Swimming for long distances isn’t exactly an adrenaline-junkie’s sport. You’re doing repetitive motions, you can’t usually see the scenery around you unless you stop to look around, and it’s a slow means of travel.
But that doesn’t mean that you don’t see anything cool while you’re open water swimming. If you’re swimming close to shore, you can often see what’s on the bottom. That mud or sand can hold treasures that non-swimmers will never find.
Here is an incomplete list of the treasures that the Wild Waters team has found while swimming in open water:
Many small plastic toys, mostly fish, some boats
A stand-up paddleboard paddle
A dollar bill
A dive mask
An Apple watch, which was unfortunately broken
What feels like all of the fishing line and all of the hooks*
Several pairs of sunglasses, in various states of usable
An uncountable number of tennis balls that sank before dogs could retrieve them
A foot-long wooden treasure chest filled with 20+ metal doubloons
A full, sealed tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
A neon pink … ahem … adult toy
Each of these items came with a story: the dogs I met while gifting them soggy tennis balls, the quest to find the owner of an algae-covered Apple watch, the argument over whether we could eat the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter that I found floating in the Willamette.
No matter where you’re swimming, if you keep your eyes peeled, you can find interesting things in the water. With the Quackpacker, you have an easy way to store them until you can get back to land and tell your own exciting treasure-finding stories.
*We keep small blocks of foam in our Quackpackers where we can stick any fishing hooks we find while swimming, to be disposed of or re-used later.
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