Cancer survivor swims 16 kilometres across Lake Winnipeg, plans to finish journey next year
Jonathon Fenton hit the water Sunday following a one-day delay and managed to swim 16 kilometres of the 26-kilometre length of the lake between Grand Beach and Gimli.
'My shoulders basically gave out,' he said on Monday. 'I couldn't raise them anywhere. I couldn't do the front crawl, so I had to switch to breaststroke, and it was just too slow, and I was running out of time.
'It's an incomplete. It's not a failure. That's the way I've got to look at it.'
Fenton, who survived two bouts of cancer, was doing the swim to raise money for CancerCare Manitoba, Health Sciences Centre Foundation and the Alberta Cancer Foundation. He has raised more than $36,000 since he announced the plan for the swim.
The original idea was to do the swim on Saturday, but high winds pushed it back a day. They were still recorded at 15 kilometres per hour on Sunday when he jumped in at Grand Beach.
'It was wavy,' he said. 'I mean, I was swimming between the troughs, because there were waves coming from the south and I'm going due west, so I was in the troughs. And so, I couldn't breathe on the left side, getting a mouthful of water. And then at times, I couldn't see the pontoon boat because I was in the trough, you know, and it was going over.
'I felt like a cork in a washing machine. I was getting bounced around. But sure enough, right around 11, it started to settle, and then it got really nice.'
Fenton was inspired by Diana Nyad's swim from Cuba to Florida and says he plans to return next year to finish the remainder of his journey.
'It took her a fifth time before she made it to Key West, so now I know what I'm up against.'
People who wish to donate to his charitable campaign can do so online.
-With files from CTV's Danton Unger and Harrison Shin.
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