The finish line will be at the end of the dock at River’s Edge Marina located just before the William Westmoreland I-526 Bridge. Swimmers are to swim to the green buoy with the timing device attached to receive the official finishing time.

The SAC has received special permission from the River’s Edge Marina to use their dock for specific race purposes and is limited to SAC personnel designated by the race director.

Spectators and swimmers exiting the water are not permitted on the River’s Edge Marina dockAttached is the power point that I have used in previous pre-race meetings. This current version is the pandemic version, hence more detailed. I did not bother to match all fonts, etc just to keep swimmers interested and reading.

This swim attracts some good well seasoned swimmers but also some real newbies, some who are truly interested in learning the sport and others who do not belong out there. That is why I am a fairly firm about pulling people who are terribly far behind and will clearly not make 6 hours or even 7 hours. It becomes a real liability and irritates my safety agencies who must use an asset to accompany them thus taking away an asset to serve the main body of swimmers. We do have great support from the USCG and other governmental agencies as well as the boaters whom I hire and who know the swim well.

I’m always open to suggestions re: any element of the swim!

Thanks very much,
Kathleen

I sent over my PowerPoint presentation for the swim just for you to have a look. There is a picture towards the end of the finish.

The finish has always been quirky in this event. Swimmers touch a private dock and even with a ladder to get out, they don’t realize that it is a very long walk back the length of the dock and across an entire parking lot to get back to the Boat landing.

I’m also concerned with tired swimmers and shaky legs making that walk, again since it’s private it’s a whole new level of liability. It could be worse than the 25 yard swim!

I have thought about staging a boat in the middle of the river but I really can’t spare a boat at that critical point of the swim and swimmers would still have to swim cross current or even slightly against the current to get back to the dock. Some years we have JetSki support from the county and they assist but we did not this year.

The boat landing where we finish is a county of Charleston asset and must remain open during the swim. I do not want to place the finished there because I don’t want to mix boats and swimmers anymore than I already do. I have been fortunate to have a great relationship with the county and they let me use the boat landings each year. Boaters and swimmers are very considerate of each other and I don’t want to jeopardize that relationship with the County.

I need to do a better job of preparing swimmers for that final 25 yards. The swimmers who have done the event previously know all about it but I must emphasize it a little more.

I’m glad that you said something- I don’t have good alternatives for a finish but I can do a better job of alerting swimmers.

Still, nothing will EVER beat Sandy Beach on Oahu when finishing Molokai!

Thanks so much for your interest,

Kathleen

Sent from my iPhone