Lets say you were on a lake on a cool crisp May morning. The boat sinks, your not wearing a life jacket, and your at least 300 feet (about 100 meters) or a football field length from shore. The waters chilly but not freezing cold.
Could you swim to shore?
Notice my above scenario is not just a quick dip in the safety of a heated pool where one is seldom more than a few arm lengths from safety. It requires requires a good swim stroke/technique. One that would combine good speed with minimum energy loss.
I’m not a very strong swimmer; can’t seem to turn my head well enough to get a good breath, so I have to stop to catch my breath. But backstroke 100 feet to shore, yeah, I think so.
Nope. I can float and dog paddle. I had swimming lessons for years as a kid but it never really clicked, and I haven’t been swimming as an adult to practice or improve my skills.
I used to swim two miles three times a week at the gym. I haven’t done that in a long time, but I still know the stroke, and I have the lung capacity, because I bike. I think I would be exhausted, need recovery-- that is, I’d have to just lie there on the shore for a while before I could get up-- and have some very sore muscles later, but adrenaline would kick in, and I’d go slow, but I think I’d make it.
When I was a kid, I went through all the Red Cross swimmer’s training tiers, passing the last one the summer I was 13. I know how to swim with my head down. I don’t do the thing that exhausts most people, which is trying to hold their head out of water. I know how to breathe and turn my head on each stroke.
I’m proud of my swimming skills, because for some reason, it was very hard for me to learn how to swim. Most of my friends could swim at 4 or 6, and I couldn’t really swim until 7. I was in the slow group in the first year at camp, but I worked my way up, and was in the second highest my last year (I couldn’t dive off the high board to make the highest group). I am not a great swimmer, but I am an extremely competent swimmer, and boy did I work hard to get here.
100 meters/300 feet? Pshaw, of course I could swim that distance.*
Is it something I would WANT to do? Nope. I swam a lot as a kid because I went to Girl Scout camp every summer, and we had to swim all the time. As an adult, I realize that I loathe the “I-can’t-breathe-I-can’t-see-plus-I’m-fucking-COLD” feeling that I get from swimming, and I avoid it except in unusual cases where I’m really overheated and/or the water is unusually warm.
That doesn’t mean I couldn’t do it in a pinch. I know how to swim and I have enough endurance to run 5+ kilometers five or six times a week so I’m sure I’d make it.
*If the water were literally freezing cold, though, forget it. I’d succumb to the iciness, no question.
Yeah, I don’t think the scenario of the OP really rises to the skill level of the Thread title.
I’m not a strong swimmer at all. Can’t do the whole “turn face to side to breathe” thing (I always end up taking in water) so I keep my face out of the water completely in very bad form. I can, however, go fairly good distances if I just hold my breath and swim underwater.
Even so, I am fully confident that I could cross the distance of a football field- especially if it were that my life depended upon it. In the ocean, with ocean currents, possibly not. I definitely believe I could do it in a lake.
So, I completely pass the test laid out in the OP but I think I’d more accurately have to answer “no” to the question in the Thread Title “Can you REALLY swim?”.
Yes. My technique is terrible but I regularly swim further than that. At our cottage, I swim around a small reef off our dock, which must be a distance at least twice that far - 100 m out and back. Of course hypothermia would thow that off, if it was a factor.
Nope - I’m dead. Although I’ve been able to save myself in your average trout stream (PA version) I admit to being a non-swimmer and after a couple minutes and a couple yards its going to basically be break out the cadaver dogs and grappling hooks.
I’m an old fart but could get to shore easily. In fact if when I got to shore I realized the cooler of beer was still floating where the boat sank I could swim back out to get the cooler and swim it back to shore.