I have always loved to be in the water. I grew up in New York City, and regularly went to a basement pool at the Paris Hotel on West End Avenue, dreaming I was swimming through tunnels into the sun-infused gold and cerulean mosaic Hearst Castle pools. During summers I swam in lakes. After college I dragged my family to Fire Island, where I discovered the joy of a daily mile in the ocean.
Lead me to water and I’ll want to swim. It’s how I fell in love with the Island.
The first time I visited Martha’s Vineyard was when I brought my youngest son to visit someone I knew from library school. My friend lived on Waldron’s Bottom Road.
In the early morning I walked from her home to Long Point, and followed the beach to the cut through the dunes to Long Pond. Mist was hanging over a mirror-still body of water. I stripped down and waded in — never in my life having imagined swimming in a pond to the sound of the ocean.
I am not alone in my love of swimming in the ocean, or my willingness to extend the season — and even take a celebratory winter dip. The day after Christmas saw these hardy swimmers dive in: Blake Gilpin of Aquinnah and New Orleans, where he is a professor of American history at Tulane; Beth Goudell, owner of Island Gymnastics; and Roberta Kirn, Island Family Chorus and Song Project founder and director.
Wetsuits, booties, and gloves (for some of us), help extend the Island swimming season to about nine months. Not long ago, The Times asked these swimming enthusiasts the following questions: When did you become swimming-obsessed? Do you only swim with a goal? Do you have a favorite swimming memory?
Blake Gilpin
I started summering on the Vineyard in 1983, and swimming was kind of the center of summer life. I think I’ve been pretty well obsessed with various swimming spots, especially since 1985 (when I was 6!). During my teens I would often do things like swim every day no matter what. That kind of thing actually made swimming tedious — especially on cold rainy days! For the half-dozen winters I’ve spent on the Island, I have tried to swim at least once every month. That’s much more fun. But this past May to January, I really tried to make it once a week or so, which was easier because it was so warm. I swam as the clock passed midnight for the millennium with my little brother. That was fun. But my favorite swimming memory came during my wedding. When the ceremony was over, my wife and I stripped and ran down the dock where we were married and jumped in. I’ll swim anywhere, literally; if there’s water, I will find a way to swim. But the Vineyard is the most special. Tonic for a healthy life.”
Beth Goudell
“Obsessed? More like a love affair. I don’t really remember actually learning to swim, but some of my earliest/fondest memories are of Chilmark in the ’70s. I remember Quitsa Pond, maybe I was 4 and my now 100-year-old grandmother, Eileen Sullivan Mayhew, bringing us down the hill to swim/play at Clam Point. We were seven siblings spanning nine years, and my aunt had seven kids too, so clearly we outnumbered the adults. My grandmother would never go in the water, and wore long-sleeved clothes to avoid burning. She let us swim far; who knows if she was napping, but I made it all the way to the dock. I remember Squibby and seeing how much abuse we could endure in pounding hurricane surf, spending a full day boogie-boarding with washed-up Styrofoam pieces from a boat wreck.
“I lived for when my fishermen uncles, Gregg, Jonathan, and Skip, would let us swim with lobsters in the tank and flip off the floating raft, lifeguard stand, jetty, and Dutcher Dock.
“My long-distance swimming love developed from Chilmark Community Center swim lessons and coach Vail Barrett. I loved the camaraderie in the old van with Jessica Hancock (who tragically drowned), Emily Nitchie, Wendy Weismann, Claire Ganz, Liz Teele, and Katie Keene, when we rode to Seth’s Pond or Menemsha.
“The one-mile swim race from Chappy to Edgartown I did at age 11 was all it took to make me a lifer. I served as a lifeguard in Chilmark in my late teens/twenties; experiencing rescues both successful and unsuccessful taught me to respect the water. A close call — six hours treading water off Gay Head — taught me more than any coach. Teaching swimming with Annie Mechur at the Tisbury Inn (now Mansion House) and then gymnastics at the Boys and Girls Club gave my experience purpose.
“My all-season surfer son, Thomas, now 23, got me into colder water by getting me a surfboard for my 40th birthday along with a wetsuit, hood, gloves, and boots. I learned I needed to move a lot faster if I wasn’t going to freeze. My friend Roberta Kirn inspired me to swim longer and earlier in the season without my wetsuit, a few times too cold to speak, as speech becomes slurred as one’s head numbs.
“My favorite times with friends and family include swims at local Land Bank properties including Ice House pond and Great Rock Bight. I did my first Ironman triathlon in August 2015 to celebrate my 50th birthday, and the 2.4-mile lake swim was a breeze compared with cold rough tidal ocean swims around the Island. I swim to be in the here and now; it is one of the greatest joys in life, I fall into a trance, settle into the cold, go under the surface, and a rhythm develops on its own.”
Roberta Kirn
“I think I was born with some fish blood in me. I have spent every summer of my life in the
water as much as possible. As a child I mostly just played — diving, somersaults (forwards and backwards), handstands, underwater tea parties, pretending to be a dolphin. I spent more time in the water than out. There was one summer when I had a few lessons and learned the basics of the crawl, breaststroke, and backstroke. When I was in my early 20s I spent a summer working in NYC, but we also rented a house down the Jersey Shore. The ocean water wasn’t very clean, and I began swimming in a pool. I was going through a rough patch emotionally, and swimming laps for long periods of time calmed me down. I have been doing distance swimming ever since, but mostly outside. I don’t really enjoy pool swimming.
“I swim for exercise and as a deep meditation for body, mind, and spirit — every day at least once, but usually morning and evening, starting in late April or early May until late October or even November, if the weather permits.
“Once, about 10 years ago, I was swimming in the Tisbury Great Pond. I swam there every morning for many years because I lived nearby. I thought of Sepiessa Point as an extension of my living room. It was August and the air temperature and water temperature were both warm and felt equal to each other and to the temperature of my blood. I had done a long, luscious, luxurious swim, and at the end I lay on my back floating for quite a while lost in delightful sensation. I couldn’t tell where I ended and the water and sky began. My heart was wide open.”
