May 16 - New Swim Start Explained
Welcome to the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim! Here's what to expect!!
Welcome swimmers to the 2023 Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. You will receive, over the next month, emails from us explaining your day, and what to expect when you get to your swim. For you seasoned Bay Swim professionals, take some time and read these emails too, as many things are changing.
To start, one major change will be... well.... THE START!
No more "blender" of 300 swimmers fighting for position to get to the bridge. We are introducing a SAFE SWIM START, based on where the industry has moved over the past few years. This means that we will be putting swimmers in the water in small groups, based on ability. So here's how it goes...
There will be TWO lines of swimmers, one for wetsuits, and one with NO wetsuits. Swimmers will seed themselves based on their ability, meaning the fastest swimmers should be putting themselves in the front of the line. There will be pace signs (per 100 yard) on the beach that will help swimmers to seed themselves.
wimmers will enter the water in groups of 10 swimmers, about every 10 seconds. Once the group of swimmers has entered the water and starts to make progress, the next group of swimmers will enter. This will be controlled by the GCBS staff. We put together a YouTube video (below) to show exactly how this went at the Maryland Freedom Swim event this past weekend.
Just click the button to go to the video
Swim Start Video
We know that there will be questions about the start, so please feel free to reach out to us at info@bayswim.com with all of your inquiries. This new start does NOT affect the first mile cutoff time, which we give you an hour (each subsequent cutoff is 45 minutes). This will be more than enough time to get everyone in the water, with time to spare (at Freedom Swim 300 swimmers entered the water in 6 minutes).
Keep an eye out for more emails coming out, and the schedule of events will be out THIS FRIDAY (May 19th, 2023)
Thank you and we look forward to seeing you in June!
Jason Chance and the GCBS Team
