We knew it wouldn’t last, but wouldn’t it have been nice for Lake Michigan to still be in the 50Fs at the start of December? But alas, it was not meant to be as Mother Nature always wins out…
I arrived at L1 just before 7:00am and was already pretty frozen from the 17F outside air temperature. I knew that the lake was going to be substantially warmer, but I was hoping against hope that it would at least be close to 50F. But the long delayed Fall Turnover finally materialized giving us a 42F lake. Fortunately for us, the lake was pretty calm and we had lots of sunshine that somewhat tempered the chill.
For this swim, I went with a neoprene shorty over my jammers and donned by hood, gloves, and booties for the first time since last March. This was more for the air temperature than the lake because, once I got in, I was quite comfortable in-swim. But all good things must come to an end. So when I made it back to L1 after a 1/4 mile swim, I hastily exited the water and changed back into my dry winter layers as soon as humanly possible. But even with this mad scramble, I couldn’t escape the bitter bite of the 17F air which savagely tormented me until I got back to the sanctuary of my heated car.
But in all candidness, I can’t wait until the next swim!
