Claire de Boer and Bridgette Hobart share a life-long passion for long-distance swims. To de Boer, swimming is akin to a spiritual experience, which makes her feel at peace and keeps her bonded to family history. For Hobart, propelling through the water is a gift that drives her forward in meeting life’s challenges.

Bridgette Hobart and Claire de Boer in Cayuga Lake (Credit: Alex Bayer/Cornell University)

The friends will attempt a joint milestone in their respective aquatic accomplishments on August 8-9: a relay swim the entire 38-mile length of Cayuga Lake, which will begin under a Sturgeon Moon and end some 20 hours later well before the sun begins to set the next day.

Their “Cayuga Swim for Mental Health” is a fundraiser for a cause that is dear to both women. They will swim in honor of de Boer’s nephew Rowan and Hobart’s nephew Corey, young men who tragically died by suicide in recent years.

De Boer and Hobart will donate the monies collected to The Sophie Fund, a local nonprofit that supports mental health initiatives aiding young people in the Ithaca area. The organization is named for Sophie Hack MacLeod, a Cornell University fine arts student who took her own life in Ithaca in 2016.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE FUNDRAISER

“My hope is our message inspires others to not give up, bring awareness to groups available for support,” said Hobart, 62, a business and technology consultant, who founded Dogged Perseverance, Inc., a nonprofit supporting animal rescue and K9 organizations.

De Boer and Hobart training in Cayuga Lake in July (Credit: Alex Bayer/Cornell University)

“It hurts my heart deeply when young people suffer with mental health challenges and feel ashamed or uncomfortable about getting help. We selected The Sophie Fund because of its award-winning strategies to effectively support young adults in Ithaca and Tompkins County,” said de Boer, 64, an Arts in Health consultant who is currently developing an Immigrant and Refugee Artist collective.

The swim brings the women’s long-standing connections to Cayuga Lake full circle: De Boer, an Ithaca native who lives in Mount Gretna, PA, completed a solo swim in 1984 while attending Cornell University; Hobart, who grew up in Binghamton and lives in Rock Stream on Seneca Lake and in Lake Hopatcong, NJ, did so three decades later, in 2015. Both swims are officially logged by the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF), as are those of two other Cayuga solo finishers, David Barra also in 2015 and Caroline Block in 2018. 

For this swim, de Boer and Hobart will enter the water near the village of Cayuga at the north end of the lake at 8 p.m. on August 8. They will take turns with one-hour stretches until they reach Allan H. Treman State Marine Park in Ithaca mid-to-late-afternoon on August 9.

CLICK HERE TO FOLLOW THE SWIM LIVE

They will swim in adherence to MSF relay swim rules, which allow no wetsuit nor buoyancy devices and an hourly scheduled change of swimmer, which must take place in the water. They will have a support boat accompanying them, as well as a kayaker for each of their swim turns.

Swimming the length of Cayuga Lake presents challenges, due to the great distance, winds, waves, currents, knots of seaweed, harmful algal blooms, and the occasional waterlogged tree branch. Hypothermia should also be a concern for de Boer and Hobart; although the lake water temperature can climb to the low 70s in August, getting in and out of the water repeatedly presents challenges in maintaining body heat.

The experienced marathoners are undeterred.

“When I swim, I listen to the sound of the bubbles, I watch the light playing in the water, and I smell the vegetation. It is a meditative experience, and I am totally in the moment almost all of the time,” said de Boer.

“Cayuga Lake is almost a spiritual experience. I feel deeply connected to it in ways that are difficult to describe. It has to do with family history, given all of the time our family spent on the water while I was growing up. It is also an inexplicable feeling of peace that I get when I am in the lake,” she added.

News clippings from Claire de Boer’s 1984 Cayuga Lake swim

Although de Boer enjoys other endurance sports including cycling, trail running, hiking, and cross-country skiing, she says that she is most at home in the water with a suit, cap, and goggles. She has swum several unofficial long distances in Maine and the Netherlands, and been part of United States Masters Swimming competitions for many years.

Hobart draws on similar memories of Cayuga Lake, where she enjoyed summer weekends on the family boat. As a teenager, she attended Cornell’s swim camp, which led to her first open water and lake crossing (“magical”).

When she was named High School Athlete of the Week in 1979, she told the Binghamton Sun-Bulletin that she had started swimming at age 11, and planned to swim the English Channel 50 years later when she turned 61. She made good on the boast, albeit a little earlier at age 51.

On September 18, 2014, Hobart crossed the channel from Samphire Hoe near Dover to Cap Gris Nez in France in 13 hours 28 minutes. The distance from coast to coast is 21 miles, but currents force swimmers into an S-curve journey that adds many more miles to the effort.

“The water has been an incredible gift to me to overcome the many challenges thrown my way. It is the one place I relax the most and just reflect on life and come to terms with what life has handed you. Water has a way of reminding you that you are strong, you can conquer anything, just focus one stroke at a time or moment by moment,” said Hobart.

After the English Channel triumph, Hobart had the idea to swim all of the swimmable Finger Lakes in one season, which is how she and de Boer met. As she planned her feat on Cayuga Lake in 2015, a mutual acquaintance connected her to de Boer for advice about the 38-mile challenge. “Claire wished me well and said she’d love to see me finish. That was incredible motivation for me,” said Hobart.

Bridgette Hobart with her team after her 2015 Cayuga Lake swim

On the day of the swim, de Boer followed Hobart’s journey through a GPS tracker. Discovering that Hobart was making good progress, de Boer interrupted a Maine vacation, hopped in her car, drove 400 miles to Ithaca, commandeered a boat, and dove into the lake to bring Hobart home. Goggles to goggles, it was the first time the two women had met in person.

De Boer and Hobart talked about doing a Cayuga Lake relay together for years, finally deciding that the 10th anniversary of Hobart’s 2015 solo swim presented the right moment—and an opportunity to find purpose out of their family tragedies.

“It was an experience I will never forget. Since my 2015 swim, Claire and I have done many swims, lost our fathers around the same time, our mothers, and then we each lost a nephew to suicide. This Cayuga relay swim is coming together to bring awareness and raise funds in memory of our nephews to support mental health,” Hobart said.

Co-Founder Scott MacLeod said The Sophie Fund is grateful for the Cayuga Lake swim to support the organization’s mental health advocacy.

“Besides being incredible athletes, Claire and Bridgette are humanitarians in their everyday lives who work to make the world a better place.” he said. “We are profoundly touched that they would dedicate this historic Cayuga Lake swim to young nephews they each tragically lost to suicide. Their swim brings greater awareness about mental health and suicide prevention in the Ithaca community and beyond.”

If you or someone you know feels the need to speak with a mental health professional, you can call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741-741.