NANTUCKET SOUND — Greg (“Beefcake”) Mason, with a steady freestyle and quick change to breaststroke, flew through the water toward East Beach Tuesday afternoon, becoming the first to reach shore in a first-of-its-kind, 18-mile open-ocean relay swim from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard — a swim that was not a race but a special feat of endurance, defiance, and camaraderie.
Mason, who counts his strokes as he swims to gauge distance (120 strokes for 200 yards), was the first to reach Chappaquiddick, at 3:21 pm. Jennifer Passafiume, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School swim coach, was close on Mason’s trail on the last leg in the second of two relays. The remaining seven swimmers, who joined the two on the final leg of the relay, were onshore 10 minutes later, hugging and high-fiving.
The moment was especially meaningful for Doug McConnell, the man behind the whole idea, who was beaming ear to ear when he reached solid ground.
McConnell is the co-founder of A Long Swim, a nonprofit that designs and manages open-water swimming events to raise funds to research amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. McConnell lost his father, Dr. David McConnell, and sister, Ellen, to the disease. And it was for his father and sister that he was swimming on Tuesday.
“It’s gratifying, but that doesn’t do it justice,” McConnell said of swimming for his family. “It’s an act of defiance,” said the Island seasonal resident, who has accomplished other remarkable swims.
It took about 7½ hours for McConnell, Mason, Passafiume, Noah Froh, Josh Thomson, Jon Chatinover, Allie Keefe, Andy Neuberger, and Jason Snow to cross Nantucket Sound, from Eel Point Beach to Chappaquiddick on Tuesday. Each swimmer has individual fundraising platforms that remain live, and Thomson and Mason may have a friendly competition on who can raise the most money between the two of them.
McConnell, who knows that for him, 3,500 strokes is about an hour’s swim, said he counts his strokes as he swims, which started as a way to get a bad song out of his head. Now, depending on where he is in his count, he’ll think about his father and sister. If anything can get him to smile while he swims, that’s a good thing.
The summer Island resident, who started open-water swimming in 2009 after years at the pool and a successful career on the University of Illinois swim team, has crossed the English Channel and the Catalina Channel, swum from Molokai to Oahu in Hawaii, and circled Manhattan.
But it was this swim, along the south shore of Nantucket through Muskeget Channel to the Vineyard, that had long stumped him. Tuesday was McConnell’s fourth attempt; his previous three lone swims were thwarted by weather, tides, and Lyme disease. “We don’t know if it’s something a human can do on their own,” said Susan McConnell, Doug’s wife.
The reverse direction is slightly easier, because there are more favorable currents that come from Chappaquiddick. The navigators use the “Eldridge Tide and Pilot Book” — essentially the “Farmer’s Almanac” for the ocean — to determine the window when the tides and current are most favorable for a successful swim.
“What this year really told us is that we figured it out,” McConnell said.
Typically, when someone wants to do an endurance swim, they call up and ask the last person to successfully make the trip for advice. But no one’s ever swum from Nantucket to the Vineyard — only the reverse direction.
“Now, we got it figured out,” McConnell said. And the plan going forward is to complete the swim again next year, with more people.
Tuesday morning started with a sunrise boat ride from Owen Park in Vineyard Haven to Nantucket. In three boats, swimmers took off just before 6 am, and enjoyed the rising sun glistening off Vineyard Haven’s Harbor’s fleet of sailboats. They then raced to Eel Point Beach on Nantucket, where the swim started promptly at 8 am.
Then it was a steady crawl toward Martha’s Vineyard.
The route was navigated by Eamonn Solway, an Island paramedic who had led all of McConnell’s previous attempts across the Nantucket Sound. He was aided by navigation experts Geoff Gibson, Mark Baumhofer, and Dana Gaines, as well as safety captains Susan McConnell and Kate Himes. Baumhofer and Gaines kayaked the 18 miles next to the swimmers. Solway and Lou Quattrucci were the boat captains.
Mason could see Baumhofer in his peripheral vision as he swam. It “felt good that someone was there,” he said, though no marine life — including any sharks — was seen by any boat. All swimmers wore a shark-deterrent band around their ankle to be safe, which because of a cramp in his leg, Thomson told his relay teammates to stretch before they got in the water.
Also there as a safety or support vessel was Steamship Authority Island rep Jim Malkin, who Thomson joked was the “pit bull,” to ward off other marine traffic should the three red-and-white diver-down flags not be enough.
The three boats kept the swimmers on course, and communicated via radio. After five hours of swimming, by Tuesday at noon, all nine swimmers had spent at least an hour in the open ocean — each leg was an hour. Chappaquiddick was in their view at that time.
About mid-swim, navigators told swimmers and their accompanying kayakers to go further north in order to avoid a rip current and being swept south in Muskeget Channel.
“We go perpendicular to the shoreline; wherever we end up, we end up,” Solway said over the radio.
When the depth of the ocean dramatically shifts from 12 to 25 feet to five to seven feet around shoals or sandbars, whitecaps are visible on the surface of the water. The water changes from a glassy surface to rougher waves in seemingly random places, but beneath the surface, the ground changes drastically.
“The ocean is so funny,” Malkin said.
There were a few other rip currents that the boats made swimmers aware of, but overall the conditions couldn’t have been better. There were relatively calm seas, and the water temperature was around 70°F. The three boats stayed around two to three knots the whole way back.
After swimming about 18 miles, the swimmers were exhausted, but proud and jovial.
“It was a party,” McConnell said.