Powering on
At 8:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2020, Charlotte Brynn eased herself into the gently lapping waters of Lake George from the dock at Snug Harbor Marina in Ticonderoga. She was wearing a one-piece competitive-style bathing suit and a bathing cap, plus goggles and a glow stick tied to her suit.
There was no moon, and the water temperature was in the low 70s.
In the dark, August night, accompanied by a friend in a kayak and several others on a pontoon boat, the swimmer from Stowe, Vermont, made her way to what is known as “Diane’s Rock,” a boulder a few feet from shore. Then she started swimming south.
The next stop: the public dock in Lake George Village, 32 miles and an unknown number of hours away.
Brynn, 54, a New Zealand native who has performed “marathon” swims around the country, had just launched her longest challenge yet. She would be the latest in a long line of aquatic athletes attempting to swim the entire length of Lake George.
In this, she would continue a tradition that began in 1958, when local Diane Struble completed the swim in 35.5 hours.
A lot has changed in the world of marathon swimming since that famous feat, when the 25-year-old mother of three was sponsored by Schlitz beer and Camel cigarettes, and brought so much fame to the lake that a group of 10,000 onlookers welcomed her at the finish.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the difficulty—the dark nights, the cold water, the moody lake with its risks of changing winds and sudden thunderstorms. Only 12 people had completed this
