A Colorado man earned top overall honors Saturday, Sept. 19, at an open-water swim in the Florida Keys designed to raise awareness about the need to preserve six aging lighthouses off the subtropical island chain.
Boulder’s Yoelvis Pedraza completed the 9-mile Swim for Alligator Lighthouse in 3 hours, 18 minutes and 3 seconds, repeating his 2014 victory and besting his previous time by almost 17 minutes.
“I like to come to this swim; it’s such a long swim and it’s only once a year,” said Pedraza, who recently moved to Boulder from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “What ‘makes’ the swim is to get to the lighthouse.
“Right underneath it is just a gigantic diversity of life,” he said. “You see reef, you see fish, you see everything.”
Alison Hayden of Kinnelon, N.J., won the women’s title with a time of 4:31:07.
“I would meditate in the water, exhaling and counting the buoys one by one,” Hayden said of her strategy. “There wasn’t one time where I picked my head up and looked at the lighthouse. I kind of just enjoyed the moment and kept going.”
Belleair, Fla., residents Cyle Sage and Mandy Zipf won the two-person relay division, posting a time of 4:34:53.
Swimmers Emilienne Allen, Janice Haramis, Kimberly Nordheim and Michala Nowak, all of Hypoluxo, Fla., won the four-person class in 3:52:54.
The event attracted almost 200 entrants.
Founded by Florida Keys artist “Lighthouse Larry” Herlth, the annual race is staged to raise awareness of the 142-year-old Alligator Lighthouse and five other aging lighthouses off the Keys.
Constructed to warn ships away from the Florida Keys reef tract, the lighthouses are no longer maintained because their function has been replaced by modern Global Positioning System navigation.
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this headline writes itself!