Most Homer residents view Kachemak Bay as a place for boating, fishing, or perhaps kayaking. Leif Reistad and Skyler Rodriguez see the bay as a massive swimming pool.

Joining a small clique of accomplished swimmers, Reistad and Rodriguez, Homer Mariner Swim Team members, successfully swam across Kachemak Bay on Aug. 18.

Reistad and Rodriquez started from Haystack Beach, diving in at 6 a.m., and finished at Coal Point on the Homer Spit. A small support crew tagged along with two kayakers, Brita Restad and Autumn Daigle, and a boat with captain Mark Restad and photographer Ella Blanton Yourkowski.

“I feel accomplished, both me and Leif,” Rodriguez said. “We set a goal and we met that, [we] worked our way up to the swim.”

The swimmers got some tips from their swim coach, Dana Jaworski of the Kachemak Bay Swim Club, who has done several bay crossings with a group of local open-water swimmers who call themselves the Kachemak Loons. Jaworski first swam across the bay in 2013 with Jan Rumble and Lila Johnson. This summer, she swam the bay again with Rumble, Jacyln Arndt, Emilie Otis and Lauren Flynn.

“I was really proud of them,” Jaworski said of Reistad and Rodriquez. “To me the story there is this is the second generation. Jan (Rumble) and I have coached these kids. It’s really cool we have people who want to open swim.”

Rodriguez also mentioned that the temperature, currents and waves of the ocean all were new challenges, different from swimming in an indoor pool.

The swim was approximately 4 miles long, and took the youth approximately two and a half hours to complete.

“It’s a cool thing to say you swam across the bay,” said Rodriguez.

The first documented open-water Kachemak Bay crossing was on Aug. 4, 2006, when Liz Villarreal, Ingrid Harrald, Kristin Siemann and Brian Stone swam from the Homer Spit to McKeon Flats. That same day, two Anchorage men, Chris Hodel and Bob Kaufman, swam from the Spit to Halibut Cove. Reistad, Rodriquez and the other swimmers all wore wet suits.

Claudia Rose, a San Diego cold-water, open-ocean swimmer, became the first person to swim across the bay without a wetsuit — what master swimmers call “naked” swimming — on Aug. 8, 2013. Legendary cold-water swimmer Lynne Cox did a training run in Kachemak Bay in 1988 after her 1987 swim across the Bering Strait from Little Diomede Island to Big Diomede Island in the former Soviet Union.

Reach Charlie Menke at charlie.menke@homernews.com.

Leif Restad swims across Kachemak Bay near Homer, Alaska, on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. Kayaker Autumn Daigle, top, helps guide Reistad as he swam with Skyler Rodriquez. (Photo by Ella Blanton Yourkowski)