Flanked by two zodiacs, the swimmers pulled their weary bodies through the lake until their feet finally touched shore.
Five heads in pink bathing caps popped out of the water, and it was all over. The waiting crowd whistled and cheered.
It wasn't exactly the end the swimmers wanted, but it was still a record-setting lake crossing, and for that they are proud.
"We did 242 kilometres, and as far as I'm concerned, that's flippin' awesome," said Nicole Mallette, 47, after the women, shivering in wet swimsuits, pulled on their white team hoodies.
Four and a half days after they began an unprecedented attempt to swim Lake Ontario lengthwise from Kingston to Burlington, the swimmers ended early in Whitby, falling about 60 kilometres shy of their goal.
"Mother Nature was not on our side. Lake Ontario threw everything she had at us," said swimmer Samantha Whiteside, 23.
The decision to end the Because Girls Can swim came after a gruelling 80 hours on the lake, soon after 18-year-old Mona Sharari, the team's youngest member, was pulled from the water and taken to shore because she was unwell. Sharari, feeling much better Saturday, rejoined the team for the last few hours of the swim.
Ending early was a difficult decision to make. They all cried. But the water, they ultimately decided, was too cold and unsafe to continue swimming in for two more days — which, given the early delays caused by storms, was how much longer it probably would have taken them to get to Burlington.
"We got some really horrendous weather," Whiteside said. "Nothing ever seemed to work out for us. It was either really warm water and ridiculous waves or it was really calm and absolutely freezing."
"Not balmy!" her teammates chorus, and they all laugh. The swimmers weren't allowed to use words like freezing or cold during the swim, so "not balmy" was their go-to description. Now they can say what they want.
"It's a little bit discouraging that we didn't get to Burlington, but you can't win against Mother Nature," said Colleen Shields, 61, who holds the record for oldest female to complete a traditional 52-kilometre Lake Ontario crossing.
The members of the relay team, aged 18 to 61 and all from southern Ontario, are experienced long-distance swimmers. Four have crossed Lake Ontario the traditional way, from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Toronto — a swim first tackled by Marilyn Bell in 1954. Mona Sharari, the fifth, has crossed the English Channel.
They were expecting this swim to be easier than the solo journey, since they would share the work. It was not.
"Our coaches had told us numerous times that if this had been a solo swim they would have called it (off) within the first two hours," Whiteside said.
Near Toronto on Saturday, veteran long-distance swimmer Kim Lumsden had to call off her solo south-north crossing about 19 hours in and 10 kilometres from shore, due to weather.
The Because Girls Can journey began in Kingston Tuesday morning.All five women jumped off the dock at Confederation Park and swam the first kilometre together, then began rotating — one at a time, two hours each.
Before the swim, they were confident they would make it to Burlington in about five days, no matter what."There is no not making it," Mallette told the Star a few days before they left. "That is not in our vocabulary."
They set off with sun shining down on them, but it didn't last. A few hours in, the swimmers were struggling to kick through two-metre waves and choking on fumes from the power boats in their flotilla, which were blown in their direction by strong winds. They had to take a break that night, heading to shore for safety after they saw lightning in the distance, which delayed the swimmers by at least half a day.
The waves continued into day two and sea sickness became a problem for the swimmers, who needed to keep food down and strength up.As the flotilla approached Cobourg on Thursday, the lake finally calmed and the sky was clear. But then the water temperature began to dip, sinking to about 14 C, with a forecast of 12 C for Toronto-area waters.
The team had been updating the public on their progress throughout the journey via social media and their website, but they went silent for much of the day Friday. Then at about 1:30 p.m., Whiteside posted a one-word Facebook status: "Alive." Things were not good.
Soon after, a Durham Region marine rescue crew announced in a tweet that Sharari had been taken to hospital with hypothermia. The Because Girls Can team has since clarified that Sharari did not have hypothermia but was likely experiencing exhaustion and dehydration.
Word from the swimmers and crew as of 4 p.m. Friday was that the relay would go on as planned. But an hour later, after the swimmers took some time to reflect, they announced their decision to continue on but end early at Heydenshore Park in Whitby.
The team was trying to raise $300,000 for the global girls' rights group Because I Am a Girl, but fell short of their fundraising goal, reaching about $19,000 by Saturday. They had planned to raise $1,000 for every kilometre they swam, and will now continue their efforts to reach $242,000 by September through their website, www.becausegirlscan.com .
On Saturday, the swimmers finished the relay as they began, with all five women completing the last kilometre together.
How many of you, they were asked on shore, would attempt to do the swim again? They answer without hesitation.
Mallette: "None of us."
Four of the five swimmers said they're done with Lake Ontario altogether; they'll never swim it again. Even Shields, who a week ago said she would keep trying until she completed one more solo crossing, has decided that's it for her. Rebekah Boscariol, who turns 19 Sunday, isn't ruling out the possibility of attempting another 52-kilometre solo swim someday, but said she won't do an end-to-end relay again.
After saying goodbye to family, friends and supporters on the beach in Whitby, the women went home with a simple mission for the rest of the day: Big Macs for some, and hot showers for all.
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