Around Coronado Island

A tandem swim with Kyla! Kyla and I tackled open water together after we graduated from college. We did our first open water and marathon race together (the Castle 10k) and since have both been hooked. After I moved to Colorado, we’ve done all of our swim training together and so of course we had to do a tandem swim at some point.

Kyla first proposed the Coronado swim and it didn’t take much convincing from me. A 12 mile ocean swim in San Diego sounded like a dream (spoiler alert: it was). It’s a tide assisted swim too, which means fast swimming. I honestly think tide/current assisted swims are some of my favorite because you just go fast. And this swim took all the way around Coronado Island so we basically got a tour of San Diego from the sea.

We practically spent the entire winter and spring in the water. Long pool training swims and even longer swims in the lake when the water warmed up. And one adventure swim at 4am in Wellington Lake with Louis as our kayaking guide to get a taste of cold water night swimming.

We made our way out to San Diego a few days before our swim to scope out the scene. We did a little 1 hour warm up swim at La Jolla and it was probably one of the coolest swims I’ve done. We swam right over sting rays and found the leopard sharks.

Before our swim at La Jolla. ALso we got matching shark swim suits

we also did a hike at Cabrillo National Monument and could see the entire route we would swim around Coronado Island

The day of the swim we woke up bright and early at 1am. The timing of the tides were best for a 2am start, so that meant an early wake up call. We loaded up our snacks, put on our matching shark suits and were ready for the big swim. Our kayakers Dan and Summer packed up the kayaks, briefed us on the route and before we knew it, we were swimming.

Waiting to start the swim

This was such a cool route. The first half of the swim we made our way through the stretch of water between Coronado Island and mainland San Diego. It was all city swimming and seeing it at night with the lights was super fun! We passed under the Coronado Bridge, swam next to the Navy Base and saw countless ships.

After we rounded the corner past the Navy Base, we had to extend a little farther south to get around Zuniga Jetty before cutting back towards the island and towards the finish. This second half we were in the open ocean, which meant full darkness as we left the city behind us, choppier and colder water and no current. After the swim, Kyla told me her watch showed about a 10 deg drop in water temp around this time. But we were working so hard, I hardly noticed the temperature change. I did, however, notice the lack of a current and the more textured, wavy water.

Not too long after we turned back towards our finishing point of Gator Beach, the sun started to rise. And with it came a very thick marine layer. We couldn’t see 5ft in front of us, it was so foggy. At one of our feeds, we all watched a sailboat emerge from the fog not too far away from us. And just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared again into the haze. It was eerie. And slightly disconcerting because it meant even larger boats wouldn’t be able to see us and we wouldn’t be able to see them. The fog even disoriented our kayakers. They lost sight of their references on land and we went in a few zig zags and circles trying to find the course. It was almost dizzying for us in the water, having no horizon to reference nor a sense of where we were going. At some points it felt like we were navigating back the way we came (and we almost were, you can see the crazy course on our GPS track).

Eventually, Dan and Summer told us to just swim straight ahead and that we would run into Gator Beach in about 500 yards. We still couldn’t see the beach at this point but we started our 500 yard sprint to the finish. It finally came into view and Kyla’s mom was there waiting to watch our run onto land and finish the swim. 4 hours and 45 minutes of swimming completed!

Finish on Gator Beach

This was such a fun swim. City sight-seeing from the water, fast swimming and I got to do it all with my bff. A big shoutout to Dan and Summer for navigating us around the Island and through some thick fog and to Kyla’s mom for being our land crew and cheering us on the whole swim. And of course a shoutout to Kyla for proposing this fun night swim, pushing me in training and making this crazy adventure a fun one!