Colin Mather began the annual rite of New Year’s Day plunges here at the turn of the last century. When asked Sunday before jogging with six others and a black Lab from his Seafood Shop in Wainscott to the Beach Lane road end, a distance of 1.6 miles, what his New Year’s wish might be, he replied, “Just in general, I’d wish for a better feeling in the world . . . and in this area.”
The kind of joyous, comradely feeling that Mather presumably would like to see in 2023 was abundantly evident that morning at the East Hampton Hurricane swim team’s record-breaking plunge at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach, and, somewhat later, at his plunge.
Both plunges raised money for food pantries — for the Sag Harbor Food Pantry in Mather’s case, and for the East Hampton Food Pantry at Main Beach.
Speaking of records, John Ryan Jr., chief of East Hampton Town’s lifeguards, couldn’t remember a warmer New Year’s Day. Fifty-six degrees, almost shirtsleeve weather. Nor could he remember a bigger turnout, which he estimated at around a thousand. The water, though, was, at 44 degrees, only one degree warmer than last year.
Asked, on exiting the foamy surf, how it had felt, Art McCann, a regular from Springs, said, “Cold . . . and you can quote me on that.”
“Great,” replied Melina Sarlo, an East Hampton High School junior who this week accepted Hofstra University’s offer to play on its women’s lacrosse team, thus following in the footsteps of Jenna Budd and Amanda Seekamp, former Bonac athletes.
“Awesome,” said Dylan Cashin, one of 25 East Hampton Village lifeguards who helped a similar number of East Hampton Village Ocean Rescue members make sure that Main Beach’s 500 to 600 plungers — easily a record — were safe. The rescue squad guards made sure that the Wainscott plunge, which took place an hour and a half later, went off without incident as well.
The eldest plunger at Main Beach was the annual baptismal rite’s founder, the 87-year-old John Ryan Sr., who led an extended Ryan family contingent numbering a dozen into the brisk Atlantic. He, his wife, Pat, and the 93-year-old Joan Tulp, whose hair was wreathed in a Christmas garland, held court on the pavilion as the check-in line grew longer and longer in the hours leading up to the event.
Another attendee, Mae Mougin, said she is talking to potential distributors about streaming her 2019 documentary film, “Waterproof,” an homage to John Ryan Sr.’s efforts to “drown-proof” East Hampton Town. It has been well received at numerous film festivals.
Sophia Guidi, a 10-year-old fifth grader at the John Marshall Elementary School, who came as a mermaid and won the costume contest, was also among those who dashed into and out of the surf.
Mike Bottini, a member of the ocean rescue squad, is an advocate of cold-water swimming the year round, having been converted to that bracing habit by Heather Caputo-Fabiszak, Spencer Schneider, and Jeremy Grosvenor. “I think it’s the endorphins — you get a big surge,” he said. “It was Heather who got me hooked one fall. I said to myself that I’d do it until Thanksgiving, but when Thanksgiving came along, I said, ‘You know, I can do this.’ ”
A member of Tim Treadwell’s masters swimming group, which trains at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, where the pool has reopened after having been shut down for a while, Bottini added that “tomorrow, we’re doing 100 yards 100 times.”