Closing down...

Hello blog people!

After a couple months of recovery and selling off the last few tshirts, it's time to close down the fundraising pages and clear out the bank account. We've raised roughly $5400 which is absolutely incredible!! The Canadian Cancer Society page will be open for another couple of weeks.

Special thanks to our fantastic distance coach Ali, paramedic extraordinaire Trevor, boat captain & first mate Hugh & Jane, photographer/logo designer Cheyney, and our support from Kerrie, Jim and Sheree.

All of the "leftover" funds donated through Indiegogo are going to be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society, as well as all of the tshirt proceeds. If you haven't donated yet and would like to we would really appreciate your support. Thank-you to everyone who has already donated. This fundraiser was very successful, and it definitely would not have been as great without all of the support that we received.

Thanks again to everyone who helped support us!

Kaylynn & Caryn

10 hours and 35+ km Later

Hello!

If you haven't already heard, we made it across the Strait of Georgia. Well, Caryn made it all the way, Kaylynn jumped in about every other hour to swim with Caryn. Caryn swam more than 35km on July 20th, and Kaylynn swam about 20km.

Our swim was planned for July 19th, and at about 5:20 am on the 19th we set out to our start site. In the inlet where we were moored overnight, the water was as smooth as glass, but once we were out on the strait, we were bouncing around in 3-4.5ft waves with the wind at over 25 knots. We were forbidden to get in the water...and headed back to Secret Cove for the day. It was a really disappointing day for us, but also for our crew. Everybody was rather quite sad. When you work so hard and so long for one day, and you have brought so many people together for a single moment, it is really disappointing to have to face the fact that the swim might not happen.

However, on July 20th, the engines of the Temptress were started again, and we set off for Trail Islands at 5:30 am to make attempt number 2. It was still pretty wavy, but they were smaller than on the 19th, maybe 2.5ft-3ft. The skies were grey and it was drizzling a little bit, but we jumped in anyway. With Trevor and Kaylynn's Mom in the dingy, we set off headed for Nanaimo. The biggest problem was that when you are swimming in between the swells, you can't see the land markers that you are headed for. But we managed to keep somewhat on the right direction, despite getting swamped a few times in the waves and spun around a bit like a toy top.

Thankfully, as the day went on, the Strait smoothed out. I think we were both a little surprised at how warm the Strait was where we were swimming, normally after 45 minutes in the ocean we could no longer feel our hands. Despite the warmer than expected ocean temperature, Caryn's body temperature at the end was 32 degrees C...

I think it is safe to say that this is one of the hardest things that either of us have done, but also probably one of the most rewarding. You learn a lot about yourself when you are pushed to your breaking point, because when you are swimming, it is just you and the ocean.

Our Life Boat/Food Boat/ Encouragement Crew/ Paramedic Station

Captain Hugh and First Mate Jane

The Dingy Captain and Paramedic Trevor

Kaylynn's Mom and Swimmer Feeder

Caryn swimming in the smooth ocean near the end

Just keep swimming...

Baby Food Break

Almost there!!

We did it!

T-46 hours!

Well folks, we leave in less than two days! EEK!

Everything is as prepared as it can be… I think. We had an awesome interview with Mike Eckford from CKNW yesterday. It was really fun and a great experience, so thanks! And thanks to Caroline who organized it for us. Here is the link to our fantastic radio interview! It’s a hoot and a half… Click here to listen on soundcloud!

We also have t-shirts!!! They are black with pink writing and very stylish! We have lots of them left so if you would like one we are happy to ship them! Mike and Caroline are also sporting them... although I think Mike might have felt a tad uncomfortable as he had to squeeze into the only small we had left. Our apologizies, but it was really quite flattering! Here is a picture of us in our lovely new apparel...

Silly Kaylynn, putting her shirt on backwards...

 

Featuring Uncle Bob!

We went and talked over boating and safety logistics with our captain and our paramedic today. We have some good ground rules set out as well as plans A-Z should some inconvenient or unexpected circumstances arise. We had some interesting boat issues… We had to fix some things that involved our safety boat… but it’s fixed! So we’re safe. For now. J

We did our final grocery shop so we are all prepared for our expedition on Saturday. Caryn got some baby food. Kaylynn got a toothbrush… always comes in handy on the high seas.

The plan at present is to leave from the Trail Islands at 6am, low tide, on Saturday July 19^th. Optimistically we’re aiming to finish the swim in 8 hours, meaning that we will reach Hammond Bay (our landing destination) by 2pm, which is high tide. Hopefully. Or we will be swimming on the spot. Cross your fingers… or fins! We will have someone in charge of tweetin’ our progress on Saturday, so follow us (@Waves4Women) for updates. We hope that the only storm that will be happening will be our tweets!

This might be our final blog post before the swim if we have no internet access tomorrow, so watch our tweets and we’ll check back on Sunday!

Our mantra for Saturday!

Caryn & Kaylynn

A week tomorrow!

We drove up to Nanaimo today to scout out where we’re going to be landing. We were going to land in Pipers lagoon, but unfortunately it’s not really accessible, which is a small problem in the event that we need paramedics to come and rescue us after our little ocean adventure. So we decided on Hammond Bay. It’s a pretty neat area, and there’s a nice view of where we’re going to be coming from at Neck Point (just north of Hammond Bay). Optimistically we should be hitting shore somewhere between high and low tide… which is not the best timing but if we make it and the currents aren’t too bad, we can hopefully swim right into the bay. We’ll have to play it by ear on the day though – safety first!

Our landing site, Hammond Bay Nanaimo

We also went for an ocean dip on Thursday morning. The water was calm and beautiful and SO COLD! We made some more jellyfish friends, one of which may have stung Kaylynn. Luckily she didn’t notice because her hands were numb. She did notice however when it was swollen this morning. Aside from the jelly sting, these pictures kind of reminded us how awesome this swim is going to be…

Stay tuned for the official countdown until July 19^th! We will have an updated twitter feed (@Waves4Women) on the day of. We’ll keep you posted on new developments!

Caryn & Kaylynn

A week and a half to go...

Well folks our swim is 11 days from today! We’re getting really excited. We’ve ordered some t-shirts and we’re hoping to get a fundraising booth at uptown mall. We will post more information once we have it! The t-shirts are pretty awesome though! You should think about getting one… J

We’ve been invited to do an interview on “The Shift with Mike Eckford” which is a radio show on CKNW AM980. We’re going to be meeting them at 8PM on Wednesday July 16^th. I’m not sure if it’s live (part of me hopes it isn’t!) but once we find out when it might air we will for sure be posting it! Stay tuned! (Cause we’re gonna be on the radio…Ha!)

As promised – a video! This is a composite of the various open water swims we’ve done with some funny moments. If you have a chance, check it out!

If you want to get involved feel free drop us a line – our email is waves4women@gmail.com. We check it daily. We are also happy to ship you a shirt and you can pay online through paypal! If you wish to donate or buy a t-shirt via cash or cheque please email us and we can give you more information on how.

Until next time,

Caryn & Kaylynn

First Waves

Hello peeps!

So we had our first team ocean water swim today. After many adventures of Caryn trying to find a wetsuit, we finally found one. None of the women’s sizes fit so she now has a men’s suit. But hey, whatever works right?

Now that we both have suits we decided to take a dip in the ocean. To say that it was an adventure would be a bit of an understatement. We did our first workout in the pool, had a snack then decided to find some open-ish water. First of all, for those of you that have never put on a swimming wetsuit before, it is a workout in itself! Many a weird poses were struck. After that we finally entered the water… man was it chilly! We managed to last about an hour, before Caryn (being the ginger that she is) started to burn. The worst part was probably the water trickling slowly into all of the spaces in the wet suit. It’s almost easier if you can jump in and just get cold all at once. Unfortunately that’s not really how it works with a wetsuit. After that weird form of water torture was over, it wasn’t too bad. After about 10 minutes we were almost fully acclimatized to the water. We did a loop of Esquimalt Lagoon (not the cleanest water, but better than nothing). I think we probably drank a fair amount of sea water, which also unfortunately included a lot of goose poop…but our swim also included a lot of laughs which made up for it. (We may have spent more time laughing at each other than actually swimming.)

Before

After

Tomorrow we have another dip in the ocean, hopefully it will go equally as well. It was a bit choppy today, but that was probably good practice for the actual swim. The ocean swim will be after a 10km pool adventure… which will be tiring but I’m sure we’ll be happy we did it when we’re swimming in the Strait!

Check back for another blog post to see if we survive tomorrow! 

Fundraising Time!

Hi friends,

As the swim date nears we are hitting the water hard for the next couple of weeks. Literally 6 hours a day… We eat all of the food. All the time. But we’re getting pretty excited! We have a good plan to keep us on course during the swim and we’ve started planning some more fundraising events. We’re hoping to have a booth with t-shirts and baked goodies at Uptown Mall (Victoria) next week. Still in the works but we’ll keep updating as we figure it out. We are also hoping to head to Vancouver for a fundraiser hosted my Amarose Events sometime either before or after the swim. Thank-you to the lovely ladies at Amarose for the support, we really appreciate it!  In case you want to check them out here is their facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/AmaroseEvents

Enjoy the weekend, and you know where we’ll be (hint: it involves water)! Until next time,

Caryn

Time to travel...

Kaylynn and I are meeting in BC later this week. Exciting stuff! I’m flying home from Ontario on Tuesday, and Kaylynn is driving from Calgary to BC on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to getting in the ocean water later this week, although it’s going to be mighty chilly. Still looking for a wetsuit… hopefully I will have one in hand soon. Kaylynn has done her first open water swim session… let’s just say it’s going to be an adventure trying to stay in the water for over 8 hours in July! We have time to get adjusted to the open water, but it’s going to be a chilly swim!

Thank-you to everyone who has donated so far to the cause through the Canadian Cancer Society and through Indiegogo! We really appreciate it. We’re still trying to come up with more fundraising ideas. I’m hoping to have a booth set up in one of the malls in Victoria for when we’re not swimming or eating or sleeping. Hopefully we can get t-shirts or something, and who knows… There may even be free food!

Free food = best

Next time we blog it will be from Victoria – can’t wait!

Caryn

June Update!

Wow, I can’t believe its June already. Time is flying by! My training is ramping up leading to when Kaylynn and I are going to meet in Victoria to start training in open water. My search for a good wet suit continues. I’ve found a few good ones, I’m just nervous to commit to one….

E-bay does have some decent deals... still can't commit to it.

They’re just so expensive

Oh, student budgets....

Kaylynn and I both arrive in Victoria June 24^th, so we’ll hopefully be able to get into open water swimming right away. Kaylynn flies back to Canada on June 10th I believe. Safe travels!!

I’ve been trying to set up our Indiegogo account, finally got it up and running yesterday! For anyone who doesn’t know what Indiegogo is (I didn’t): it’s a sort of crowdsourcing fundraising website where you can help raise money for your fundraiser. In our case, we obviously want people to donate to the cause through the Canadian Cancer Society. However, we need funds for the actual event itself. We need money for fuel, wetsuits and lifesaving equipment. All of these things are expensive and although we have a lot of people willing to donate their time like our lovely yacht Captain and our Lifeguards/paramedic friends, we can’t ask them to pay out of pocket for all of the equipment they need to help us. Indiegogo should be able to help us with these expenses.

The catch to this Indiegogo business is that you need a bank account to put it into, so I went to TD to open a non-profit business account. TD was wonderful and very helpful, but it took about 5 days to activate the account. I felt really important after I set up the account though - I'm the Chairperson. Probably the first and last time I will ever get to say those words! After that, you need to register for either credit card payments or paypal payments (or both). In order to open a paypal account, you need the bank account. In order to set up the paypal account with the Indiegogo page, the paypal account needs to be verified. I thought this process would take a week, maybe 7 business days. Unfortunately I was wrong a vastly underestimated the complexity of this process. I'm happy to report that I managed to get it up and running with minimal blood, sweat, and tears! Hopefully we can start getting some funds to help with our expenses.

Speaking of next week, it’s my convocation! Hurray!

Although hopefully I'm not like Sean Bean, because he dies in everything.

Looking forward to it. Going to be tricky balancing hours of swimming and weight training with family time, eating, sleeping and celebrating. Unfortunately I don’t think I can rely on my usual strategy

Not ALWAYS how I roll... but sometimes. My time-management strategy is a work in progress.

Until next time,

Caryn

Indiegogo!

Just launched our Indiegogo page, check it out! Funds raised through this campaign will help with the costs of the event, and anything left over will be donated directly to the Canadian Cancer Society.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/waves-for-women/

May!

Oh hey!

Kaylynn left on May 8 for Tanzania – so exciting!

Super jealous!

Hopefully she’ll have access to internet… but most likely won’t have time to blog, so it will just be me for the next while. I’m still doing biology things….

It's sad how close to the truth this is...

…. And swimming a lot!

Let's be serious, what I actually do is eat everything.... after swimming.... for hours....

Pretty sure all of the guards know who I am. Most of the stuff is in order for the swim- I just need to find a wet suit. And we’re still working on a launch site, which hopefully we will figure out soon enough.

After Tanzania Kaylynn and I will meet in Victoria around late June to start training on the open water together before the swim in July.

I realized last night when I was going through my various email accounts that we didn’t thank some of our donors! Thanks to Jacky, Keith and Renée Rogers for your generous donation. We really appreciate it and I apologize for how long it took to post our thanks.

On the topic of donations: Does anyone want t-shirts? I have a design in mind and if we get enough interest I am happy to put in an order. If you want to know what it looks like beforehand I can post more info, but if you are interested, please send us an email! waves4women@gmail.com

Til next time,

Caryn

Things are Starting to Fall into Place

Hello everyone!

We had to take a long hiatus from blogging because both of our semesters got a bit hectic. 

Turns out 4th year of university is busy! Who would have thought.

This is how we have both felt this semester, and now we are!

The training plan is ramping up and Kaylynn and I have been spending many hours in the pool 

each week. I’m still working on finding a wetsuit to help me bear the chilly waters of the straight. We’re working on finding launching and landing sites. As of now it looks like we’ll be landing in Pipers Lagoon in Nanaimo, but as for a launch site we’re not 100% sure where we want to start from. 

We have a few more people we would like to thank as they’re going to be donating their time 

and money to help us out. Trevor Vestad is our lovely lifeguard/paramedic/safety-man-extraordinaire who is going to follow us all day, swim a bit with us, and hopefully rescue us if we get into trouble. He  has all of this fancy equipment to help save us – here’s to hoping he doesn’t need to use it! 

Seeing as it’s a bit far to swim unaccompanied across the Strait of Georgia, we need a boat! 

Instead of finding a boat, we found a lovely man named Hugh McGillivray who has a yacht he is going to captain for us. Thank-you so much for helping us gentlemen! Your help is invaluable.

Kaylynn and I have also discussed the training plan and weather conditions a bit more. We are 

still going to train as if we are swimming the full distance side by side (so we would both train to swim 35km), barring any serious conditions arising. We both have struggled at times keeping up with the training plan, and Kaylynn has an amazing opportunity to go to Tanzania for a month which means she won’t have any specific training facilities. Lack of training makes completing the swim difficult, however we are both confident we will be able to complete it. The bigger concern is weather, which unfortunately we have no control over. If there are serious weather conditions on July 19th swim date), then we may switch to a relay style. We would both launch from the beach together and swim the first 5km, along with Trevor if he feels like getting his feet wet (get it? Hehe), and then we will alternate swimming 5km each, and then we will swim into the landing beach together as well. Optimistically we should be able to swim the entire thing but weather is incredibly unpredictable and uncontrollable. Hopefully the conditions will be favourable that day!

Until next time,

Caryn

The YMCA

Last week, as Caryn mentioned, I had a medical school interview at Virginia Common Wealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Because I was there for two days I got to do some site seeing in this beautiful and historic city, and I also got swim at "the Y" for the first time in my life. Up until last week, I had never swam at a YMCA before, so it was a unique experience, especially because this YMCA was particularly old and located on historic Franklin St. It was also the smallest pool and most ghetto prison shower that I have ever experienced. On the upside, they had water zumba while I was swimming, so at least I had some good jams.

Other than being behind in school (like every 4th year) I am enjoying the time in the pool. I am also eating a lot (maybe not 6 dinners like Caryn), but that is what comes with training.

I though you might like to see some photos of Richmond, VA instead of reading a rambling post for a change (also because I need to head to the pool soon and I don't have time to write anymore).

Statue of George Washington outside the State Capitol

Virginia State Capitol, originally built in 1778 By Thomas Jefferson

Original House of Delegates

The YMCA I swam in twice while I was there

The hotel I stayed in called the Linden Row Inn. Doesn't look like it could be affordable on a student budget does it? Well, it was! I also found out while reading a guest book that the room I stayed in was haunted...probably why it was affordable. 

The historic Jefferson Hotel. This was not student budget friendly.

Just an average street in Richmond

'Merica Y'all

Good advice from the bottom a fence post. 

For all my Canadian friends in the throws of -20 weather, Virginia has green grass.

Until next time,

Kaylynn

First Full Week!

Hello!!!!

 

Apologies for the late post. I usually aim for Monday but this week has been a tad hectic. Over a full week on Ali’s training plan and I am ready to eat as much as a small village and I feel like my shoulder muscles are going to rip all of my nice shirts. On one hand I feel kind of awesome and like I could take on the world, but on the other hand… I’d be too tired L Kaylynn and I area finally back to full training (or as close as my fitness will allow, as some of the workouts are definitely putting me through my paces!) and Kaylynn had her first med school interview this week – hurray! Sorry to spoil the news. Exciting stuff! I finalized my grant and scholarship applications for grad school…. After I ate all 6 of my dinners on Thursday night. Thanks again to Ali – this training plan is really above and beyond what I could have hoped, and on top of being invaluable it was a huge personal contribution and I really appreciate it as this cause is very near and dear to my heart. I also want to say thank-you to Cheyney, for our fantastic logo!! Looks awesome! I feel like we're even more official now J

I’m excited for what’s ahead, although it does seem like a daunting task. I was re-assured this morning when one of the guys I see at the pool every morning told me I had an ‘efficient’ stroke. Speed might have made me feel better but I’ll take anything I can get, especially because he seemed genuinely nice and wasn’t creepy about giving me a compliment J Thank-you kind stranger!

So. Much. Food.

Until next time,

Caryn

Set Backs

As always, every athlete has set backs. Last week, Caryn was still recovering from a knee injury that happened while doing some winter running when she decided to test gravity and the coefficient of friction on a patch of ice. I on the other had an unfortunate complication from a medical procedure that resulted in a CSF leak, some solid time in bed (I watched so much gossip girl I think my brain my have actually atrophied), and some unfortunate time in the emergency department.

The good new is that Caryn is on the mend and I am no longer leaking CSF (but my back does resemble pin cushion).

The bad news? The University of Calgary aquatic centre had some mechanical issues over the weekend and is closed until Thursday. Apparently city pools do no allow you to spend more than an hour at time doing lane swimming during the week...which seems bizarre to me. So, now that I can swim again, I am desperately trying to find a pool near by that will allow me to complete one of Ali's amazing workouts.

But, even if we have had a bad few weeks, we now have an awesome logo thanks to Cheyney at designbycheyney.com

Each triumph has its trials.

-Kaylynn

Planning time

Hello lovely blog people!

We received our training plan courtesy of Alastair Dennis so first of all a big thank-you! Everything that we have received so far is pro bono and we really appreciate it.

If we aren't at school, we are here

Looks like we're going to be swimming 20k a week for the next month, exciting stuff! We're looking forward to starting a more structured plan - going to be a change from our regular training. The info about the swim says that we're planning on swimming across on July 19th. When we were originally planning the swim we realized that there were only a few dates that work, and it wasn't just random. There is only a couple of months in the year where it is warm enough to safely swim across, and on top of that the swim should be done on a neap tide. A neap tide means that we are swimming across between two full moons, when the tides are at minimum. The changing tides can cause a lot of problems (considering that neither of us can swim faster than the tides). This means that there are only a couple of days every year that are ideal to complete the swim. Hopefully July 19th coincides with good weather and wind conditions!

We've already received 2 donations - Jenna and Dale - thank-you so much! We're excited for what's ahead and looking forward to starting on the plan that Alastair has created for us!!

Until next time,

Caryn

So it Begins

Hey!

This is our first official post on the Waves 4 Women blog to launch our fundraising (and training) campaign!

If you are thinking what we are thinking, which is that you must be a little bit crazy to want to spend 10 or more hours swimming in the pacific ocean (against the current), well then you would be right. But the thing is, it is only 10 hours. A cancer diagnosis changes the rest of your life and going through treatment is a lot worse than spending 10 hours in a wetsuit.

We hope that you will see past the crazyness and support us as we begin training and fundraising for what you have to admit is a pretty cool idea.

Check out pages at the top to learn more about us, our supporters, our swim and how you can donate to help us reach our goal of raising $7, 500 for the Canadian Cancer Society.

-Caryn and Kaylynn

Under Construction

Our blog is currently under construction as we prepare to launch our fundraising goals and swim plan. Check back soon!!

-Kaylynn and Caryn