Michigan swimmer Dreyer to tow 250 cannonballs for America’s birthday

• The stunt is being billed as an exercise to commemorate of America’s 250th birthday.
• Dreyer newest swim is about to start out Aug. 7 and finish at Goodrich Park in Whitehall.
• Each cannonball weighs six kilos and Dreyer plans to swim with 250 of them.

Jim Dreyer, the 62-year-old long-distance swimmer who calls himself “The Shark” and has achieved unusual feats within the water, is planning a brand new check of energy: The Michigander goals to tow 250 cannonballs whereas swimming 22 miles.

Take that, UFC fighters!

Dreyer’s newest stunt is being billed — like many anniversary occasions this yr — as an exercise to commemorate America’s 250th birthday. It can also be designed to extend consciousness about preventable deaths and lift cash for a veterans memorial.

“I don’t see how we can celebrate 250 years of freedom without also honoring those who fought to win and preserve that freedom,” Dreyer, of Ferrysburg close to Grand Haven, defined. “That is what this swim and memorial are all about.” 

All kinds of occasions — together with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, blended martial arts cage matches on the White House garden this previous Sunday, June 14 — are unfolding this yr to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary.

Dreyer’s fundraiser may also show to be redemption for the athlete, whose final two makes an attempt to regain previous glory by re-creating his swim throughout Lake Michigan did not fairly work out the way in which he had hoped and have been lower quick.

Dreyer’s newest feat is about to start out Aug. 7, with Dreyer arriving at Goodrich Park in Whitehall in the course of the White Lake Maritime Festival, a three-day household occasion on the state’s west aspect close to Lake Michigan.

The silver-colored Revolutionary War-style cannonballs can be utilized in a brand new memorial, the U.S. 250th Combat Veterans Memorial, which can be at Whitehall, a trip space off White Lake.

The swim can be 22 miles, which, along with the variety of cannonballs, additionally has symbolic that means. Twenty-two is a quantity that has been used to emphasise the typical variety of veterans who take their very own lives day by day after serving in fight.

It was taken from a 2012 report by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

More recent studies, nonetheless, put the typical quantity nearer to 17. Either approach, public well being officers level out that hundreds of vets are taking their lives annually, that are preventable deaths.

Each cannonball weighs about 6 kilos, and Dreyer plans to drag 249 cannonballs in two dinghies and carry yet one more cannonball on his again, which, he stated, will signify his late father, Jack Dreyer, a World War II veteran.

The whole weight of the load provides as much as about 1,500 kilos.

Dreyer, who swam all 5 Great Lakes, achieved one thing related in 2013: He pulled a ton of bricks in a 22-mile swim throughout Lake St. Clair to Detroit as a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser.

More: 7 athletes who swam throughout Lake Michigan: From Ted Erikson to Elizabeth Fry

In newer years, he has tried to swim throughout Lake Michigan to re-create his first effort in 1998. And final yr, he organized an Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim, a 411-mile relay to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the freighter’s sinking.

The monthlong swim started close to the Fitzgerald shipwreck website, confronted problems and reportedly took a day longer than deliberate, however swimmers completed on the Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle.

More details about Dreyer’s newest swim, the veterans’ memorial, and how one can donate to the undertaking could be discovered on-line at www.jimthesharkdreyer.com/cannonball-memorial-swim.  

Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com