Swimmer dealt with dead GPS, hallucinations in failed Lake Michigan swim

(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Jim “The Shark” Dreyer, the 60-year-old Michigan man who attempted to swim across Lake Michigan last week, says he ultimately had to give up over AA batteries.

He was changing batteries for his GPS in the dinghy he was towing and the new batteries somehow went overboard.

“A tough pill to swallow,” Dreyer wrote.

Dreyer continued with a compass. At night, he guided himself with the light of what he believed to be Milwaukee in sight, as well as the stars. He was about half-way across and on pace to finish in 60 hours.

At some point during the night, though, he started hallucinating.

The glow on the horizon would come and go and move around, Dreyer wrote. A freighter started moving in ways ships can’t. A wall came out of the lake.

He would later learn that he swam in circles for all of the second night. For half of the third day, he was swimming north — not west. He wondered if he was hallucinating the compass readings.

For the third night, the forecast said there would be 9-foot waves in his face. He said his brain was mush.

Dreyer talked it over with members of his team who came out to check on him, and it was called off.

He’d gone 60 miles. The swim was to have been about 80. But with some of that done in the wrong direction and deteriorating conditions he still had nearly fifty miles to go.

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