B.C. swimmer crosses the Strait of Georgia in under nine hours

LISTEN | Interview with Melanie Buggey:

When it comes to crossing the Strait of Georgia, most would likely do so in a boat, a ship — any kind of a marine vessel, really.

But not Vancouver Island native Melanie Buggey. She chose to swim.

Just before 7 a.m. local time Tuesday, the 33-year-old stepped into the waters at Reception Point near Sechelt on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast. Eight hours and 42 minutes later, she emerged on the other side of the strait on Vancouver Island at Schooner Cove in Nanoose Bay.

The 29-kilometre swim may have been a record. Buggey said in a Facebook post on Thursday that, if her time is ratified, it would be the fastest recorded unassisted crossing of the Strait of Georgia.

The current record, according to the Marathon Swimmers Federation, is nine hours and 23 minutes, set by Mike Powley in 1967. 

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Buggey is no stranger to water, but most of her experience has been in the pool where she has competed in masters-level events around the world.

Her open-water experience, she wrote, has been limited mostly to some cold plunges and crossing Kalamalka Lake in the Okanagan "where I spent a frankly unreasonable amount of time floating on my back in the sunshine and singing to myself."

Here’s part of her conversation with As It Happens’ guest host Catherine Cullen:

Melanie, has your body adjusted to being back on dry land yet? 

Somewhat, I guess. My neck is very much, I think, like Michael Keaton in a Batman suit, but otherwise I think I'm functioning OK.

How long do you think it's going to take you to fully recover from something this intense? 

I don't think I've recovered from childhood, so probably never, but I could get back in the pool in a day or two if I was keen on swimming, which incidentally, as it turns out, I don't think I am right now. 

Take me to the moment where you finally arrived on the beach after swimming so far. What did that feel like? 

A little uncomfortable because my legs gave out and I fell onto some barnacles, so that was fun. And then there was a bunch of people, so that was wonderfully overstimulating, so I had to put on a smile — "Yay, I'm suffering on the inside! Too many people!" Had to pretend I was an extrovert.

Was there any sense of euphoria or were you just like, oh my goodness, I survived? 

I was seasick the majority of it, so I think the euphoria was "get me to a toilet." 

Let's go back to the beginning then. As you jumped in to start, what was ultimately going to be almost nine hours in the water, what was going through your mind?

Right before jumping in, I thought "this is going to be the worst day of my life," and then when I got in the water, I thought, "oh, it's not too bad temperature-wise, so I shouldn't have any problem making it to the other side." I was really concerned about hypothermia.

Melanie, you don't feel great now, you didn't feel great when you finished, and you were feeling dread at the beginning and worried about hypothermia. Why did you do this? 

I guess I thrive on self-loathing. 

What were you thinking about when you were in the water all that time? How did you stay focused? 

I thought, my God, this is so boring. I just kept counting my strokes over and over until I reached peak insanity. 

Now, you had a support team nearby on a boat. How reassuring was that for you during this process? 

They were great. They did everything that they were supposed to. They had to give me food every 30 minutes just to keep my blood sugar levels up. And because I was nauseous, I did a lot of, "no, I don't want to eat, go away!" But they forced me to eat. So that was good. 

Did you think about giving up? 

Oh, God, no. I was more so just thinking, "oh, can this be done yet? Nope, still not there."

In a [social media] post you did mention there was a lot of vomiting as well while you were doing this. How did you keep going?

I just swam through the stream. Otherwise, if I didn't keep swimming, I was going to be sitting in my own vomit.

What made you decide that you wanted to do this particular stretch? 

I just think every time I've ever been on the ferry, I thought, I kind of want to jump in and swim across. And I've had a lot of people tell me that's not possible. So I think a lot of it was spite. 

What do you know about whose record you seem to have broken? 

Well, I didn't have any intention of beating a record. I just wanted to get from one side to the other just to prove I could. And I know I had told the people on the boat, I had said, "extremely far fetched long shot, but if at any point it looks like I might be faster than, say, 11 hours, let me know, I'll put in a little more effort," because I knew that was the fastest woman who had ever done it, I think was about 11 hours, 20 minutes or so. So I thought it might be cool to be the fastest woman, but I was expecting to be more like 13 hours. But I ended up beating the fastest man who was, I think, nine hours and 23 minutes.

What did you think when you realized you finished it so much more quickly than you had imagined? 

I was kind of like, "oh, that's cool" …. It's hard to feel kind of an ego about it because I feel like no two swims in the ocean are ever the same, because you never know what current someone gets stuck in or whatever. So it's kind of hard to feel a superiority complex in a sense when it's not equal.

There are rules though, in terms of the record here about what you are and aren't allowed to do. Can you explain to us what those are? 

Yeah, they're just all based off of the English Channel rules. So it's the things like you're not allowed to wear a wetsuit — it's considered a buoyancy aid — and you can't touch the boat or have any kind of rest like that. So pretty much I was just restricted to having my swimsuit, a swim cap, and goggles.

How much training went into this? 

At first, a lot. My swim season, because I swim on the master swim team, I swim with them five days a week in the pool. That started September till June. So I was swimming five days a week, very high kilometres, maybe like 100 or so a month. Then once that stopped, I became unbelievably lazy and undeserving. 

I don't think anyone ever gets to call you lazy again, Melanie, after this.

I might have been hitting 10 kilometres a month. It was lazy, unbelievably lazy. 

I understand there's quite a lot of ice cream involved in the training. 

Yeah, I was trying to gain as much weight as possible just to combat hypothermia, because I knew that would be a problem. And then the water was stupidly warm, so I'm like, "did I eat ice cream for nothing?" ... I was originally planning on doing the swim in July, and the water was like 13 or 14 degrees. So I was all mentally prepared for that. And then it just got postponed so many times because of weather and boat issues and whatnot, that I had to do it so late, and the water warmed up significantly.

Once you feel better, how do you plan to celebrate? 

Eating more ice cream, maybe. I don't know. I thought I was over the ice cream, I'm really not. It's an addiction. 

Do you think that you'll do any more open water competitions anytime soon?

I definitely think I will. It's not my top priority right this second. I want to get back into swimming pool races and whatnot. But I know the English Channel has always been calling me. It's just extremely expensive to do it. The support boat, I think, alone costs about $10,000. So I figured maybe I should save my money.