Melanie Price is in the water!!! She started her journey last night at about 12:20… and at the time of this writing she is 8:47 minutes in!
Her crew of about 20 and 4 boats (sailboat, coast guard zodiac, smaller zodiac and Tylers powerboat) all met at the Port Dalhousie Yacht Club (great club and very friendly and helpful, btw!) for dinner and the pre-race meeting.
My 16 year old daughter, Maisey, is one of several crew members helping Mel. (I’ll add more crew names as we go). Her role is Lifeguard and Pacer, so Jillian, my 13 year old daughter and I drove Maisey down. I was excited… Maisey was wired… and Jill was nervous for her big sister being out on the Lake all night! Joanne was too nervous to come down, she was torn about seeing Mel off and being too worried for Mel… and Maisey! As Stacey and Petra (more crew) accurately articulated, it’s a mom thing.
I think most of the crew was very antsy and was just doing the ol’ “hurry up and wait”, until the stroke of midnight. The Port Dalhousie Auxillary Coast Guard was the picture of calm… they did their best to try and grab a little shut eye from 10 – 12… as did everyone else, including Mel… but I don’t think anyone had much luck.
Colleen is the swim-master. Ultimately all the key decisions have to fall on someone… and in this case it’s Colleen. Speaking with Colleen, when we got there at 7:30, if the weather would have been like that at midnight, she wouldn’t have been going. It was too rough. But it gradually started dying down from 1 meter swells to 1/2 meter swells… coming straight at her from the north. The bigger issue was that the Lake had apparently rolled over and had gone from 77F earlier in the week to it’s current 58F… in Oakville. Port D, however, was still warm, around 68F. So with the wind finally changing direction from blowing for several days from the cold north, in a matter of 3 hours it moved a 180 dergrees and was now blowing from the south. Phew. The waves continued to come from the north as they take a while to change. But it was close enough.
At 12:20 on Thursday, August 11, 2011 Melanie Price set out to be the first person in history to make the 42 km swim across Lake Ontario, from Port Dalhousie to Oakville. Very exciting.
Peter, Cousin Al, David, Jenn, Brian, Hugh and John all showed up to send her off too, as did Mel’s daughter, parents and several other friends.
As for Mel, I think David’s email this morning said it best… “For those that couldn’t make it out to Port D last night, Mel was A.W.E.S.O.M.E.!!! Typical Mel huge smile and calmly walked into cold, choppy, dark lake with confidence and just started swimming. We watched her for about 15 minutes ’till her glow sticks disappeared into the surf and the light from her Zodiac faded. Picture of courage.”
So we drove home to Oakville, in less than an hour… it is stupid and perhaps bad luck to try and guess how long it will take her to cross, as any marathon swimmer knows… it’ll take as long as it takes. Having said that, I’m like everyone else and want to guess… and if I had to guess I would say about 18 hours… give or take 2 or 3 or 4 hours either way! Hopefully she’ll be home for supper! And you all can make it down to Coronation Park in Oakville to greet her!
I’ll keep the posts (and pics soon too!) coming in here as they come in to me from Andrew on the boat and Maisey as well, and add my own bit of color, if it helps. You can also follow her on one of her sponsor site, great site, complete with map and everything…
http://accipiterradar.com/page/melanie-price-lake-crossing
GO MEL GO!!!
Cheers,
Rob