Happy (*eeeeeek!*) New Year!

The annual New Year's Day open-water swim at West Neck Beach has become a hallowed West Neck Pod tradition, and the newly arrived 2015 was no exception.  Despite near-freezing temperatures, white-capped waves and a ferocious wind, three other mermaids answered the siren call of acting mermaid-in-chief Joye Brown on New Year's Day, and took the Pod's first plunge into the 2015 Salt (I was away on vacation and missed the swim, alas!). Gae Polisner, the only one of the four not wearing a wetsuit, stripped off boots and pants and ran in barefooted and waist-high, staying in only long enough to utter the high-pitched, pitiful scream you can hear distantly at the end of this video, taken from the dashboard of Gae's parked car. Sorry for the poor image quality, but it's worth sticking through to the end just for the audio! Gae was followed into the churning waves by Joye and her wetsuited cohorts Kathy and Carole Wickham who went for the full monty (no, not the movie kind!)...The icy rain that's falling now is predicted to last into tomorrow, so prospects for a reprise on this first weekend of January 2015 are dim...but we'll keep you posted!  Happy New Year -- See you in the Salt!