Swim Vacations

This sounds like a great vacation..

WHAT I remember most about a nighttime tour I took of Alcatraz a couple of years ago was the fact that — given the nearness of the island prison to downtown San Francisco, just a mile and a half offshore — inmates were often haunted by the sounds of life across the water. When city residents held New Year’s Eve parties and their reveling carried across the cold, current-roiled bay, the two shores seemed maddeningly close to the prisoners.

I recalled this fact last October as I stood on an idling fishing boat at the edge of Alcatraz Island, eyeing the distance I was meant to swim. Was it really that close? For a moment, that mile and a half of choppy water might as well have been 10 miles. Yet when I finally jumped into chilly San Francisco Bay, all I felt was the distinct personal thrill of my very own Escape From the Rock.

Swimming-oriented tours and vacations have been around for a while, but lately there are new trips of a single day up to a whole week for the recreational swimmer. The vantage point gained from the water — whether on a swim expedition down the Thames in the English countryside, or among the coves and coral reefs of the Caribbean — is a special one, and with guidance you don’t have to be an Ironman athlete to submerge yourself in the experience.

On the expedition I joined — led by the San Francisco-based company Swim Art — there were six swimmers, including my friend Steve Dawson, an open-water aficionado who somehow convinced me this was a good idea. Steve began swimming in the bay last year when he was looking for a fresh challenge. Alcatraz was it; he hasn’t been in a pool since. “I love being way out in the water and seeing the city from a totally unique vantage, knowing that it’s where I swam from,” he said. He added that his daily commute over the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco is eased by the knowledge that he has swum the very route he’s driving.

“The way swimmers think is that they’ll see a body of water, and then they’ll wonder if they can get in it,” said Leslie Thomas, the 33-year-old founder of Swim Art. She coaches recreational and competitive open-water swimmers. Last year she added a calendar of expedition swims around San Francisco icons like Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, as well as a two-day tour at Lake Tahoe. There are other organized swims from Alcatraz that are competitive, but Swim Art’s private small-group trips are not races; they are designed to let participants explore a new location by swimming at a group pace.

Ms. Thomas’s swimmers are accompanied on a boat by a local guide intimately familiar with shipping lanes, tides and currents; our leader was Gary Emich, who on the morning of our trip told us that he had recently completed his 511th Alcatraz swim.

Ms. Thomas says her emphasis on safety comes from personal experience. “Once I headed out with my friend for a swim on the Italian Riviera, when I was pretty naïve about swimming in unfamiliar bodies of water,” she recalled. “Suddenly, we were surrounded by speeding sailboats. And we thought, ‘This is beautiful, but we probably shouldn’t be here.’ So we try to control conditions to be as safe as possible.”

Swim Art’s expedition schedule starts in the spring, but in some parts of the world it’s always swimming season. In April, Swim Vacation, a small adventure travel company based in Bath, Me., ran its first weeklong swimming vacation in the British Virgin Islands from a chartered trimaran sailing yacht. Mike Sloan, a 55-year-old dentist from Lincolnville, Me., was on the inaugural trip.

Mr. Sloan, who swam competitively as a child growing up in Florida, began swimming again only three years ago. Before the trip, he hadn’t done any open-water swimming outside Maine.

“My expectation was that I would swim a lot, get some coaching and advice, and visit a beautiful place while it was still cold in Maine,” Mr. Sloan said. “The trip far exceeded my expectations. We saw sea turtles, tons of fish, rays, coral and shipwrecks. It was like snorkeling, but we were getting great workouts.”

Participants swam two to four miles a day. Mr. Sloan’s favorite swim was a 2.4-mile stretch from Cooper Island to Salt Island, where the drop-off between islands and the deep blues of the bay made him feel as though he were swimming in space.

Swim Vacation was started by George McDonough, 37, known as Hopper, who intends to fill a rapidly expanding niche. Triathlons and open-water swims are becoming more popular; this summer’s Olympics will host a 10-kilometer open-water race for the first time.

“I first swam in the Virgin Islands in 1998 while on an excursion from a dreadful cruise,” Mr. McDonough said, citing the inspiration for his inaugural expedition. He is planning to add a four-day Maine Lakes swimming tour to his trip program in the summer of 2009.

In London, SwimTrek bills itself as the world’s only swimming vacation operator. Its most popular destinations are the Greek Islands and Croatia. The latest addition is a series of two-day swims along the Thames in June, July and August. Beginning in the village of Lechlade, in the Cotswolds, participants swim a little over four miles a day downriver, cruising from pub to pub (giving new meaning to the term “pub crawl”). The finish line is the Trout Inn near Oxford, where the stone Tadpole Bridge crosses the Thames. Most tourists to the area drive, walk, bike or boat along the country waterway. But who wants to join the masses? With a swim, the reward is a sense of place that’s uniquely memorable