Westport to Port Jefferson Swim – July 2003
This was a swim of very mixed emotions. It is a swim that by all rights I should have completed two years ago, so it is not as dramatic as past swims where these was a freshness to the venue I completed the English Channel last summer, the most important open water swim anywhere However, almost every day I see my daughter suffer through this terrible disease. I pray that we find the answer to her problems and I pray that her tremendous spirit will not crack. How can I not swim for as far as possible and for as many years as possible while her disease remains, for the most part, out of control? Finally, I am repaying a friend who helped me train for the English Channel last summer. Without Liz Fry’s help, I would not have been as successful as I was. As she is making her attempt to swim the English Channel this summer, how could I not help her for as long as she trains in Westport?
I also picked Westport as the jumping off point for a number of reasons. Again, Liz was a very large part of it. For the last three summers I have used Compo Beach as my training ground for open water. It provides both choppy and smooth water during the course of the season. Because it is Long Island Sound, it is salt water. Finally, it remains cooler longer than the local lakes during the late spring and early summer and it stays warmer through late October and, sometimes, into November. It is an 800-meter course a nice distance to train.
Finally, I picked this course in memory of my Mother, the late Lois B. Bayles. She didn’t know my daughter, as my Mom died way too young. She was a wonderful local historian who had a touch for writing that I wish I had. She loved American History, especially Colonial History. While she was sick, she completed her second masterwork called Canaan Parish During The American Revolution She wrote a series of articles on the life of our local town, Canaan Parish that is today New Canaan, who fought and for which side, everyday life, and how the town changed because of the revolution. The series of articles was re-worked into a book published in 1976 by the New Canaan Historical Society.
My Mom’s last piece of writing, completed while she was quite sick, followed the route of the British Raid on Danbury, CT.; The British started and ended at Compo Beach.; They took four days to get to Danbury, burn Continental Army’s stores and supplies kept for safe keeping by Connecticut, and then returned to their ships that had remained anchored just off Compo Beach.; The genius of the article was her reconstruction of the route for her readers to follow the progress of the British from Compo Beach to Danbury and back using the roads that existed then and now.; In re-reading the article I was struck by how clearly she wove the story of the raid, the plight of the British and the Revolutionaries and the ability to follow the route using the roads that are still in existence. On my trips to Compo Beach I traveled over many of the same roads the British used to get to Danbury.
We arrived at Compo Beach Marina at 8:15 AM in order to transfer food and clothes on to the support boat my wife, Trina, and my eldest daughter, Jen would travel. Liz arrived a few minutes after we did and her support boat arrived a few minutes after that Mike Krein, my long-time friend and support arrived a bit later with his kayak. He would again be my main provider of support across The Sound.
Channel 12, the local news station for Cablevision in Connecticut, arrived at about the same time. We did an interview, which ran all evening as the lead story of their Sunday. I did one thing that was quite stupid: Since Liz finally had a boat, Mike Laux, a long-time friend who was sleeping on their sailboat off of Cockenee Island in Westport Harbor, was no longer needed. When News 12 showed up, they were hoping to take footage of us swimming in Westport waters. We called him and woke him up. He got underway and then cooler heads prevailed. A second boat had come up with Steve Crawford of Greenwich and Stamford, CT., my boat captain, in anticipation of being used by Liz. Because Liz had already found a boat before we learned of this second boat from Greenwich, we didn’t need the second boat. I paid the second captain some money for her effort. I should have first asked her to take the News 12 people out instead of calling Mike Laux. Because of my hubris in seeking more publicity for the swim, I woke up a friend who was dead asleep at 9:00 AM.
After the interviews, Liz and I walked over to the cannons that commemorate the landing of the British at Compo Beach, and headed into the water. The water was smooth, similar to the start of my swim in the English Channel. ; The predicted weather was 80°, 10 to 15 knot winds coming from the Southwest and then switching to almost directly West during the course of the day.
The goal was to swim almost directly towards the electric power stacks in Northport and, after going 1/2 to 3/4 of the way, head east, parallel to the Long Island Shore line and then swim either into the harbor or to one of the nearby beaches. We didn’t want to swim across the route of the Port Jefferson to Bridgeport Ferry but instead wanted to stay west of their normal route.
We quickly go to Cockenee Island, just off the Compo Beach shore, and then it seemed as if we were not going anywhere. When swimming, the eyes play tricks on the mind. Because my eyes focused on a spot each time I breathed, it seemed as if I was staying in the same place as I kept seeing the same part of Cockenee Island. However, I could tell I was moving when we quickly passed lobster pot flags; that made me feel better. My stroke felt long and loose. I was reaching well and my stroke count was at around 60, which was slower than my Channel swim. Nothing was bothering me except a slight twinge on my right side where I had slipped 6 days earlier and fell into a railing. The plan was to eat after the first hour and then every 30 minutes thereafter.
At the 45 minute mark I felt a bit of a bonk coming on. I don’t think I ate right and, as I was walking over to the beach, I felt thirsty, two bad signs. So I ate early, and a lot, and started up. Liz ate right on schedule and we never quite got into synch again. She had a great swim. While we passed each other several times, she was on her own schedule, as she should have been.
For the first 50 minutes or so, the water stayed relatively calm. After 50 minutes, the water turned choppy. The forecast was for 1-foot waves, which we had. Unfortunately, 1-foot waves in the Sound, because of the confines of the Sound and the short “reach” of the waves, meant for washing machine type water. At one point a wave hit me and almost rolled me over onto my back. I remarked to Mike Krein that: “That was fun!” Overall it was easier to swim in long slow swells than the chop of the Sound. Neither were ever enough to deter me, they were part of the swim.
Mike stayed in his faithful, two-man kayak the entire trip. He paddled for longer than he has ever done with me. I very much appreciated the help and the dedication. It turns out that the trip back did more damage to his back than sitting in his kayak the 8 hours. Also, his arms didn’t fall off, so the exercise must have done him good.
At around the 3/4 mark across the Sound, we started to swim East towards Port Jefferson. At this point in the Sound, Northport and land falls quite a bit away from the South shore of Connecticut. To our East, the land and Port Jefferson harbor rises towards us. As we started to swim east the same mind tricks happened to me. I kept seeing the Northport Electric Power Smoke Stacks in the same place and I was concerned that I wasn’t going anywhere. However, we did a 210-stroke count and we quickly passed a lobster pot. Again, I felt better. Also, with the wind coming almost directly out of the West, the Sound flattened. What little tidal current was available helped push us along, but at least for the rest of this swim, we were not going to have to worry about the tides.
I always count my strokes. It helps me pass the time, it keeps me focused on the length of my stroke, and it gives me an idea of when I can take a 5 second break. The 105-cycle stroke count came about two falls ago in preparing for the channel. My age group swimming coach always wanted us to breathe on both sides. Breathing every 3 arm makes that happen However, even without walls and flip turns, breathing every 3rd arm can lead to a bit of an oxygen debt. Therefore, I devised changing sides every 3rd arm, then 5th arm then 7th arm. While swimming I tried to figure out where the intersection of the three strokes counts, 3, 5 or 7, would end up on the same stroke. I should have remembered my simple math and just multiplied the three numbers together. Instead, I was constantly dividing each of the three numbers into the same number. For example, did 75 work? No, 7 did not divide divided evenly into 75. I finally figured out the number and told Mike Krein who said, “Why of course, 7 times 5 times 3 equal 105.” Anyway, that became our counting and swimming measurement: how many 105s to go until we reached a certain point.
This Spring and Summer I changed the pattern to from breathing every 3, 5 and/or 7arm, alternately or for a whole 105, to changing sides every 7th and then 3rd to get a round number of 10. I would then count to 210. One swim with Liz, I breathed every second arm to the right and then switch and breathe 5 strokes to the left (2 breaths), then 95 and 10, 85 and 15, etc, until the entire 105 strokes were all to the left. Doing this was about 2200 strokes and we swam from the middle of Lake Lillinoah back to the launch. In the Sound, I used the stroke counting technique to keep going and not to stop, no matter what the pain.
In terms of being in pain, there were some problems. The slip into the rail six days earlier did hurt and my right side was quite bruised. While the pain is almost gone, it did hurt to breathe and to stretch. It wasn’t excruciating and it would not have made me stop, but it was there. At around the 4-hour mark, I started taking “Move Free” which is a supplement of glucosamine and condroitin. While it helped a lot, I was too far into the pain to get the edge fully off. Also, in the Channel and other swims, I have added pain / anti-inflammatories. This time I messed up and didn’t take any. For the rest of the swim my neck felt as if I had just had my whiplash accident from a few months earlier. Not being fully prepared cost me. Even Jen noticed that my stroke count had changed and I wasn’t as smooth as when I started. Finally, with 90 minutes or so to go my left trapezium started to hurt. This was the same one that hurt last year in the Channel. As soon as it started to hurt, I began to fade left. Luckily, we were near the end, so I rested more, slowed down more and I didn’t care about when I would stop. I was within 1.5 miles from shore, so I knew I would complete the swim, no matter what.
The boat that supported Mike and me was a 25-foot Century. Steve Crawford one of the sons of a good friend of Marcia Cleveland, owned it. Bob lost his wife less than a year ago. He has found a new hobby: traveling around to Harley motorcycle rendezvous. I called him a few weeks before my swim and he hooked me up with his son.
Trina and Jen acted as support on this boat. They were great, except with Mike in the kayak, they didn’t have a lot to do. They took pictures, gave food to Mike to give to me, and had a pleasant time crossing the Sound with Steve and his fiancée Debbie. Unfortunately, Steve’s boat had an external outboard gasoline motor. For the most part, they protected me from other boat traffic, ate hotdogs, and stayed down wind, almost exclusively to the left of me the entire trip. A few times I called over and waved, and they waved back.
Jen went in the water at least twice. We have a must-keep picture of her sitting in a water chair that is attached to the boat. A lot of the time the two sunbathed. There was no cloud protection, so both almost burned. We hope they do not peel.
At around 4:15 PM we decided to declare a great victory, swim to shore and complete the journey. As we started in toward shore, it seemed as if all of Port Jefferson emptied out and motor craft started to move quickly towards New York City. Once in a while a few of the boats would slow down when they saw us so the wake hitting us wasn’t too bad; mostly though they took off from the Port Jefferson channel as fast as they could. I wasn’t in any danger, just rocking and rolling in choppy surf again.
We decided to head into West Beach. There was a tent that looked as if it were set up for a wedding reception. Just east of the tent and on a hill was the Port Jefferson Lighthouse. It looked more like a church with a light tower in the form of a steeple. It was wooden cedar shake and quite beautiful. Because of my drift to the left, I missed the sandy beach and instead had to swim over the rocks and sea anemones. The rocks were soft, when compared to the dragon’s teeth of France, and therefore I wasn’t scratched up or scarred. While I was told I didn’t really have to get to a point where the water could not go in front of me, I still walked above where the water lapped, raised my hands and thanked God for the strength and health to complete my 10thfund raiser for charity.
As I wrote at the top of this monograph, this was not the most exciting swim. The venue was not new and it was not the English Channel as that was the dream swim of my life. However, it reminded me of what and why I swim.
I swim because I love to swim. I swim because, when the stroke is long, smooth and powerful, it gives me great and good pleasure. In Chariots of Fire, Eric Lyddel says, “When I run, I feel his pleasure.” I also remember the narrator in movie The Legend of Bagger Vance that God is happiest when we are at play. When I am swimming, I am at play.
I am lucky because I am healthy. For the most part, my injuries will continue to heal themselves and I will be fine. But my daughter Kate is not fine. Others who have epilepsy either live with their symptoms masked by medicines or live a life with uncontrolled seizures. In either case it is a life I can hardly fathom. I swim for them. I swim to raise money for them, so someday they will receive better medicines and treatment and have a more normal life. As I have stated so many times, how can I not try to give back to others, perhaps in another form, what God has given me, a gift of health through funding additional research.
You can view pictures of this swim in the pictures section of this website under "Pics_LISound_03.htm"
Second Long Island Sound Swim