A crossing of the Muskeget Channel

Updated July 29.

For the second year in a row, a group of year-round and seasonal Islanders swam from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard as both a feat of endurance and a fundraiser for the Island’s youth swim programs.

It took between seven and a half and eight hours for two relay groups, each with five swimmers, to make the trek from Eel Point on the west side of Nantucket, past Tuckernuck Island and Muskeget Island, through the Muskeget Channel, and over to East Beach on Chappaquiddick.

It was around 5:30 am Friday when swimmers, bleary-eyed but full of adrenaline, and their entourage walked down the long, newly reconstructed Owen Park Pier to pile onto three boats and head over to Nantucket as the sun rose over the horizon.

Once the three boats reached the waters of Nantucket, a horn sounded at 7:38 am to indicate the start for a swimmer from each relay — seasonal Island resident Doug McConnell and full-time resident John O’Connell — who stood on the beach and entered the 67° water. Geoff Gibson, who wasn’t able to join the swim but provided waypoints, or specific coordinates, said that based on the tides, the ideal start time was 7:30 am.

The swim, which would end between 3:22 pm and 3:41 pm for each of the relays, was done by English Channel rules: standard swimsuits, swim cap and goggles permitted, 30-minute rotations, and no physical contact between the swimmer and escort vessel or another person. Turnovers were completed every 30 minutes, and swimmers were tagged out by the next person, who was directed to start behind them.

A relay from Nantucket to Martha’s Vineyard was successfully completed last year for the first time ever, and once again, participants included some who never competed in the open ocean. 

The teams were split between two boats: McConnell, Jon Chatinover, Luke Lefeber, Brock Katzen, and Emmett Silva on paramedic and U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Eamonn Solway’s Bluebird of his charter company Island Girl Excursions, and O’Connell, Bill Ritter, Jen Passafiume, and Andy and Gabby Carr on Lou Quatrucci’s Cottage City Charters boat. Kyle Gatchell of Cheap Therapy Charters was also there as a support boat. Dana Gaines and Tucker Cosgrave, on kayaks, paddled next to the kayakers for the long swim and directed them toward Martha’s Vineyard.

Ritter, who is currently a pilot for Cape Air, but previously flew for the military and UPS, said that he joined the venture because he was on the “crazy list” of swimmers. Passafiume, an MVRHS swim coach who runs aquatics programs at the YMCA, was a part of the swim last year, and was joined for this round by three swimmers she’s coached; she even taught Cosgrave.

Each boat kept records of stroke count for each swimmer, done twice a round for one minute, and were dictated by Gibson’s predetermined waypoints. In the first 30-minute leg, swimmers on Quatrucci’s boat said that the current wasn’t in their favor, shown definitively in their stroke counts, which shot up after the first leg, closer to 9 am.

By 9:45 am, swimmers were already 2.79 nautical miles (about 3 miles on land) away from Eel Point, and at 10:07 am, the boats started to slowly turn left as the surface water temperature went up to 73°.

By 10:54 am, they were about 5.5 nautical miles (about 6 miles on land) away from the start, and as they came up on the Nantucket Shoal, where water depth goes from as high as 32 feet to as low as 4.9 feet, the swimmers were slightly ahead of Gibson’s recommendation that they cross that threshold by five hours in.

The difficulty around this swim, which McConnell has experienced numerous times, is that the current runs north to south, while the swimmers want to travel east to west, and it varies throughout the tidal cycle. McConnell, who’s crossed the English Channel and the Catalina Channel, swam from Molokai to Oahu in Hawaii, and circled Manhattan, hasn’t been able to complete this 18-mile journey on his own. 

As 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 is the organizer of the now-annual swim. McConnell lost his father, Dr. David McConnell, and sister, Ellen, to ALS.

The reverse way is a lot easier, McConnell said, and because no one’s ever successfully made this swim before, “there’s a lot of unscientific judgement and guesscalls along the way.” Live calls were made based on how fast a swimmer moved and various weather patterns.

The weather this year was just as good as last year, McConnell said, and the primary change was the 30-minute increments instead of one-hour ones. He said this was a good call because each person was able to swim five separate times; he and O’Connell were even able to swim in a sixth leg to complete the last stretch.

Though some swimmers started to fade — between the hot sun and demands of continuous exercise — as the day went on, the current was mostly always on their side.

In the middle of the trek, O’Connell decided to quote and draw inspiration from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” which said, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; and we must take the current it serves, or lose our ventures.”

Both teams eventually reached the beach and surprised beachgoers, who asked, “What were they doing?” (“We just swam from Nantucket.”) Then the swimmers reboarded boats to motor around Cape Poge for a ceremonial swim in Edgartown Harbor toward the lighthouse. A celebration was then held at Nomans in Oak Bluffs.

A Long Swim plans to make a donation of $10,000 to Passafiume’s learn-to-swim scholarship program at the Island’s YMCA. McConnell said he plans to organize the swim again next year, and hopes to recruit swimmers from Nantucket’s endurance group as well.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story identified the Bluebird as the Island Queen.