Steve Fagin: A foggy swim to Fishers Island -- and back

One early morning last week, Dan Linkinhoker zipped up his wetsuit, pulled on a swim cap, adjusted goggles, stretched muscles, and stepped cautiously to the edge of a wooden pier on Groton Long Point.

He peered down at the water, six feet below, and then – kersplash!

Quickly bobbing to the surface, the 28-year-old triathlete started swimming out the mouth of Palmer Cove, into Fishers Island Sound. His destination, Fishers Island, two miles due south, lay obscured in fog.

This wasn’t pea-soup fog – it was more like oatmeal; denser, more opaque. At least the breeze was light; the seas, pancake flat.

Dan’s father, Jeff, family friend Mark Hester and I maneuvered our kayaks alongside him, and began paddling. His mother, Betty L. Brown, waved from the pier. We were off.

I glanced at my deck compass and called out, “One-hundred-and-eighty degrees.”

“One-hundred-and-eighty degrees,” Mark acknowledged. This heading would take us directly to Clay Point on New York’s Fishers Island, the closest land from Connecticut.

Stroke-kick-stroke, stroke-kick-stroke – Dan settled into a mesmerizing, metronomic rhythm. For the most part, Jeff, Mark and I paddled silently, intent on holding our course while listening for power boats – especially the ferry from New London to Block Island, which was scheduled to cross near our route later that morning.

Avoiding the ferry was one reason Dan wanted to get a 6:30 a.m. start; the other was to take advantage of slack tide at 7:30.

I kayak from Noank to Fishers frequently – in fact, paddled there with friends the day before. In addition, I have swum, with friends, from Groton Long Point to Fishers, and from Fishers back to Groton Long Point, which is why Dan got in touch with me to help plan his itinerary.

But two major differences distinguish Dan’s experience from mine. First of all, I am, at best, a casual swimmer, who took a couple hours to cover the distance each way, while Dan is an elite competitor who has won the Niantic Bay Triathlon. His 9-hour, 56-minute time in Ironman Lake Placid – a race consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run – qualified him to compete in the world triathlon championship in Nice, France.

More significantly, a rowboat accompanied me when I swam with friends to Fishers, and then we all rowed back to Groton Long Point. A few years later, I rode with friends in a powerboat to the island, and then we swam back to Connecticut.

Dan would be doing his round-trip swim in one morning.

“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” he said. Dan and his family lived for years on Groton Long Point, where he would gaze frequently at Fishers, wondering how difficult it would be to swim there.

“It always seemed way too far,” he recalled with a wry smile.

Now a civil engineer working as a construction supervisor in Washington, D.C., Dan was back in southeastern Connecticut last week to visit family, and to fulfill his long-held mission.

Jeff, Mark and I launched our kayaks from Esker Point in Noank, while Betty drove Dan to Groton Long Point. The three of us paddled a mile to the pier, in time to watch Dan jump into the water.

The forecast called for the fog to burn off, and it did in fact lift slightly as we neared the island’s West Harbor, heading toward Clay Point.

“Right on course!” I announced, steering between partially submerged Pulpit Rock and West Clump, a collection of partially submerged rocks. A harbor seal slid off Pulpit Rock as we approached, dove underwater, and then popped its head up to watch us go by.

This channel shallows at low tide, and without missing a beat, Dan switched from freestyle to breaststroke while kicking his way through thick eelgrass. In a hundred yards, when the water deepened, he reverted to freestyle.

A beach nestled between shoreline rocks beckoned, and Dan made a beeline.

I saw a door open to a mansion overlooking the strip of sand, and a couple emerged, just as Dan stepped ashore. Uh-oh.

Not to worry – Dana Didriksen and Rachel Williams couldn’t have been friendlier or more gracious.

“Wow! Can I get you anything? How about some peaches? Do you need a hot shower?” Rachel asked.

Dan was, in fact, shivering.

“I kept hitting these cold patches of water,” he explained. “I’d be swimming along, nice and warm, and next thing I knew, I’d be freezing.”

Rather than a hot shower, Dan opted to jog up and down the beach, and then slip a shirt supplied by his dad under his wetsuit.

After gobbling an energy bar and packets of caffeinated jell, he waded back in the water. Time to swim back.

The fog, meanwhile, had rolled back in – if anything, it was even thicker than off Groton Long Point.

Rather than wallow through the Sargasso Sea-like eelgrass between West Clump and Pulpit rock, I set a course slightly farther east.

We had expected the sky to clear and navigate visually, but the fog kept our eyes on the compass. I steered slightly east, calculating that a flooding tidal current would pull Dan further west toward Groton Long Point, but because he is such a strong swimmer, we wound up heading more toward Noank.

Jeff and I used the map function on our phones to adjust the course, while Dan stopped swimming, looked up and asked, “Where are we? Halfway?”

“We’re back in Palmer Cove! About a half-mile to go!” I shouted. Still no sign of land, though. This slightly circuitous route would add about four-tenths of a mile to the return trip.

Finally, 100 yards from shore, we saw a moored sailboat, and then the east shore of Groton Long Point, where Betty was waiting.

A sprint to the beach, followed by fist bumps and hugs all around.

“Except for the fact that my skin is on fire, I feel great!” Dan exclaimed. The shirt donned for warmth wound up causing severe chafing – when he peeled off the top of his wetsuit, Dan’s back looked as if he’d been flogged.

Not that the red welts would erase the broad smile that creased his face.

“Wasn’t that hard,” he said. Even the fog helped, allowing him to settle into a meditative state, rather than continuously focusing on a distant shore.

Mission accomplished – what’s next?

Dan began ticking off past and future athletic challenges, including a 70-mile trail race, and rim-to-rim-to-rim hikes of the Grand Canyon. Readers may also recall a 2018 column I wrote about Dan’s crazy, day-long, 135.5-mile bike odyssey that involved ferry rides to Block Island and Long Island, during which he averaged 18.35 mph and burned off 8,000 calories.

No rest for the weary – I can respect that.