After a year of planning, weather and water conditions have prompted Lesley Burton Zehr to push her planned crossing of Lake Huron from Michigan’s Harbor Beach to Goderich to next summer.
In a statement, Burton Zehr said “I have been preaching over the past six months ‘know your abilities, know the dangers’ this weekend I have to take my own advice.”
There had been some hope she could attempt the 40-hour swim over the long August weekend or early the following week, which would have been the fifth attempt to reschedule the swim.
Instead the SEALS Swim to Survive Team will complete a 25 kilometre swim from Bayfield to Goderich on Monday.
They are expected to leave Bayfield at 5 a.m. and arrive in Goderich around sometime before 3 p.m.
The original swim was meant to promote drowning prevention and raise $50,000 to provide swimming lessons for 1,600 Ontario children through the Lifesaving Society’s Swim to Survive program.
Wingham’s Burton Zehr would have been the first to swim across Lake Huron since Vicki Keith completed the 75 kilometre swim in 1988.
