Ventura swimmers shatter distance mark with 202-mile relay

For six swimmers who on Monday completed a record-breaking 4 1/2-day, 202-mile relay off Southern California, among the biggest challenges were brutally cold water temperatures, jellyfish stings and mysterious little fish that nibbled on their skin as they stroked across the black ocean during the night.

"They would nibble on my feet at night, and they got us all eventually," team member Jim McConica said of the pesky denizens. "I don't know why they would only feed at night but they would come up and they would nibble on you, causing you to lurch out of the water, trying to get away."

The ambitious project, called the Ventura Deep Six Ocean Challenge, was planned to shatter the 78.2-mile record for a continuous open-water relay swim. The six members were McConica, 59; Jim Neitz, 42; John Chung, 40; Kurt Baron, 46; Tom Ball, 50, and Mike Shaffer, 45.

McConica, a renowned distance swimmer and an L.A. County lifeguard, said the team agreed on 202 miles hoping to not only break the record -- which was set last year on a lake in New Zealand -- but to put their new record out of reach.

They embarked on their quest last Thursday at dawn in Ventura. Their route led northward, to Santa Barbara's Stearns Wharf, then southward to La Jolla in San Diego County.

Wetsuits are banned in these types of record pursuits and the ocean was so cold -- from the mid-50s into the mid-60s -- that the swimmers would turn "a cadaver white," said McConica, who was still in bed at mid-morning Tuesday, trying to catch up on sleep, when reached by phone for this interview.

Each swimmer had set times in the rotation -- McConica's times were 6 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. and midnight -- and by excursion's end each would complete 17 hour-long stints in the water. A team of observers made sure all rules were followed and the record is expected to be validated by the World Open-Water Swimming Assn.

But it was not the smoothest of operations. The escort boat did not always present the straightest path and after each swim, weary and chilled almost to the point of immobility, the swimmers had to try to climb back onto a small inflatable boat via a precarious swim ladder. They then had to climb from the inflatable onto the mother ship, a task made difficult because of large swells.

Lisa Gizara, a photographer who accompanied the expedition, said the swimmers shivered uncontrollably and their lips and faces were blue as they tried climbing aboard the inflatable.

It was overcast throughout the journey and by the time a swimmer was able to lose his chill and feel somewhat comfortable, it was time to go back into the water.

But there were what McConica called "beautiful moments," such as the time he was accompanied by about 100 dolphins that scooted beneath and around him as he swam. "They were chirping and talking, the whole thing," he recalled. "Even with ear plugs in you could hear all the noise they'd make."

The most beautiful moment, of course, was the finish. The swimmers got stronger as the finish line drew closer and McConica said they were like horses wanting to get back to the barn.

"We were all ready to be done," he said. "We were all just physically and mentally exhausted. But it was tremendous. We were all elated and extremely pleased with each other because we had accomplished something that nobody else had done."

-- Photos: Swimmers exchange places as part of the Ventura Deep Six relay (top); Jim McConica climbs aboard inflatable boat after a stint in the water (middle), and Jim Neitz being accompanied by an escort boat in the waning sunlight (bottom). Images are courtesy of Lisa Gizara and subject to copyright protection.

-- Editor's note: This post also appears on the GrindTv.com outdoors blog