My family has a lake house. On our section of lake, it’s about 1 mile or so from our dock to the other side of the lake. This is a reservoir lake, calm water. I often swim to the other shore and back. This freaks some of my family members out. I am a strong swimmer but they give me the “people drown every year” story.
I’m wondering, do they have a point? Yes, anytime you are in water you can drown, but is this really all that dangerous? If I were to get overly tired, I am perfectly comfortable floating. I could tread water for hours if necessary. I’m very comfortable in water. Aside from having a freak heart attack and drowning, do you feel this is overly dangerous? I’m 36, physically fit and have been in water as long as I could walk FWIW.
I don’t swim much as of late but but used to do things like that all the time. I feel your family is effectively saying don’t walk down the street you might get hit by a car. Yeah sure accidents can happen but i think the odds of a good swimmer drowning on a calm lake are less then someone getting hit by a car on the sidewalk.
As a kid, when I had a lot more my friends and I would have contests seeing who could swim to the other end of Walden pond and back the most times. It’s about a half mile in length. Usually after a half dozen times we were sufficiently tired or our parents made us stop.
If you care for data from the land of a thousand lakes, most people who drown are intoxicated. Typical case, elderly overweight gentleman with bad cholesterol values goes for a swim after sauna and a couple of strong beers, and the ticker can’t handle it. Instant heart attack. The other typical case involves fast motor boats and alcohol, so I don’t think that’s relevant in your case.
I’m always as amused by the yearly bafflement of some journalists who see it as newsworthy that more people drown around midsummer than at any other public holiday. Duh. One of these days, some genius will point out that for public safety, midsummer’s eve has to be moved into February.
I don’t think you are at undue risk as long as a) you know your abilities; b) your comfortable enough in the water not to panic in the event of a cramp; c) you keep an eye out for boats; d) you are not in a classic 80s era horror movie.
I agree with you that the risk should be low, but three of my cottage neighbours are tri-athletes who swim better than I could fantasize about. They are absolutely obsessive about the buddy system, even when they’re swimming in areas that I’d assume that I would be safe swimming alone. I’m assuming they know something I don’t!
So you’re out walking down a nice quiet country lane, and suddenly Something Happens in your body–a blip in the brain, a twinge in the heart–and you black out and pitch to the ground. And a couple of minutes later you awaken and say “Geez, that was weird,” and get up and move along with a few bruises, or you can’t really get up but you use your cell phone to call for help, or somebody finds you…
Same situation, only now you’re swimming in the middle of the reservoir, alone, and when the blip or twinge comes along you have little air in your lungs and down you go–and no one’s watching, and there’s no cell phone, and when your unconscious body yields to instinct and tries to breathe you get nothing but water, and that’s all she wrote.
Is that likely to happen? Of course not, given the health record you described. But you can see the difference in the two scenarios, and we human beings are very poor at assessing risk. This is probably what’s going through the minds of your family. (Unless, of course, they just want to spoil your fun.)
Or maybe they are concerned because the idea of swimming more than a mile freaks them out?
Those triatheletes training may have buddies partly because they know they plan on pushing themselves to the limit during training (which does substantially raise the risk of an untoward event) and partly because because many find it easier to work out harder with buddies.
if you didn’t use the buddy system then at the cost of some drag you could wear a CO2 inflatable life vest. people would have less fear due to your instant flotation if needed.
Spontaneous undertows are a real problem in large bodies of water. Do relatively small bodies of water get the same effect? I have no idea. I’ve never experienced a significant one myself, spending a lot of time swimming in Lake Erie when I was younger (often far off from shore, alone, sometimes at night. Probably not the greatest idea).
Edit: I may be thinking of rip currents, which are sometimes incorrectly called undertow. Undertow is simply the subsurface retreating wave action near the shore, right? Could someone explain the different ways you can get caught up in an unexpected current?
I would think being hit by a boat would be the biggest issue. A good friend of ours was killed several years ago when he was hit by a speedboat that simply never saw him.
For some people, warning others against things is like throwing salt, it’s pure superstition without the slightest connection to actual danger, real or imagined. They do it because they’ve always done it and because they were raised by people that did it.
For others, it’s just so they can say at your funeral, “I told him not to do that.”
I got caught in an undertow in Key West when I was a kid. The wave moves away from shore underwater and if you get caught in it as a layer it’s tough to get back to the surface. I had the presence of mind to rotate so that I was facing the bottom and was able to plant my feet and spring to the surface.
the risk in this case is medical. Any ailment that makes it difficult to swim becomes fatal. Swimming with a gas inflatable vest would add greatly to the safety margin.
Healthy people tend to drown due to panic. It’s easy to say that you know how to float, but it’s not always easy to remember that when you get a major cramp, and then swallow a whole bunch of water, and you realize no one knows you’re out there, and you’re in a lot of pain. Panic isn’t logical, and there’s a limit to how much the average person can prepare for it.
No, it’s not likely that you’ll drown, but it is a possibility and it’s not something you should ignore when swimming long distances alone.
Nothing to add to the OP except to say that the worst happens when you least expect it, an dif it does, and you’re alone in the middle of a large body of water, then you wouldn’t be the first person described as a “strong swimmer” to wash ashore with lungs full of water.
The big thing here for me is swimming across the lake.
If you swim that mile close to the shore of the lake you give yourself an escape route.
Your reasonable sure that if a “bad thing” happens you can almost certainly get out of the water.
Risk of drowning - really low.
“Bad thing” happens half a mile out, your stuck with a half mile swim back to shore.
Can’t swim that far, your life might depend on someone else figuring out your stuck out in the lake and need help and actually being able to provide that help.
Can’t swim that far and the water temperature is below 80°, have a look.
Risk of drowning - who knows for sure, but your putting yourself in the best possible position to find out.
CMC fnord! #th on getting an on demand flotation device.
Done more than a mile alone on a busy lake full of drunk boater many a time. smart, no; fun, yes, why; because I could.
I ride motorcycles, SCUBA, made a so so living flying small planes, climb cliffs, all manner of things. I’m 66.
I think you should heed all the advice and stop doing anything fun that has any danger to it. You will have a much more enjoyable life. I feel really bad that I did all the the things I did. I wish I had not done them.
Remember you have no rights to live your life your way no matter how long it might last.
Swimming with a life vest , even an uninflated one is pure joy, just ask the one who told you to do that.
Swimming along the shore is just the same as swimming across and has the same thrill so actually you should only swim in a pool that you can touch the bottom if you stand up, sheesh, everyone knows that.
Not many really want to die today nor deliberately do really really risky things. (some do but not really that many so they make the news and they usually have folks watching.)
I am among those that do not want to die a little every day because I do nothing.
Risk assessment, we all do it all the time.
Risk / reward, we make the choice all the time.
You came here and asked and of course the people who are fearful just like the ones you know are who respond the most. If you don’t believe you are safe without others agreeing with you and are leaving that decision up to others, well …
