A 60-year-old athlete attempting to swim 80 miles across Lake Michigan was forced to give up on the third day after realizing he was going in the wrong direction.
Jim Dreyer, nicknamed “The Shark” for his underwater exploits, blamed his underwater blunder on a faulty GPS that caused him to lose control and become lost.
“In the end, I think something as simple as two AA batteries was what prevented me from completing a self-sufficient swim across Lake Michigan,” Dreier said in an online post.
“It was an accident, but it’s my fault,” he said. “It’s an unacceptable truth.”
Dreier swam the length of the lake from Two Rivers, Wisconsin, to Ludington, Michigan, in 1998, but has done it again since last summer and fallen off three times.
This time, the trip departed from Grand Haven, Michigan on August 6th, heading for Milwaukee.
He said that on the second day he was well ahead of schedule, hoping to complete the swim in 60 hours instead of the expected 72, with only 23 miles remaining.
Then things came to a standstill.
“The batteries in the GPS on my supply boat were running low,” Dreier wrote, “so I reached into my waterproof bag, found a bag of replacement AA batteries, and carefully placed it on the left side of the supply boat.
“I turned to the right and took out the old battery, then turned left again and took two new batteries out of the bag,” he said. “The bag of batteries was gone!”
Determined to keep going, Dreyer said she followed the setting sun, then the constellations, and beyond them, what she believed to be the glow of Milwaukee.
But as the city lights faded, he found himself adrift.
“It was a lost night, literally and figuratively,” he wrote. “I was lost in the middle of Lake Michigan. From sunset to sunrise I swam in circles, making very little progress. What a futile effort!”
When the lifeboat made a noise signaling that it was way off course, Dreyer said it was all over for him — about 47 miles from his destination.
“How terrible!” he wrote. “In fact, I had already swam 60 miles and was a little over halfway down the lake,” he said. “This makes over 100 miles and over 100 hours of swimming.”
He described the failed swim as “demoralizing” but did not rule out trying again.
“I can promise you I’m thinking seriously about it,” he said.
With post wire
