At 12:30 a.m. on a recent Sunday morning Patria Frias-Colon stepped
into the New York Aquarium’s education hall, shed a heavy
winter jacket, wiggled out of her boots, peeled off sweater and
socks, and emerged in a flamingo-pink bathing suit.
Polar girls brave sand and snow before they take a dip.
Outside on the Coney Island boardwalk in Brooklyn, passersby tightened
their scarves against the 35-degree late January weather. In contrast
Ms. Frias-Colon was about to take a dip in the Atlantic Ocean’s
30-degree water.
The gap-toothed New Yorker isn’t insane. She is a member
of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, an organization of people
who gather every Sunday between the months of October to March
to go coldwater swimming.
Ms. Frias-Colon, 35, is also one of the few but steadily growing
number of women who are joining the club. For more than 100 years,
the Polar Bear Club’s members were middle-aged or retired
men. Now 12 out of the 57
active members are women compared to fewer than a handful a year
ago, and the club expects a growing number to come for the fun.
Louis Scarcella, the club’s president, attributes the rise
to the club’s increased publicity, and overall membership
growth.
“We do have more women who are trying to make it and get
in their 12 swims,” Mr. Scarcella said, noting that to become
a full member, a candidate needs to complete 12 cold water swims.
"We Like Having Women"
The guys don’t mind. In fact, the club is hoping more women
join.
“We like having women,” said Oscar Abolafia, who described
himself as sixty-something and has been cold water swimming for
14 years. “The women in many ways take to the water better.
We would like to get more female members, I really think they
add to this.”
Nevertheless, change won’t come overnight. At a recent club
meeting, swimming trunks far outnumbered bikinis.
Ms. Frias-Colon started swimming in December, and said that she
doesn’t know why more women haven’t joined.
"Princess Capri" Djatiasmoro, the club's secretary,
looks forward to the weekly swims.
“It’s definitely not a macho thing, they don’t
treat us any differently,” she said of her male counterparts.
“I feel at home here.”
The female polar bears are from diverse backgrounds; they include
lawyers, bankers, schoolteachers, housewives, and even a handful
of elderly Russian women; Ms. Frias-Colon is the assistant deputy
to the New York City Commission of Education.
What the women do have in common is that most are athletes and
are active in other physical activities.
Janelle Barabash, a member for three years is continuing a family
tradition. Her great grandfather started coldwater swimming at
the turn of the century, and she remembers watching her father
every Sunday at Coney Island as a girl.
Montserrat Hernandez, 41, a sociologist, began coldwater swimming
after witnessing the World Trade Center disaster on Sept. 11.
She sees cold water swimming as a de-stressor. But her husband
has yet to join, despite repeated invitations.
“Immediately people think that you’re crazy, you guys
are nuts, but it’s such a spiritual experience for me,”
she said. “You feel like you are leaving the world when
you go into the water.”
Barabash speculated that women join the Polar Bear Club for the
some of the same reasons that men join.
“I think we want to live the thrilling experience as well,”
she said.
Stephanie Monseu, a 35-year-old circus performer, is on her seventh
swim and hopes to be a Polar Bear soon. Monseu enjoys downhill
skiing and is an avowed thrill seeker. Cold water swimming, she
said, has also helped offset her seasonal depression.
“For me I’ve always sought out really extreme physical
experiences,” said Ms. Monseu, who also appreciates the
cameradie of the Polar Bears. “The moral support of knowing
that a bunch of other kooks will be out there is a great motivation
to get out there.”
But it’s not for everyone, she conceded.
“You can’t go in slowly, otherwise every nerve in
your body screams no! The weirdest feeling is spinal fluid cooling
down,” she said. “It feels like my body temperature
is cooling and my spinal fluid feels like it’s turning into
slush.”
"The Induction of A Polar Bear Girl"
For Ms. Frias-Colon being a Polar Bear is a dream come true. At
her induction on this recent Sunday she and Louis Scarcella, the
club’s president looped arms as they prepared for the icy
dip.
Following club tradition, Mr. Scarcella launched the procession
toward the boardwalk by blowing into a conch shell. The group
of 40-plus people paraded onto the frozen tundra of ice and sand.
Heads turned, mouths dropped, and many onlookers gawked at the
sight of a throng of people in bathing suits splashing happily
in the water.
David Weinraub and his son Elias, 9, and a friend Ian Herrera,
9, stopped to watch the group splash and scream in the darkened
waters.
“They’re crazy,” Ian said.
“I’d never do it,” Elias said.
And after a minute or so the boys observed that the human polar
bears were emerging from the
"It's definitely not a macho thing, they don't treat us any
differently. I feel at home."
- Patria Frias-Colon, Polar Bear Club member
water. “Look there’s fewer of them now,” Ian
said.
Nevertheless, the adrenaline from the group was far from over.
The club members were high-fiving and congratulating Ms. Frias-Colon
who, as an official Polar Bear, was crowned with a white fur hat
with the Polar Bear emblem.
“Crazy, that’s what I think,” said Ms. Frias-Colon’s
husband who arrived after the swim to take pictures of his wife,
the Polar Bear. “No, I would never do it.” Ms. Frias-Colon’s
daughters Nairobi, 9, and Lida, 12, shook their heads with disapproval
at their father. “My dad won’t do it,” said
Nairobi. “But I will someday.”
“When I’m older I want to do it,” Lida, a soft-spoken
girl said as she held onto a stuffed polar bear. “I want
to be a polar bear, and see more girl polar bears
=
Floating
Between Continents Profile: Cristian Vergara BY SHEILA CALLAHAN
October 12, 2004
http://www.nysun.com/article/3091
A pilot whale and her two calves escorted Cristian Vergara partway
across the Strait of Gibraltar when the 46-year-old Park Slope
accountant recently swam to Morocco from Spain.
Mr. Vergara, a veteran open-water swimmer who has swum around
Manhattan three times (it takes him about eight-and-a-half hours)
had never encountered anything like the whales.
"About three-quarters of the way across, I noticed a shadow
to my left," he explained. Because he was breathing on his
right side, he didn't immediately spot them. Rolling his head
to the left on the next breath, he saw the pod about 15 feet away,
swimming parallel. He could hear them communicating.
The proximity of the whales caused some concern among Mr. Vergara's
crew, including two members of the Spanish Red Cross and his wife,
a psychiatrist, who spotted the mother, estimated to be 14 feet
long, and her young, about half that size, swimming close.
"I didn't get scared, as I didn't feel threatened by them,"
he said of the whales, but after keeping their distance for a
couple of minutes, "they started swimming closer," Mr.
Vergara explained.
"My wife and the lifeguards on the Zodiac had been screaming
at me to get out," Mr. Vergara said. "My wife was frantic.
The lead boat turned back because of the screaming," he said.
(The captain later confided to Mr. Vergara that the whales were
merely curious - and harmless.)
When the whales got within six feet, he stopped swimming. As soon
as he did, they submerged, not to reappear.
"It was one of the greatest experiences of my life,"
Mr. Vergara said of his temporary adoption by the whale family.
Mr. Vergara's was the 120th crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar.
Each year, "the window of opportunity is very small,"
explained Mr. Vergara. "For two weeks it can be unswimmable,
then you can you can have two days where you can," he continued.
"The wind normally blows easterly; we need a westerly wind
because the easterly is very strong and will push you out into
the Atlantic Ocean, whereas the westerly wind is weaker, so you
don't get blown off course, Mr. Vergara said. "It blows you
to Morocco," he said.
Making the Europe-to-Africa crossing in four hours and 10 minutes
(a 13-kilometer, straight-line distance), Mr. Vergara swam in
6-foot waves and refreshingly cooler water as he neared Morocco.
Although Mr. Vergara spent the earliest years of his life in Chile,
the country of his birth and one with thousands of miles of coastline,
he never swam in the ocean there. "The water is very cold,"
he said.
In Chile he learned to swim in streams and lakes. He moved to
Ohio, at age 12,and was a competitive high school swimmer, but
left the sport after graduation.
Mr. Vergara resumed in 2000, because at almost 200 pounds, he
wanted to lose weight. Four years later and hundreds of miles
later, he weighs a slim 172 pounds, and now, ironically, wants
to gain weight.
"For the Channel," he explains, referring to the English
Channel. Body fat aids flotation, making it easier to swim greater
distances.
"I'm the first on the queue for the neap tide July 10, 2005,"
he said of his upcoming attempt at the English Channel. "It's
the first swimmable day" of next season, he explained.
His first open-water swim, in 2001, was a one-miler on Long Island.
"It was the first time I ever swam in the ocean," he
said.
"It was cold, but I made it," he explained. "I
swam the mile. The next day I did a 5K. I was seeing how far I
could go. The 5K was fantastic," he said.
On recent Saturday morning, Mr. Vergara, a quiet, direct person,
stood along with five other swimmers in the Municipal Parking
lot in Brighton Beach, Coney Island, getting ready for one of
their three-times-a-week, four-mile swims. His close-cropped gray
hair matched his silver Volvo, where he stowed his clothes.
Pulling out a container of Vaseline, he rubbed some under his
arms to prevent chaffing and grabbed his goggles and red swim
cap.
"I don't know if I would have stayed in the water,"
said one swimmer, Henry Eckstein, of Mr. Vergara's encounter with
the whales on his crossing.
While whales do not faze this father of three, jellyfish can.
"The jellies," he sighed. "At Coney Island they're
big, and I do get scared of them because they sting," he
said.
He couldn't think of anything else unusual or menacing in his
swims in the rivers and ocean waters around New York. Then he
remembered some striped bass off Brighton Beach.
"They were very small - around five inches- they weren't
following me," he said. "They were following the person
I was swimming with. They followed us the whole way," he
recalled.
Deep-set brown eyes offset a bright smile as Mr. Vergara walked
across to the parking lot to the boardwalk, tying his car key
in the string of his red nylon trunks that said "The Victor"
on his right hip.
From April to November this group meets regularly at Brighton.
On this October morning, a stiff wind blew and the water looked
gray and choppy.
Mr. Vergara walked into the surprisingly warm water, only to run
back out.
"One thing I forgot to tell you. One time coming out, I got
pinched by a crab," he said, with the enthusiasm of a child,
mimicking a crab's pincers with his fingers.
"That made me scream," said the man who felt at home
with the whales.
A jet banked as it prepared to land at JFK, and a tug pushed a
freighter toward Manhattan. The green, orange, yellow, and red
caps of the swimmers disappeared as they headed toward Marine
Park Bridge.
Capri Djatiasmoro, on the boardwalk with her bike, told of how
she once suggested to Mr. Vergara that they swim from Coney Island
to Sandy Hook, seven miles away.
"I love Cristian," said Ms. Djatiasmoro, "He's
so crazy. He said, 'Yes, we could do that.'"
