In 1989, a quarter of a century ago, Lucky Meisenheimer moved in to his home on Lake Cane, strapped on a knife, and began swimming across the lake behind his house. He invited all of his swimming friends to join him. The first few crossings were at parties then quickly it turned into a regular, three morning a week event with an average of 3 to 5 swimmers. Saturdays were soon added and the numbers grew to as many as 10-12 swimmers on a big weekend. In the early years the swims stopped when it was no longer light at 6:30AM, but one year in the early 90s everyone just kept on swimming in the dark. The swims would generally continue until it got cold in late november or early december then resume in mid-March. In the middle of the 2000s someone asked if they could keep on swimming in a wetsuit and from that point on it has been a daily (excluding sundays) year-round event. Around 2006, when social media hit the Internet, the swim really took off. In 2007 Yuko Matsuzaki a professional marathon swimmer from Japan set a (RHR) World record for the longest open water lake swim by a woman with, 82 crossings (82 kilometers). Coverage of Lucky’s Lake swim by the nationally syndicated Growing Bolder show in 2008 garnered more attention with their posted video acquiring more than 30 thousand views. Growing Bolder followed their initial coverage with another story in 2009 on, the now annual, “Jaws” midnight swim where everyone swims into the fourth of July at midnight after watching a scary water creature movie. Now during the spring – summer – fall seasons we average 30 swimmers at the daily 6:30AM swims and 150 swimmers on Saturday. Swimmers come from all over the world to participate and it is a rare day that the swim doesn’t have new visitors. In 2009 triple Olympic Gold medalist and NBC Olympic sportscaster, Rowdy Gaines, gave credibly to the swim by taking the challenge and he continues to be a periodic guest swimmer. In 2010 a parody video of a piranha attack at Lucky’s Lake Swim went mini viral with over 120,000 views so far. In 2011, the now annual, Easter morning service and lake swim started. In 2013 the website started recording age group records for the 1 kilometer crossing and in the same year the World Open Water Swimming Association listed Lucky’s Lake Swim as one of the top 100 swims in America.
We hope the best is yet to come.
