The South End’s annual New Year’s Day Alcatraz! Except as you may note from the map below, it was not actually an Alcatraz swim at all.

Yesterday’s test swim demonstrated that the current was really strong and timing would be critical. Today, we rode on the boats out to Alcatraz and started to wait for the tide. However, there were some technical issues with vessel traffic, and two large cargo ships that would have crossed our path when we wanted to swim, which would have made for a super risky crossing for 120 or so swimmers.

Plan B: swim from Pier 39! It was a quick 20min swim, and even though it wasn’t an Alcatraz, we still had some fun and I’m glad our pilots made the call to reroute us for our own safety.