Closing down...

Hello blog people!

After a couple months of recovery and selling off the last few tshirts, it's time to close down the fundraising pages and clear out the bank account. We've raised roughly $5400 which is absolutely incredible!! The Canadian Cancer Society page will be open for another couple of weeks.

Special thanks to our fantastic distance coach Ali, paramedic extraordinaire Trevor, boat captain & first mate Hugh & Jane, photographer/logo designer Cheyney, and our support from Kerrie, Jim and Sheree.

All of the "leftover" funds donated through Indiegogo are going to be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society, as well as all of the tshirt proceeds. If you haven't donated yet and would like to we would really appreciate your support. Thank-you to everyone who has already donated. This fundraiser was very successful, and it definitely would not have been as great without all of the support that we received.

Thanks again to everyone who helped support us!

Kaylynn & Caryn

10 hours and 35+ km Later

Hello!

If you haven't already heard, we made it across the Strait of Georgia. Well, Caryn made it all the way, Kaylynn jumped in about every other hour to swim with Caryn. Caryn swam more than 35km on July 20th, and Kaylynn swam about 20km.

Our swim was planned for July 19th, and at about 5:20 am on the 19th we set out to our start site. In the inlet where we were moored overnight, the water was as smooth as glass, but once we were out on the strait, we were bouncing around in 3-4.5ft waves with the wind at over 25 knots. We were forbidden to get in the water...and headed back to Secret Cove for the day. It was a really disappointing day for us, but also for our crew. Everybody was rather quite sad. When you work so hard and so long for one day, and you have brought so many people together for a single moment, it is really disappointing to have to face the fact that the swim might not happen.

However, on July 20th, the engines of the Temptress were started again, and we set off for Trail Islands at 5:30 am to make attempt number 2. It was still pretty wavy, but they were smaller than on the 19th, maybe 2.5ft-3ft. The skies were grey and it was drizzling a little bit, but we jumped in anyway. With Trevor and Kaylynn's Mom in the dingy, we set off headed for Nanaimo. The biggest problem was that when you are swimming in between the swells, you can't see the land markers that you are headed for. But we managed to keep somewhat on the right direction, despite getting swamped a few times in the waves and spun around a bit like a toy top.

Thankfully, as the day went on, the Strait smoothed out. I think we were both a little surprised at how warm the Strait was where we were swimming, normally after 45 minutes in the ocean we could no longer feel our hands. Despite the warmer than expected ocean temperature, Caryn's body temperature at the end was 32 degrees C...

I think it is safe to say that this is one of the hardest things that either of us have done, but also probably one of the most rewarding. You learn a lot about yourself when you are pushed to your breaking point, because when you are swimming, it is just you and the ocean.

Our Life Boat/Food Boat/ Encouragement Crew/ Paramedic Station

Captain Hugh and First Mate Jane

The Dingy Captain and Paramedic Trevor

Kaylynn's Mom and Swimmer Feeder

Caryn swimming in the smooth ocean near the end

Just keep swimming...

Baby Food Break

Almost there!!

We did it!

T-46 hours!

Well folks, we leave in less than two days! EEK!

Everything is as prepared as it can be… I think. We had an awesome interview with Mike Eckford from CKNW yesterday. It was really fun and a great experience, so thanks! And thanks to Caroline who organized it for us. Here is the link to our fantastic radio interview! It’s a hoot and a half… Click here to listen on soundcloud!

We also have t-shirts!!! They are black with pink writing and very stylish! We have lots of them left so if you would like one we are happy to ship them! Mike and Caroline are also sporting them... although I think Mike might have felt a tad uncomfortable as he had to squeeze into the only small we had left. Our apologizies, but it was really quite flattering! Here is a picture of us in our lovely new apparel...

Silly Kaylynn, putting her shirt on backwards...

 

Featuring Uncle Bob!

We went and talked over boating and safety logistics with our captain and our paramedic today. We have some good ground rules set out as well as plans A-Z should some inconvenient or unexpected circumstances arise. We had some interesting boat issues… We had to fix some things that involved our safety boat… but it’s fixed! So we’re safe. For now. J

We did our final grocery shop so we are all prepared for our expedition on Saturday. Caryn got some baby food. Kaylynn got a toothbrush… always comes in handy on the high seas.

The plan at present is to leave from the Trail Islands at 6am, low tide, on Saturday July 19^th. Optimistically we’re aiming to finish the swim in 8 hours, meaning that we will reach Hammond Bay (our landing destination) by 2pm, which is high tide. Hopefully. Or we will be swimming on the spot. Cross your fingers… or fins! We will have someone in charge of tweetin’ our progress on Saturday, so follow us (@Waves4Women) for updates. We hope that the only storm that will be happening will be our tweets!

This might be our final blog post before the swim if we have no internet access tomorrow, so watch our tweets and we’ll check back on Sunday!

Our mantra for Saturday!

Caryn & Kaylynn

A week tomorrow!

We drove up to Nanaimo today to scout out where we’re going to be landing. We were going to land in Pipers lagoon, but unfortunately it’s not really accessible, which is a small problem in the event that we need paramedics to come and rescue us after our little ocean adventure. So we decided on Hammond Bay. It’s a pretty neat area, and there’s a nice view of where we’re going to be coming from at Neck Point (just north of Hammond Bay). Optimistically we should be hitting shore somewhere between high and low tide… which is not the best timing but if we make it and the currents aren’t too bad, we can hopefully swim right into the bay. We’ll have to play it by ear on the day though – safety first!

Our landing site, Hammond Bay Nanaimo

We also went for an ocean dip on Thursday morning. The water was calm and beautiful and SO COLD! We made some more jellyfish friends, one of which may have stung Kaylynn. Luckily she didn’t notice because her hands were numb. She did notice however when it was swollen this morning. Aside from the jelly sting, these pictures kind of reminded us how awesome this swim is going to be…

Stay tuned for the official countdown until July 19^th! We will have an updated twitter feed (@Waves4Women) on the day of. We’ll keep you posted on new developments!

Caryn & Kaylynn

A week and a half to go...

Well folks our swim is 11 days from today! We’re getting really excited. We’ve ordered some t-shirts and we’re hoping to get a fundraising booth at uptown mall. We will post more information once we have it! The t-shirts are pretty awesome though! You should think about getting one… J

We’ve been invited to do an interview on “The Shift with Mike Eckford” which is a radio show on CKNW AM980. We’re going to be meeting them at 8PM on Wednesday July 16^th. I’m not sure if it’s live (part of me hopes it isn’t!) but once we find out when it might air we will for sure be posting it! Stay tuned! (Cause we’re gonna be on the radio…Ha!)

As promised – a video! This is a composite of the various open water swims we’ve done with some funny moments. If you have a chance, check it out!

If you want to get involved feel free drop us a line – our email is waves4women@gmail.com. We check it daily. We are also happy to ship you a shirt and you can pay online through paypal! If you wish to donate or buy a t-shirt via cash or cheque please email us and we can give you more information on how.

Until next time,

Caryn & Kaylynn

First Waves

Hello peeps!

So we had our first team ocean water swim today. After many adventures of Caryn trying to find a wetsuit, we finally found one. None of the women’s sizes fit so she now has a men’s suit. But hey, whatever works right?

Now that we both have suits we decided to take a dip in the ocean. To say that it was an adventure would be a bit of an understatement. We did our first workout in the pool, had a snack then decided to find some open-ish water. First of all, for those of you that have never put on a swimming wetsuit before, it is a workout in itself! Many a weird poses were struck. After that we finally entered the water… man was it chilly! We managed to last about an hour, before Caryn (being the ginger that she is) started to burn. The worst part was probably the water trickling slowly into all of the spaces in the wet suit. It’s almost easier if you can jump in and just get cold all at once. Unfortunately that’s not really how it works with a wetsuit. After that weird form of water torture was over, it wasn’t too bad. After about 10 minutes we were almost fully acclimatized to the water. We did a loop of Esquimalt Lagoon (not the cleanest water, but better than nothing). I think we probably drank a fair amount of sea water, which also unfortunately included a lot of goose poop…but our swim also included a lot of laughs which made up for it. (We may have spent more time laughing at each other than actually swimming.)

Before

After

Tomorrow we have another dip in the ocean, hopefully it will go equally as well. It was a bit choppy today, but that was probably good practice for the actual swim. The ocean swim will be after a 10km pool adventure… which will be tiring but I’m sure we’ll be happy we did it when we’re swimming in the Strait!

Check back for another blog post to see if we survive tomorrow! 

Fundraising Time!

Hi friends,

As the swim date nears we are hitting the water hard for the next couple of weeks. Literally 6 hours a day… We eat all of the food. All the time. But we’re getting pretty excited! We have a good plan to keep us on course during the swim and we’ve started planning some more fundraising events. We’re hoping to have a booth with t-shirts and baked goodies at Uptown Mall (Victoria) next week. Still in the works but we’ll keep updating as we figure it out. We are also hoping to head to Vancouver for a fundraiser hosted my Amarose Events sometime either before or after the swim. Thank-you to the lovely ladies at Amarose for the support, we really appreciate it!  In case you want to check them out here is their facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/AmaroseEvents

Enjoy the weekend, and you know where we’ll be (hint: it involves water)! Until next time,

Caryn