Current swim coach for the Kachemak Swim Club, Dana Jaworksi, says she’s considered swimming the bay since she first moved to Alaska nearly 10 years ago. Then last winter her dream took a strong turn toward becoming reality when she and her friend Jan decided to go for it.
“I walked up to Jan one day and said, ‘Hey I got something I want to ask you about.’ And she said, ‘Me too. You want to swim across the Kachemak Bay?’ And I said, ‘That’s what I was going to ask.’ And it was meant to be,” says Jaworski.
Jan Rumble is also a coach with the club. She and Dana were joined by a teacher from Anchor Point, Lila Lee Little, and they started training for the big day on the first of June.
“Really, the distance as far as open water swims go is not that far. Diana Nyad swam 72 hours straight from Cuba to Florida. This is nothing like that,” says Jaworski.
Dana says their swim was about four and a half miles. Each of the women have done that before, so the only things that worried them about getting into the water were possible run-ins with jellyfish, fishing boats, and of course, the cold.
“Just a mile and a half off the end of the Spit, the current brought the glacial water right to us and it was extremely cold and it just got colder. So the last mile was just excruciating,” says Jaworski.
The swimmers had friends following them on boats to avoid falling into the path of another vessel and they didn’t see a single jellyfish. They did see some seals, fish, and a humpback whale.
All in all, Jan says the swim was a huge success.
“The weather was perfect and our support crew just did great and other than the cold, it was a beautiful swim and a beautiful day,” says Jaworski.
The trio first planned to start the swim on Saturday morning but because of poor weather decided to wait until Sunday.
They have bumped the number of people to swim the bay up to at least 10. Claudia Rose of San Diego made the last swim back in August of 2013.
Quinton Chandler is a reporter at KTOO in Juneau.
