
Originally Posted by
Alan H
Just a comment. I, personally, in my early 50's have swum about a half-mile in Puget Sound. I swam from the north beach of Herron Island, in the Case Inlet to the opposite shore, about 300 yards east of the ferry dock. This was at high tide. There's a long sandbar at the north end of Herron Island which is exposed at low tide. I did NOT walk out on the sandbar to do the swim. I was wearing a very thin "shorty" wetsuit, meaning a farmer john top and legs down to lower thighs. My wife rowed our aluminum rowboat near me in case I ran into trouble. I had no trouble. I am not a trained open-water swimmer. At that time I was swimming 2-3x a week for 25-30 minutes in a heated pool for my exercise and I thought it would be fun to try to swim the channel. After I was done, I stripped off the wetsuit and handed it to my brother-in-law, who weighs 2/3rds of what I do, so the suit was loose on him. He did the same swim and got cold, but he did it just fine.
I am really tired of posts that claim that the persons home waters are the deadliest in the world.... that if you even LOOK at the water without something designed by someone from the WBF Approved List, you will die. I once saw a video on YT of some guy sailing a little dinghy someplace on Puget Sound. It was hardly blowing, and the boat crossed over a little tideline, or maybe a line of rocks and went from utterly glassy water to 2-inch ripples in the span of a boat length. The narrator went on to explain that Puget Sound was incredibly dangerous because the sailing conditions could change so fast.
What the actual 'FFFF????
You can die in a puddle. It's all dangerous...the Bahamas, Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Lake Michigan, the Gulf, Lake Minnetonka, Lake Tahoe, Lake Geneva, the Irish Sea...it's WATER. Be aware, be sane, but get over it.