Whatever floats your boat

A little while back, my nephew, Kenny, who has gone back to school to become a social worker, asked me for some more information about my swim because he wanted to do a presentation about it at school.  This was a proud moment, as I am quite proud of Kenny for continuing his education and desire to help people as a social worker, and because he was learning more about Lake Ontario specifically through my goal and wanted to share it with his classmates!

For one part, he wanted to know a bit about the challenges and sacrifices, and I told him something along these lines:  At over 40k of swimming, being in the water continuously for 15 to 21 hours without a wetsuit in uncertain conditions, this is one of my biggest physical challenges yet, but not only is it physically and mentally challenging, it is also an organizational and financial challenge.  I mention that my 1st & easiest sacrifice was TV and suggested that the average persons hours of TV viewing per week was probably close to the hours I train a week; but still the time commitment means some of my family time is sacrificed (although I try to limit it and make up for it, this is the hardest sacrifice) as well my family have all sacrificed time to help me with the swim...

But even through all the challenges and sacrifices, I have been relatively happy and excited about the swim and the preparation for it.  I have a wonderful and great support team of family and friends who help me stay in the right frame of mind and swimming for the health of Lake Ontario helps too!  I guess I'd say Lake O really floats my boat!...

Which brings me to my announcement: we bought a boat, a 14' inflatable boat!!  As I mentioned to Kenny, one of the challenges is organizing the swim, this is partially due to the requirement to have 4 boats accompany me during the crossing.  So this boat will be used in my crossing, but more then that the decision to buy a boat was influenced by how we want to use it after the swim:

We want to help on future swim crossings, help the aspirants by lending & driving one of the required boats, and hopefully make the organization for others a little easier in doing so!
We also want to share Lake O with more family and friends, so sometime after the swim we hope to get many friends out for a little boat ride/tubing as a little thank you to the many who have helped us and just for a fun time on Lake O!
So financially we think it is a good investment...

Today we took the boat for its maiden voyage, I swam awhile first with Cadence kayaking and Bill driving the boat with Dahlia, my sister Ariana and her boyfriend Adam on board; and then Cadence and I joined in for a ride on the boat too.