A swim is underway through the Great Lakes to commemorate the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The freighter went down in Lake Superior 50 years ago this November.
And open water swimmers are going from the wreck site all the way down to Belle Isle, in the Detroit River. The goal of the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim is to symbolically complete the route the vessel might have taken.
One of those swimmers is Lisa Kohler, from Traverse City, who swam the leg spanning Whitefish Bay, from Whitefish Point over to Iroquois Point.
Kohler was part of a four-person team that took 30-minute shifts swimming in Lake Superior.
"The waters were kind of wild all day, and then at about 4:30 in the afternoon, the captain of the boat felt it was too much," she said. "He estimated waves of approximately 6 feet. So that shortened our day, and we picked up on Tuesday."
The waters were surprisingly warm, Kohler said.
"It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," she said. "I thought about the mariners during our swim and the big body of water we were swimming in. We know about the Edmund Fitzgerald because of songs, but there are many shipwrecks and a lot of lives lost. It was a nice learning experience, for sure."
