VOWSA Bay Challenge
What’s the longest distance that you can swim? Personally for me, I can make it about 2 lengths in the pool before I have to take a breather, however I had the pleasure of doing some photo coverage for some people who can swim a whole lot farther than I can. On Saturday I was volunteering for the Vancouver Open Water Swim Association, or VOWSA for short. It was their annual Bay Challenge, which is a 10km swim across the bay from Lighthouse Park ending up at Kitsilano Beach.
Does this guy look like he has just swam 10km? Not to me! Alan Bell was this year’s winner in the solo category with a time of 2 hours and 41 minutes!
We started off at Sandy Cove in West Vancouver, which is a beautiful secluded little beach. There were 7 teams and 12 solo swimmers.
3…2…1….GO!
After swimming for up to 4.5 hours, the swimmers then run up the beach and through the finish gate. It was a gorgeous day too!
You are probably wondering, what do you win besides the satisfaction of reaching a personal goal…? Well everyone is entered into a draw to win great door prizes from all of their sponsors (including us!), but the winners get their name on the Percy Norman Cup!
Here are some details of the cup. I love the engraved pictures depicting the swim across the Bay.
For more information about VOWSA and their history, or if you want to become a volunteer (it is a 100% volunteer-run organization), please check out their website. They are having their last challenge (the Kitsilano Challenge) of the year this Saturday so if you are in need of something to do, please go down and check them out!
Great shots of a very impressive event! Were you in the water for the 5th photo? Love it!
Thanks:)
Yes I was in the water for the start photos! The water wasn’t that cold, but I was only about 5 feet off the shore. If I can remember correctly, the water temperature that day was about 20 degrees Celsius (which is fairly warm according to the swimmers).