What a great picture of the Sharon High School Sailing Team training on their home waters of Lake Massapoag on a typically chilly Massachusetts March day when the temperature barely reached 80 degrees. I tell you, those kids from Sharon are tough. Rumor has it that at least one swanky private school sailing team in their area goes off to Florida in March to train. What wimps!
Wait.
Who are those two kids in the foreground of the picture? They look vaguely familiar. Yes. I know them. They are my two eldest grandchildren Aidan (3) and Emily (6). What is their mother thinking, letting them play in the water in March? Doesn't she read Bonnie's blog? Doesn't she know how dangerously cold the water is in March?
OK. I know it's really not a very good picture of the Sharon High School Sailing Team.
Here is a better one...
11 comments:
March? Death of cold!
Oh, I have crazy friends who swim at Coney Island 12 months a year! I think they were disappointed this year because they never had any snowbanks to wriggle around in afterwards.
I think there's a big difference between walking into cold water of your own volition, and falling in unexpectedly - especially headfirst, or at least head-simultaneously-with-rest-of-body, which is sort of how it ends up working in a kayak.
Or maybe it's just the British blood, wot, wot?
My polar bear friends do have something they like to say about how if you stay in long enough it starts to feel good, but when it starts to feel REALLY good, that means you need to get out!
Well we Brits are used to swimming in cold water. We used to do swimming lessons at school in an open air pool starting each year when the water temps were in the 50s. When it got up into the 60s we thought the water was really warm.
Every year we would take a beach vacation on the East coast of England and swim every day in the North Sea. The sea temperature would be in the low 60s at best. (Try it in Estonia!)
I think you are right about the difference between walking into water and falling in. Don't a lot of people die from the initial shock that causes them to inhale underwater and so drown? Also there's a lot of difference between swimming in a pool or a lake for a few minutes and being able to get out of the water when you start to shiver, and falling in the water some distance from shore and being stuck there for hours.
You Brits are way tougher than us Hawaii-raised kids. I still remember being completely baffled some neighbor kids took me along on a trip beach park on a lake during the first summer after my folks hauled me off to Washington State - it was summertime, it was warm, I had this idea in my head that it would be pleasant to wear a swimsuit and go swimming and although you would think I would have gotten a clue when no one else turned up with a swimsuit, I tried to swim anyways and it was not pleasant at all and I was very confused about the whole thing.
I do think it would be interesting to go out and join my polar-bear friends sometime in the next couple of weeks - I'm so good about always wearing the right gear that despite being out on the water all winter, I think that one beach trip in the early 1980's is the only time I've ever actually exposed my flesh to water that was anything less than around 70.
It's definitely the initial shock that gets a lot of people. I've seen it happen a couple of times & it's impressive - one very competent paddler came up pretty much only because his lifejacket brought him after he managed to get out of the boat. Once he regained the ability to actually speak, not just sputter, he said he'd had absolutely no idea which direction the surface was. This is a guy who went on to circumnavigate England in a kayak (and he didn't take that northern canal that most do, either), he doesn't get rattled easily, but the shock threw him for enough of a loop that was the end of our practice session that day. He'd even had a hood on, it was just badly adjusted or something and he got an earful of very icy water.
ps - I have already asked Captain Kat to please keep an eye on me & make sure I don't dive headfirst off the boat once we've anchored for the first night. Last time I went on a bare-boat charter with her, I did - but that time we'd anchored off Anegada, not Helsinki.
I still startled everyone - I'd been dying to go in the whole time we were anchoring but I didn't think to warn anyone & they just weren't expecting anyone to go flying off the boat!
Take care. I found a website that says that in the height of summer the water temperatures on the Estonian coast only get up to around 17°C. That's about 63°F, I think.
63 is numbingly cold, at least to me.
I seem to remember that going numb was part of the fun of playing in the sea when I was a kid. That, and getting stung by jellyfish.
I'm actually wondering if it would be silly to take my drysuit. Just in case of a storm or anything, you know?
I suspect you will find that all the Estonian ladies will be swimming in the sea quite happily in their bikinis so you would look somewhat ridiculous swimming in your drysuit. Get in some practice with your polar bear friends in the next few weeks and you will do fine.
Võtad siitpoolt paati vett või sealtpoolt, üks merevesi ikka.
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