B.C. woman completes trio of open-water marathons with swim around Manhattan

A Vancouver woman is celebrating after swimming more than 42 kilometres around the island of Manhattan this weekend, the last of a trio of marathons that have earned her the Triple Crown of open-water swimming.

For eight hours and 37 minutes over the weekend, Jessi Harewicz battled rough water and pollution to complete the swim.

"I was watching the water days previous from near the Statue of Liberty and you're looking at all the pollution and having nightmares about it. Am I going to see dead rats?" she told Jason D'Souza, guest host of CBC's On The Coast.

"I kept having to remind myself to keep my mouth shut because we don't want to get sick with the water pollution."

She says in spite of her worst fears, she was pleasantly surprised to have encountered mostly twigs and seaweed.

A little more than 200 people have achieved the Triple Crown, which also requires swimmers to cross the English Channel between England and France, and the Catalina Channel off the California coast.

Beginning at Mill Rock where the Harlem River and the East River meet, Harewicz and the group of swimmers she was with made their way north up the Harlem and around the northern tip of Manhattan.

"That was probably the prettiest part of the Harlem," she said. "There's also a lot of bridges on the Harlem. It's called the '20 Bridges Swim' now and there's probably at least 10 bridges in one section."

As the group of international swimmers rounded the northern tip and headed south down the Hudson River, the Vancouver swimmer says the swim began to get stressful.

The water started to get rough because of increased boat traffic, she said. 

Also, Harewicz was becoming mindful of the time. Swimmers have to reach a cut-off point within a certain time or risk being pulled out of the water if they get there too late.

Barely two days after the swim ended, Harewicz says she was ready to get back in the water again.

"Oh, I feel great. ... I think I'm ready to get back into it," she said.

She credits her training with her 67-year-old father back home with preparing her for the swim.

"We've learned so much from working together in the Salish Sea of navigating through water," she said. "You just really have to look and see what the currents are to assist you and not get stuck."

Now that she's swam the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, and around New York City, Harewicz is ready for a new challenge: the North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland. She says the cooler conditions are similar to what she's used to around Vancouver and more comfortable than the waters around New York.

"The water was quite warm the other day — it got to a low of 16 [C] — especially with a high air temperature of at least 20, 25 degrees. It was quite warm and I prefer colder water," she said.

In the meantime, she's looking forward to exploring more open-water swimming around Howe Sound.

Listen to Jesse Harewicz recount her marathon swim: