Group Swims From Nobska In Falmouth To Martha's Vineyard

One day, Mr. McCadam was riding his bicycle to a client’s house when he was hit by a car. He was taken to the emergency room and learned that his arm and shoulder were broken in six places. He underwent more than six hours of surgery that left him with an eight-inch plate and more than a dozen screws in his arm.

Mr. McCadam moved to the Cape, where his parents are spending their retirement, to start rehabilitation for his arm. Although he had not gone swimming much since his childhood, Mr. McCadam began practicing in a pool in Mashpee to help with his arm.

“[I] realized that swimming was probably the only solace that I had to actually get back to any kind of normalcy with my arm,” he said. Mr. McCadam explained that he has nerve pain from his injury every day, but swimming is the one thing that helps calm that pain and inflammation.

Soon, Mr. McCadam began swimming in the ocean. At first he was just swimming a couple hundred feet. “It turned into 500 meters and [then] it turned into a couple of miles,” he said.

Mr. McCadam met his fellow open ocean swimmers last year at a Zoom talk hosted by Highfield Hall. Participants were asked to introduce themselves with one interesting thing about themselves. Mr. McCadam said he swam in the open ocean year round, and another person on the call, Megan A. Titas, took note. “She got all excited because she actually swims all-year round, in the winter as well,” Mr. McCadam recalled. “She got my information and my email and she contacted me, and then we met up.”

Ms. Titas introduced Mr. McCadam to her swimming group, which had been swimming at Chapoquoit Beach for 15 years, he said. Mr. McCadam said the group does adventure swims, like the one to Martha’s Vineyard, each summer throughout Falmouth.

When Mr. McCadam joined the group, he was not able to keep up with everyone right away.

“Some of them were collegiate swimmers, some had played Division 1 water polo, and then it’s me, who just is starting to learn how to swim and has a serious arm injury,” he said.

So Mr. McCadam began swimming by himself and did so every day that summer. “Now I can actually keep up with them,” he said. He estimated that the group’s average distance each day is about 1½ to two miles.

One day this past February, Mr. McCadam was swimming with his group when he mentioned off-handedly to fellow swimmer Kalina Grabb that he wanted to swim to Martha’s Vineyard. “When I first moved up here, I always dreamed of either paddle boarding or swimming there. I just didn’t think swimming was even a credible dream, just because I wasn’t a good swimmer at the time,” he said.

But as soon as he told Ms. Grabb about his idea, she got to work organizing it. The swim group got in touch with marine scientist Rick Reinhardt. Mr. Reinhardt had been collecting data on tides and currents in the area for a couple of months, so he picked a day where the group would have the best conditions for making it across Vineyard Sound.

At 5 AM on the day of the swim, Mr. McCadam, Ms. Titas, Ms. Grabb, Mr. Reinhardt and their fellow swimmers—Moira McCullough, Dina Pandya, Mary Kaminski, Karen Mareb, Meredith Gilson and Blake Cole—met at Fiddler’s Cove. From there, the group brought the support boats to Nobska Beach.

At Nobska, Mr. McCadam saw that three lifeguard supervisors and four Falmouth lifeguards showed up to watch the swimmers take off.

“I got a little teary-eyed when I was about to start to swim, just because I didn’t realize anyone was going to actually wake up and support that type of thing,” Mr. McCadam said.

At that point, it was around 6 AM.

As the swimmers went on their way, they were accompanied by three support boats, each with one captain and two spotters. If a swimmer got tired, got a cramp, needed food or water, or was swept up by a current, the support boats were there to help, Mr. McCadam explained. The boats also served as a signal to other boaters in the sound that there were swimmers in the water.

In addition, the boats helped the swimmers know where to go. The captains—Robert Catilano, Chuck Reddington and Eve Cinquino—drove the boats about 200 feet in front of, or next to, the swimmers, following a specific route, Mr. McCadam said. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution engineer Blake Cole charted a course for the boats that would create the most favorable swimming conditions possible, Mr. McCadam said. “The boats were pretty instrumental in getting us across. I think if we just swam across by ourselves, we would have no idea exactly the routes to take.”

Even with the support boats, Mr. McCadam said, he still had a few things to worry about: the swimmers had to cross the boat channel where the ferries between Woods Hole and Martha’s Vineyard go. They had only 10 to 15 minutes to cross if they wanted to avoid the ferries coming from both directions.

“I was a little nervous about it before,” Mr. McCadam said. But after the group crossed, “it didn’t really seem as hard as we thought. After that, the whole swim was just kind of smooth sailing.”

But not everyone had quite as easy a time as Mr. McCadam. Three swimmers got caught in a current that carried them so far along the coast of Martha’s Vineyard that they ended up having to swim an extra mile, Mr. McCadam said. Though the support boats were there to pick them up if they were struggling, they were determined to keep swimming, Mr. McCadam said.

Dehydration was another problem some of the swimmers faced, Mr. McCadam said. This is because dehydration can cause cramps, which can be dangerous during an open ocean swim. Mr. McCadam was able to mostly avoid this issue by packing an electrolyte drink in his swim buoy. Every so often, he would float on his back and take a few sips from his drink container before continuing on, he said.

The swimmers had gone in three different groups based on speed. Mr. McCadam was in the first group. He arrived on shore about 10 minutes before his support boat and the rest of his group.

Right away, a woman came running down from her house overlooking the beach to talk to Mr. McCadam. She said she had seen him out in the water and was not sure if he was a seal or a person. She asked where he came from, and when he told her Nobska, she congratulated him and offered him food and water. As the other swimmers began to arrive, the woman brought out a tray of coffee and water for everyone. “It was pretty incredible,” he said. “She really gave us kind of a heroes’ welcome.”

After tying up all the boats, the swimmers “ate and celebrated and just kind of basked in the glory of the swim,” Mr. McCadam said. He and several of the swimmers continued their celebrations in Vineyard Haven before catching the ferry back to Woods Hole. “It was a 45-minute boat ferry back,” he said. “We just swam across the sound, and it only took about an hour more than taking the boat.”

Mr. McCadam said the end of the swim was a triumphant moment for him after his injury. “I was in pain the whole time, so I was kind of fighting the pain and almost using the pain as a motivator,” he said.

Mr. McCadam explained that since his injury, his relationship with pain has changed. “I think it’s actually made me stronger,” he said.

Part of what made Mr. McCadam’s success in the swim so emotional for him was the journey he had been on leading up to it. “It’s like the swim was kind of the culmination of rehab and being in this area and learning to swim again,” he said. “The ocean kind of saved me.”

Next, Mr. McCadam and his group want to swim across Buzzards Bay, which is a little over five miles, he said. The group hopes to do the swim this summer or in the fall.