Dynamic Waterloo Region duo conquer Lake Ontario, raise $56,000-plus for Multiple Sclerosis Society

As they swam across Lake Ontario for 15 hours together, two young Waterloo Region women were nervous about things floating on the water in the darkness. Jaime Doucet and Sarah Sine, both 18, thought of their families to motivate themselves to continue in the gruelling 52-kilometre relay swim.

And on Sunday morning, at the end of their journey, Sine’s blood sugar level dropped so badly that she had to be put on an intravenous tube pumping dextrose into her body after she climbed out of the water in Toronto.

For the last half-hour of the swim, “I could hardly push myself through the water anymore,” said Sine, a first-year University of Waterloo science student who lives in Mannheim.

“I was really confused how to get up the ladder,” when it was time to climb out of the water onto dry land and greet several hundred cheering supporters, she said.

Paramedics were there to help. She ate a cinnamon bun, but when that was no help, they tried an intravenous tube. Sine soon felt better, and said she would spend the rest of Sunday sleeping and eating pizza.

Both women have family members with multiple sclerosis. And as they pushed themselves through the water Saturday night and Sunday morning, they thought of those relatives to inspire them.

“My mom, my aunt, Jaime’s dad, they go through hardships like this every day. It’s a lot harder than some cold water,” Sine said in an interview Sunday after the swim.

“And once we hit the half-way mark, we said, ‘We’ve already gone this far, we can’t turn back!’” said Doucet, of New Hamburg, who just graduated from Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School.

Sine and Doucet left Niagara-on-the-Lake at 9 p.m. Saturday night, and swam relay style. Each took an hour in the water, then an hour in the boat to rest and warm up.

“We didn’t really get to know the lake” ahead of time, she said. “We saw black things floating in the water, that ended up being seaweed. It kind of looked like jellyfish. We’re (wondering) – ‘WHAT is that?’ ”

In the darkness, your mind can play tricks on you too, she said.“I’d feel an itch on my leg, and I’d think, ‘Is that a leech or something?’”

As the swim drew to an end, with each woman having done nearly 26 kilometers, the water started feeling very cold. They changed places every 30 minutes, instead of every hour. And the very last half-hour, they swam together.

Their coach, Joni Maerten-Sanders, who was with them throughout the long ordeal, said she never doubted that they would both finish.“These girls are incredible,” she said.“They were swimming from the heart.”