In the Netflix movie “Nyad,” Annette Benning plays the eponymous, maniacal swimmer.

To prepare for the role, Benning swam eight hours per day – that’s called “getting into the part,” or perhaps “crazy” to others.

Less well known, but no less dedicated than the famous actress are Vashon’s open water swimmers, who continue to perform strongly at national and world venues. And within this tight knit group, Mary Singer has been raising her profile with some major swims.

The National Center for Cold Water Safety shares a sobering fact on their website: Water between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit can kill someone in less than a minute from cold shock and swimming failure.

Let that sink in, and then realize that cold water swimmers swim for hours in such water temperatures, and the only rule that applies in ratified swims is: no aids! Swim cap, goggles and swimsuit only.

But what’s not to like about a sport where you can eat a pint of Haagen-Dazs™ per hour and just stay even on the calories you are burning?

Although Singer trains in colder water, so far most of her longer swims have been in more “pleasant” temperatures of 65 degrees or so.

From April 24 through 27, Singer competed in the SCAR Swim Challenge event in Arizona’s rugged Salt River Basin. Named for the four impoundments that form the course (Saguaro, Canyon, Apache and Roosevelt lakes), participants cover about 40 miles in four days, swimming through a stunning desert canyon environment.

Well, most of the time it is stunning; some of the swimming is scheduled for dark hours in order to match the conditions found on the longer channel swims. SCAR is four back-to-back marathon swims (defined as 10 km or longer) and not all swimmers enter all four legs.

Swimmers are accompanied by a support kayaker responsible for providing safety — and those calories needed to keep the swimmer going. In this case, the support person was Heidi Skrzypek, another of Vashon’s open-water group.

All went swimmingly until the penultimate leg, when a huge wind stirred up. Swimmers, being at water level, are affected much less by wind; but kayaks act like a sail and can be stopped cold, as was the case on Apache Lake.

With winds gusting to almost 40 knots and spray blowing in her face, Skrzypek was helpless as she saw Singer’s head moving ahead down the course.

“I have paddled support kayak many times and have never seen anything like this,” Skrzypek said two weeks after the event. “I still haven’t regained full feeling in my hands, wrists and forearms.”

All the swimmers and support boats were similarly compromised, and Skrzypek was grateful when a motor boat swooped in, grabbed her kayak and whisked her to the finish line to watch Singer cross.

“I was grateful we weren’t disqualified as the rules say the support kayak needs to be near the swimmer at all times, and Heidi was way back up the lake,” said Singer, who placed 14th out of 36 swimmers in the Apache event.

Not all swimmers enter all four legs, but of those who did, Singer also placed 14th.

Singer swam in high school and then took off nearly three decades before entering the open water game in 2019. In 2021, she entered her first marathon swim, and in 2023 her first “ultra” — the swim from Catalina Island in southern California to the mainland beach. Such swims have nominal distances (Catalina is about 20 miles), but those numbers can obscure the true difficulty of the swim due to tides, currents and wind.

Even when a swim is challenging, the sights can be stunning — including the sea life Singer has seen on her forays.

“I got to swim with a pod of dolphins once, which was incredible,” she said. “But I don’t like sea lions. They are big, sometimes playful and intimidating.”

To date she has not had an encounter with a shark, and she hopes to keep it that way.

You might assume that the prospect of meeting an Orca pod in the water is a remote concern. But you would be wrong.

“I was in the water in Colvos Passage one time when an Orca passed by fairly closely,” Singer said. “Katsumi, my husband and kayaker, finally got my attention long enough for me to see it swim by, 25 to 50 yards away — then it disappeared.”

There is only one documented case of a human being attacked by an Orca, so the odds for swimmers are pretty good. Just don’t wear a chinook salmon or seal costume (depending on whether you’re sharing the water with Southern Residents or Transients, respectively) and you should be okay.

In fact, Vashon’s open water swimmers worry more about the cute (and relatively diminutive) river otters that populate our shores.

“You really don’t want to swim with them, especially when there are pups in the water,” Singer said. “One Vashon swimmer had an otter nip.”

Night swimming in the ocean can be a little unsettling when a swimmer sees shapes passing by below but can’t identify the creature. That’s why it’s “always comforting when you hear those little dolphin chirps,” Singer added.

Asked what has kept her engaged with such a tough sport, Singer said: “The experience of cold-water swimming is amazing. There’s joy in walking into the water with these friends with whom you share something really special: a bond over a challenge. Ten minutes in, you go from being cold to feeling alive and invincible, presumably from the endorphins. Beyond the day-to-day experience, I love a tough, seemingly impossible, challenge. It motivates me to train long hours, work on my stroke and build up my cold tolerance.”

Although it is common in most sports for men to hold the big records, many long-distance swimming records are held by women. American Sarah Thomas holds a number of “first” and “only” records, including the longest current-neutral swim (104.6 miles) and four contiguous crossings of the English Channel.

Next on the schedule for Singer is an English Channel relay in June. She will be joined by two other Vashon swimmers — Heidi Skrzypek and Mary Robinson — and three swimmers from Seattle.

They will rotate swimming one hour each, accompanied by a support boat, until they reach the French shore opposite the Dover starting point. This swim will be a test run for a solo swim of the Channel that Singer has secured for 2025. If successful, that will put her in a small circle — fewer than 2,500 people have swum the Channel to-date, and about a third of them are people who have also summited Mt. Everest.

We’ll be waiting to hear how it goes, Mary. Keep up the hard work.

Pat Call is a master rower whose only sound swimming occurs when he flips his single and has to swim to shore.