Only lightning’s flash could stop storm swim

Despite her effort, nature rebelled against girl’s attempt to break Lake Ontario record

After a gruelling 23 hours in the water, 14-year-old Maya Farrell was swimming into the teeth of a thunderstorm.

At 7 p.m. Wednesday night and a mere 300 metres from dry land at the tip of the Leslie Street Spit, Farrell and her crew were hit by heavy rain and howling winds, risking her chances of being the youngest swimmer ever to cross Lake Ontario.

Nearly crying with frustration, Maya started punching the waves that crashed continually over her head.

She had been sprinting all out for nearly two hours, trying to beat the storm.

“It was awful,” she said Thursday afternoon. “I couldn’t see anything. I felt like I was going nowhere.”

Three hours earlier, her father knew it would be a race against the clock. In the support boats, he and swim master Miguel Vadillo could see the storm clouds ahead better than Maya could.

“We knew that storm was coming,” Scoppa, her father, said. “Miguel said, ‘You can’t stop anymore. I need you to do this last three hours in an hour and a half.’ She just put her head down and went.”

Standing on the shore an hour later, I could see her support boats zigzagging slowly but steadily towards me. They were being tossed about like toys in the stiffening wind. Scott Gervais, a friend of Maya’s family, was with me.

“It’s pouring rain at the beaches right now,” he said. I glanced over my shoulder at the black clouds looming over downtown Toronto.

“She’d better hurry if she’s going to beat that storm,” I said, as the first heavy drops splashed onto my back. Scott just nodded gravely. Out in the boats, things were getting tense. Maya’s support crew couldn’t decide which way to go. She lost time swimming first east, then west, then east again, trying to navigate the swirling wind.

“It was really nerve wracking,” Scoppa said. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was hailing. We were screaming at her to go, and she was sprinting as hard as she could for about the last 40 minutes.”

Gervais and I watched for an hour as she tried desperately to close the final few hundred metres.

When the storm finally struck, it went off like a bomb. Barely 300 metres away, Maya and her team disappeared behind a wall of wind-driven rain.

After about half an hour, the weather lifted a little. We ran back down to the shoreline but there was nothing but empty water.

“Where’d they go?” Gervais asked, his voice rising slightly.

I scanned the horizon. “Over there,” I shouted, pointing far to the west. The wind had driven the team farther out into the lake and well off course.

“I was crying because I felt so much for her,” Scoppa said, recalling the storm. “I knew she was going through so much agony.”

And then came the lightning — not far-off on the horizon, but right over head. That ended it. Vadillo pulled the plug. “I wasn’t really thinking. I just got out of the water and into the boat when they told me to,” Maya said. They were so close to shore, but it wasn’t her call. Throughout her swim, she never once asked to quit.

“It was disappointing, but it was the right decision. I didn’t want to be in the water when there was lightning,” she said. Given the logistical challenge of organizing a lake crossing, there isn’t enough time left this summer for Maya to make another attempt. By next summer, she’ll be too old to try for the record.

Even with the heartbreaking end, Scoppa said he doesn’t see Maya’s swim as a failure.

“It was amazing to watch her out there,” he said. “I remember all the training that I watched her do. To see it actually happening for real, I was really immensely proud.