Well, I’ll tell you the essentials, but the story of the Lake rolling over was best told in the email below by Brett. (at least I thought so… I couldn’t stop laughing!) I was out for a long ride yesterday with Greg Pace’s group, we had a lovely ride through the vineyards down to Port Dalhousie. Very civilized, don’t you know. Meanwhile, Brett and a few of the boys decided to get their LOST swim in early. Only problem was, I knew the Lake had rolled over… and they didn’t. I told Brett that it rolls over this weekend every year… so Joanne told me I should send them an email… but then I wouldn’t have recieved the comical email from Brett yesterday. It was well worth it… for me at least!
As for our swim this morning, yet another LOST World Record… 37 swimers! These new world records are becoming routine! And new one each of the last 3 weekends. The water, as I mentioned, was a bit chilly. I’ll call it 49F / 9C… recall last week it was 62F and 65F the week before. Well this is how Lake O works. It “Rolls Over”… the surface water warms up… then it creates a bit of a convection and that warm surface water gets pushed over to the US side of the lake… which forces the cold bottom water over to the Oakville side. And then it continues to warm up again… and will likely roll over one more time, but with less of shock to it, which is how the entire Lake gets warm over the summer.
Having said that, we did what we did on the first swim of the year, when it was 44F… we sprinted 250m out to the lighthouse and around the pier into the warm creek water. In the span of a few feet it went from 49F to 68F. Nice. So we had a very scenic swim up and down 16 Mile Creek… and then a 250m sprint back to the beach.
Hats off for a few special swims this morning… Darren and Chris swam early… and swam as far up the creek as they could go, until their knees were practically hitting bottom! They were almost stopped early though… a couple of swans (with big sharp teeth!) nearly attacked them and wouldn’t let them pass! They snuck by doing breast-stroke though! (not quite the same wildlife issues the folks in La Jolla and San Fran have with wildlife, but very scary all the same I’m sure (sometimes its hard to pick up sarcasm in an email, isn’t it!). There were a few newbies out their today, but a couple of note were the brothers Nick and Art… who swam the whole thing naked… including the sprints out to the lighthouse… well done boys!
So that’s about it, enjoy the picks, courtesy our faithful kayaker, Bill Johnson!
Cheers,
Rob
(the email from Brett:)
OK Rob… so last week before the swim when you were saying typically the lake Rolls during the Canada Day weekend I was only half listening and thought you were kind of full of it anyway. After all it was morning. This morning when I showed up for an arranged 5:50 am swim, it was picture perfect. Sun was just cresting the horizon. Not a cloud in the sky, not a ripple in the water. We Scored. And I called the swim so I figure I’m going to be a hero…minimum. Anyway Tim Barnaby was first there waiting and I asked how he was. All he said was It’s cold. I agreed thinking he was talking air temp. He just said the waters cold but didn’t sound to excited. I walked in to check it out and within seconds my feet are done. I walk out thinking ok that didn’t just happen. I’m just going to wait for the other guys. Pete shows 
up. Walks in the water for not more than 30 seconds and just simply says very calmly I won’t swim in this today. Pete never says this… so that didn’t happen either. He gets out of the water, kneels down on shore an sort of puts his head between his legs. We are casually asking if he’s ok. He doesn’t answer. Finally after a minute of us wondering if Pete is possibly in cardiac arrest he starts talking about how he is waiting for his feet to come back to life. By this point I’m back in the water thinking I’ll just get it over with and start swimming. No. I put my head in. Thinking immediately how clear the water was and how I liked my new goggles. That was the first 3 seconds. Then a sudden rush of numbness comes over me. I start understanding Pete’s position on the shore. Anyway… to make a long story shorter. Bruce, (cousin) Al, Darren, Pete Tim and I ended up swimming up the creek for what seemed like an hour and a half but was maybe 20 minutes. Happy to salvage the morning. Could not believe the difference in water temp between lake and creek. We gathered at the Cafe for a great Canada Day tempo run and coffee on the patio. Condiments other than cream and sugar where provided by Julia. And Rob I will never doubt you again. You are my Lake Ontario Zen Master. Please tell me the lake is going to “roll again tonight”. Don’t know what the water temp was this morning. All I can honestly tell you is there was no ice …I think.
Cheers,
Brett