Penguin Club to take a dip in chilly Pacific
VENICE BEACH For penguins, it’s a necessity, for humans it’s purely recreational.
About 80 people will tap into their inner Chilly Willy today, ringing in the New Year with a refreshing — albeit brief — dip in the Pacific Ocean.
It’s all part of a Venice Beach New Year’s Day tradition dating back 48 years, founded by a local resident, Cecilia Kilger, who organized and participated in the event until 2000, when she called it quits at 93 years old. Kilger passed away two years later.
The so-called Penguin Club Swim has been held in its founder’s honor since then and is now organized by Kilger’s close friend, Mary McGuirk of Marina del Rey.
“It’s always been a party more than a swim because it attracted more than Venice locals,” McGuirk said last Thursday.
Water temperature around this time of year ranges in the mid to upper 50s. The celebration kicks off at noon starting with a brief submersion in the water for a minority of swimmers. That group is followed by the masters swimmers — usually a younger demographic — who will freestyle their way 300 yards through a route that will be determined by the lifeguard today, depending on the weather and water conditions.
The first master swimmer usually finishes by the three minute mark and the first male and female to come in are crowned the king and queen.
McGuirk participated in the swim from the early 1970s until 2001, when she retired because she could no longer handle the cold temperature.
“It took me two days to warm up,”the 78-year-old woman joked.
The club has its roots dating back to the late 1950s when a lifeguard on Venice Beach noticed a group of women that frequently swam from the Venice break water to the Venice Pier and back again, a pack with which Kilger swam. With the help of the lifeguard and Kilger, the swim was organized into a club and an annual New Year’s Day tradition, McGuirk said.
The Penguin Club Swim is among the many organized winter swimming groups around the country, all practicing an icy activity that is popular in the Nordic countries where ice swimming is more than a once-a-year occasion. The oldest known winter bathing organization in the United States is the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, founded in 1903. The group of swimmers hangs out in the Atlantic Ocean every Sunday from October through April.
For the many swimmers that participate in the Venice Beach tradition, the New Year’s Day event is the perfect way to start fresh. Some participants say the swim keeps them from indulging in alcoholic drinks the night before, avoiding a hangover.
Terry Ballentine has partaken in the event for the past 10 years, a family affair that includes his brother, nephew and a few friends.
The Venice native usually swims out to the buoy and then back, just to get a feel for the water temperature.
“The air is warmer than the water so the fact that I’m not in the water for that long doesn’t make it hard to do it,”Ballentine said last Friday. “It’s shocking at first but it’s fun, as long as I have a dry towel to come up to.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 1, 2008. Read the original PDF.