None of this was planned, right up until the end when everything had to be nailed down and double-checked. ADVERTISING None of this was planned, right up until the end when everything had to be nailed down and double-checked. The
None of this was planned, right up until the end when everything had to be nailed down and double-checked.
The spontaneous realization of group goals occur naturally, planned or otherwise, and this is a group that tends to work outside the lines. For starters, they show up at Richardson Park on Sunday mornings to swim for an hour or so in the ocean, and it’s not like there’s a long line of traffic in front of them. They have it all to themselves at times, it seems.
And now, they have another memento of their long relationship with the ocean — they came together and swam as a group from Richardson to Honoli’i, just because they thought they could, and they were right.
You could say they swim to a different drummer, but maybe it’s just the unbroken quiet in dark and light they experience every week that seduces them, brings them back for more. And what’s more natural for ocean swimmers than to look along the shoreline and consider the possibilities?
It is an eclectic group, these four swimmers who recently looked up the coast from Richardson Park and saw a challenge they thought was worth a try.
Nobody was making too much of it, these are not people who see themselves as shocking the world. None of them wants to be Diane Nyad, who swam around Manhattan, 28 miles, in 1979 and who, at 64, became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage.
None of that stuff, these are just four people who like to swim in the ocean and wanted to have a bit of test for themselves.
But it’s intriguing sometimes, and at least a little instructive for the rest of us, to see what can be done in small groups of like-minded folk.
Cat Spina grew up in Montreal and was introduced to lake swimming early on, and as she grew up she found her interest in the water, the planet, and her peace of mind was all connected somehow.
She worked on tour boats on Maui, participated in the 6-mile rough water swim, the Ali’i Challenge, and last year when she was going back home for a visit she happened to look around and found a 5-mile swim in Vermont.
“That might have been what did it,” Spina said, “that kind of put it in my mind.”
It wasn’t just a 5-mile swim, though. Spina and a small handful of others decided to do it back and forth, making a 10-mile swim.
“It was great,” she said, “really helps your confidence.”
Not a big surprise then when she got back to the Big Island and started thinking about what she had heard from a friend who often showed up for those 9 a.m. Sunday swims at Richardson.
Mike Dishman explained to Spina that he made the Richardson-Honoli’i swim, but, in retrospect, he had done it backwards, against the currents, and one day he wanted to do it the right way, ending, not starting at Honoli’i.
The power of the group took over and by the time everyone spoke up, they agreed to try a 5.6-mile swim from Richardson to Honoli’i, a stretch of water that was open ocean, beyond the reef, out there where not everything in the water is your friend.
Spina took over, made phone calls to the Coast Guard about their plans, made sure everyone had at least one support canoe or kayak to assist and keep them headed in a straight line. By the time they all got organized at 7 a.m. on Sept. 9, they had a support crew of five outrigger canoes, one standup paddler and a kayaker.
In the group you had a 63 year-old Australian woman, a 39 year-old guy from Hawaii, another from Northern California who is 53 and Spina, 37, the ring leader from Canada who conceptualized the challenge.
Sam Martin grew up in Australia, moved here 14 years ago, but has always been an ocean swimmer.
“We didn’t have pools,” she said the other day, “but we had an ocean, we all just swam in the ocean, nobody had a pool.”
It does seem a little odd that we live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and then we build pools for the purpose of swimming. Go figure, it’s what we do.
Aaron Costillo’s background was nothing like that, nothing like any of the three others who completed the swim had known.
He grew up in Hawaii but he wasn’t a swimmer until his younger brother asked for some help in 2009 when his brother was training for a triathlon.
“He was all on his own,” Costillo said, “and I wasn’t a bike guy and I didn’t think I could run that much, so I thought I’d try swimming with him.
“It sort of stuck,” he said. “These guys are really great, I’m so glad I ran into them.”
Costillo just started showing up for the Sunday swims in July but fell right into the groupthink.
“It’s so encouraging to have a group, even a small group like this,” he said. “I was looking for it but I didn’t know I was looking for it, if you know what I mean.
“The swim brought something out of me,” Costillo said. “I felt good all the way and we couldn’t have asked for better conditions or more support. Really, it was a pretty cool thing.”
Apparently, something about the lure of the blue Pacific reached out and drew in all four of these recreational swimmers.
Roy Dollwet, a local Realtor, grew up in Northern California, swimming in the Russian River.
“You do that, you feel it differently than swimming in a pool,” he said, “it’s a whole other thing, you don’t really forget it. I didn’t, anyway.”
They said they could see the bottom about 80 percent of the time on the swim, but yeah, the murky waters are a bit scary.
“For me,” Spina said, “being out there is meditative, it gives me a chance to collect my thoughts and sort things out, it’s a stress-reliever.
“But I’ll be totally honest,” she said, “in the murky water when I couldn’t see what was going on, my hand brushed against a leaf and it totally panicked me for, like, maybe a second, then I realized it was only a leaf.”
And surrounded by a team, she had reason to feel secure out there in Big Blue.
So is this an end in itself? Is it a start of something? Will more people start showing up at 9 a.m. on Sundays? Is Richardson-to-Honoli’i going to be an annual thing?
“Oh, I don’t want to think about it,” Spina said. “There were a lot of details but I’m so glad we pulled it off.
“Next year? Will the interest be there? The conditions have to be right or you could ruin the day, we’ll see.”
She doesn’t want to admit it, but Cat Spina is already thinking about it.
This could be a thing.
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