the days leading up to the race workouts were great with the Sitka masters team, beautiful fly fishing and a rain forest hike. We even saw a bear from a quarter mile while fly fishing. I did the 5K this year and plan on the 10K next year as I work toward the 34K (although slightly warmer skin swim) channel.
