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In a matter of weeks, Ann Arbor resident Blake Andrews and three different individuals will work as a workforce to swim a distance most swimmers would by no means think about ― 32.4 miles throughout the Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron.
The three will take turns, swimming in 30-minute intervals, till they full the gap, all a part of an formidable plan this summer season to retrace the journey of the doomed Edmund Fitzgerald 50 years after its demise in Lake Superior. Each of them might common swimming eight miles over a day.
The lengthy swim will likely be a brand new problem for Andrews, 30, who runs half-marathons as his fundamental type of train however has by no means swum eight miles earlier than, not to mention eight miles in one in all Michigan’s Great Lakes. He has needed to discover ways to practice for long-distance swimming. Last Thursday, he practiced with a night swim at Island Lake State Recreation Area in Green Oak Township.
“I think really just knowing that there’s a really meaningful event at the end of the horizon has helped me sort of get in the pool day after day,” he stated.
Andrews is one in all 68 swimmers who will take part within the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim, a 411-mile relay swim set to start Saturday in Lake Superior, the place the well-known freighter sank, and finish on Aug. 28 at Belle Isle in Detroit, close to its supposed vacation spot. It’s meant to memorialize the 29 males who died within the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, stated Jim Dreyer, the occasion director for the swim. The fiftieth anniversary of the wreck is Nov. 10.
Dreyer, who has swum throughout the entire Great Lakes, stated he got here up with the concept for the memorial swim whereas happening a stroll in fall 2023 following a dialog with the previous government director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. He wished to retrace the freighter’s route, which was supposed to finish at Zug Island in Detroit.
“Let’s finish the Edmund Fitzgerald’s tragic journey,” Dreyer recalled his ideas on the time. “They were headed for Detroit with 26,000 tons of iron ore, and they went down in that horrific storm 411 miles short of Detroit.”
The Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim is split into 17 phases, and relay groups of 4 individuals will full every stage. They will rotate each half-hour.
The swim begins on the shipwreck location, which is northwest of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior, after which goes alongside Michigan’s japanese shoreline earlier than ending in Detroit.
Dreyer stated the occasion would be the topic of a documentary movie referred to as “The Legend Lives On,” which he stated will assist “preserve the memory.” A success tune by Gordon Lightfoot in 1976 additionally helped preserve the story of the freighter alive.
“Along with the Gordon Lightfoot song, I’m hopeful that this film is really going to help carry on the legacy of these 29 men, you know, forever,” Dreyer stated.
Swimmers coming from close to and much
Dreyer stated most of the swimmers are from Michigan or different Midwestern states, together with Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and Illinois. Some are coming from different components of the nation, together with one from Hawaii.
A number of swimmers from the Ontario province of Canada and one from the United Kingdom will flock to Michigan as effectively.
Sheila Fitzgerald, who lives in London however is from Michigan, stated she is doing the swim to commemorate “this incredible tragedy and this terribly sad event that happened in our Great Lakes.”
The swim additionally will increase cash for the preservation of the Whitefish Point Light Station on Lake Superior, established in 1849, although the present lighthouse was constructed in 1861, so “it’s a wonderful cause as well,” Fitzgerald stated. Each swimmer needed to increase a minimum of $2,500 for the restoration.
Fitzgerald, 67, additionally has a private connection to the wreck. She is expounded to the namesake of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, who was the chairman of the board of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. The firm invested in an ore service, which was launched in 1958. Sheila Fitzgerald’s great-great-great-grandfather was Edmund Fitzgerald’s great-grandfather.
“We shared a common Irish ancestor who came to the Port Huron area from Ireland in 1837,” she stated, referring to William Fitzgerald, who was married to Julia Fitzgerald.
She is doing the second to final stage of the swim, which is a majority of the size of the St. Clair River ― from the mouth of Lake Huron to Algonac. The location of the 30.8-mile swim holds significance for her, as she realized the best way to swim in Port Huron and her mom is from there.
“I will literally be swimming past the beach where my mother taught me to swim, past the river where my grandfather’s drydocks shipbuilding business was, past my mother’s childhood home, past the farmstead where … that original Irish ancestor had a farm in East China Township, St. Clair County, where he settled in 1837, so it’s incredibly meaningful on a personal level too,” Fitzgerald stated.
How the swim works
Each of the 17 phases will happen on a unique day, with a day without work scheduled between every stage. That will permit organizers to vary the schedule if inclement climate is forecast. The contributors will comply with a tug boat, with medical professionals on board.
Starting the swim over the shipwreck in Lake Superior will likely be “very, very moving,” Dreyer stated. The occasion will start with a memorial ceremony after which a 17.3-mile swim to Whitefish Point.
“Captain Ernest McSorley of the Edmund Fitzgerald was desperately trying to close that last 17 miles,” Dreyer stated, “because if he had made it to Whitefish Bay right around the point that we’re swimming to, they would have been safe.”
The longest stage is 35.3 miles. Four swimmers will cross the northern a part of Lake Huron ― from the Upper Peninsula to the Lower Peninsula, Dreyer stated.
The ultimate stage, on Aug. 27, is a 30.5-mile swim that crosses Lake St. Clair and ends on the Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle, he stated. A Mariners’ Memorial Service is scheduled to be held on the Mariners’ Church of Detroit on Aug. 28.
Dreyer stated security is the organizers’ No. 1 precedence. A medical workforce is coordinating EMS technicians who will likely be used all through the swim. He added that they’ve “a full evacuation plan.”
“We’ve got a ground operations director that will coordinate with the crew out on the boat if we had to transport somebody ashore and we had to arrange an ambulance transport or anything like that,” Dreyer stated.
In addition to being the occasion director, Dreyer stated he’s additionally the rescue swimmer. He will usually kayak subsequent to the swimmer.
Swimmers practice for occasion
Michael Bell, a Plymouth Township resident, will likely be taking part in Stage 8 of the memorial swim, which is from Presque Isle Range Light Beach to Thunder Bay Island in Lake Huron.
Bell, a 56-year-old know-how adviser who swam competitively in highschool and faculty and has participated in U.S. Masters Swimming since faculty, is swimming 4 to 5 days per week as he prepares for the memorial swim. On weekdays, he swims two to a few miles. On weekends, he tries to swim even longer distances.
He has primarily been coaching in swimming pools, however he stated he lately swam in Long Island Sound and educated within the Detroit River final weekend.
“You got to get some open water swimming in,” Bell stated. “It’s different than swimming in a pool.”
Bell’s grandfather labored on a freighter within the Great Lakes after coming back from abroad in World War II. While Bell was rising up, his grandparents and his household went on street journeys across the state, together with to the Whitefish Point Light Station. Bell stated he loves the historical past of Michigan and the freighters, and the memorial swim permits him to “be a part of that history.”
“This type of a swim has never been tried before,” he stated. “I mean, this is a 411-mile journey through the Great Lakes.”
The swim will largely be in open water, the place swimmers cannot see lanes on the underside or rise up, Bell stated. Another problem of the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim is that if the climate pushes again the beginning time for a stage, the swimmers must end the stage at the hours of darkness, he stated.
Andrews, the Ann Arbor resident, stated he tries to swim 4 to 5 days per week. Three of the times often are in open water, and one or two are in a pool, he stated. He usually practices in lakes within the Island Lake Recreation Area in Green Oak Township. He additionally has swum in Lake Erie a couple of instances and educated in Lake Michigan final weekend.
Andrews, an intraoperative neuromonitoring technician for Michigan Medicine, grew up within the Columbus, Ohio, space. He spent two and a half years in England as an grownup earlier than shifting to Michigan a couple of months in the past.
Andrews stated he realized quite a bit concerning the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald after signing up for the occasion. The story “just really spoke” to him, he stated.
“My kitchen table is made out of iron, and everything around me has been mined and created and shipped from port to port, and there’s this huge background network of people who allow us to live the way that we live,” Andrews stated. “The fact that these 29 men braved the Great Lakes for so many years just to help us feel like a bit more comfort at home kind of made me feel like impassioned to honor them in some way.”
He stated that during the last month or so, his confidence within the swim has risen. When he began doing swim exercises, he frightened, “Oh, am I in over my head?”
“But as I just kind of committed to the regimen and put in the mileage in the pool and in the water, I’m starting to feel more confident and like I can actually swim long distances, longer than I ever have,” Andrews stated.
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