Making Waves During Swim to the Wreck

It’s well before sunrise and Sexton Plaza’s oceanfront parking lot is already abuzz with swimmers, snorkelers, kayakers, and paddleboarders preparing for the quarter-mile sprint to the 300-foot-long British cargo ship that ran aground in 1894 while en route from New York to Tampa. From its bow an American flag flutters triumphantly in the warm, salty air. To the uninitiated, it looks like an aquatic fire drill. But to those who treasure this sun-drenched town with its postcard-perfect beaches, it would be a sacrilege to kick off the
July 4 holiday any other way.

“The Swim to the Wreck began over a decade ago as a fun way to enjoy and celebrate our beautiful ocean and reefs,” explains Vero Beach Realtor and longtime runner Lori Strazzulla, who broadcasts the event to fellow members of the Sunrunners of Vero Beach. “Last year we had around 1,000 people, which was so fun and humbling. I also love that it’s accessible to anyone who can hop on a kayak or paddleboard—even a pool noodle—and paddle out,” she smiles, adding, “This year we even saw people with floating coolers for the traditional champagne toast, which was amazing. I’m getting one this year for sure!”

It’s the greatest Vero Beach tradition going, agrees local real estate attorney Barry Segal, who joined in the annual swim 10 years ago. “It combines so many things: the beauty of the ocean, the camaraderie of the people, the Fourth of July, and the history of the wreck.”

When the SS Breconshire went down on April 30, 1894, all 24 crew members survived. For over a century, the ship’s boiler protruded from the water and remained visible from the shore. Thus, locals often refer to it as the “Boiler Wreck.” In the early 2000s, however, the boiler gradually disappeared below the surface as the wreck aged and settled deeper into the sand below.

For Vero Beach native Flynn Fidgeon, communications manager with the St. Lucie County Board of County Commissioners, the annual tradition is a family affair shared with his wife, Chelsea, and young son, Andrew. “It’s an awesome community connection, being out there afloat with friends old and new while hearing a chorus of champagne corks popping”—which participants dutifully retrieve from the water, he assures. “To have this beautiful beach and ocean in our own backyard makes me feel so grateful and blessed every year when it comes around.”

“It’s utterly amazing what we have here,” says Keith Hennessy, a fellow native and owner of Deckmasters, one of the town’s oldest marine construction companies. “Because we have three reef lines that run parallel to our shore just a few hundred feet off the beach, you can put on your dive gear in the parking lot, walk to the shore, and within 150 feet be floating in 20 feet of water over a reef that’s 8 to 10 feet tall and teeming with everything from turtles and pilot whales to stingrays and sharks. It’s so shallow you can dive on one tank for an hour and a half. It really is a whole other world, which you wouldn’t have a clue about if you didn’t see it for yourself.”

The Breconshire is also a tangible reminder of what makes Vero Beach’s shallow coral reefs both extraordinary and dangerous. Unpredictable weather, especially hurricanes, would force passing vessels onto the jagged limestone shoals that fringe the coastline. The most notable case of such a fate, of course, long predates the Breconshire; 11 Spanish ships famously sank and spilled their treasures here in 1715.

But, muses Segal, our ocean, beach, and reef are “the only real treasure that everyone can experience and appreciate every day.”

Chris Hammett, owner of Deep 6 Dive & Watersports in Vero Beach, has been diving the area’s waters for over 50 years and knows firsthand the extraordinary variety of its fragile marine ecosystem. “We have everything you can see in the Caribbean right here, since we are at its northernmost edge of warm water and the tropics,” he says. “As a result, we get the full array of northern as well as southern fish: big lobsters, grouper, snook, tarpon, turtles, eels, rays, everything. It’s truly vast.”

For longtime Vero Beach resident Dan Richey, president and CEO of Riverfront Packing Company, the association with the Breconshire began on June 22, 1982, when he celebrated his birthday with a spontaneous swim around the wreck. “My buddy, Pat Rodgers, played the national anthem on his harmonica as a squadron of pelicans flew overhead,” remembers Richey. “It was spectacular and almost seemed as though we had organized the flyover.” Other friends joined in and, the following year, Richey recommended the group celebrate the nation’s birthday instead.

His core group continues to make the swim at 8 a.m. every Saturday morning in favorable weather. “I’ve been swimming out there when a whole school of tarpon swam below me, and I just stopped and said, ‘Wow, we’ve got a great thing right here.’”

The annual Swim to the Wreck is also an undeniably bittersweet homage to Vero Beach native Michael Blatus, whose vocal concern over the damage to marine life being caused by pollution and beach restoration efforts prompted him in 2009 to plant a flag on the Breconshire’s bow as a way of sounding the environmental alarm before his premature death that year.

“Growing up, he was always passionate about nature and the ocean, while I was the annoying little sister,” reflects Jeannie Burke, Blatus’ sister. “He’d be in the ocean exploring all hours of the day and night. It was such a frustrating battle going to city hall in the early 2000s with photographs of marine life showing damage from pollution and beach restoration efforts that created conditions detrimental to the survival of coral and other marine life. He also had a website illustrating the fish that once thrived here but had disappeared because of the sand pumping. But, watching what was happening to his beloved reef, well, it crushed him.”

Following his death, Burke and family started the grassroots organization Save the Reef Vero Beach. “He would be thrilled to see that his friends have continued his legacy and support his efforts to bring attention to the beauty that’s just beyond the shoreline,” she adds.

The following Fourth of July, Blatus’ longtime friends—including Keith Hennessy, Craig Haight, Rob Prosser, Jeff Punches, Boban Abbate, Angelique Kulynych, and others—celebrated their mutual friend by starting the tradition of erecting the flag each year in his honor.

“We’ve been reengineering it every year since the early days when we used PVC pipe, and now we use a telescopic pole that’s lighter and easier to put up,” explains Haight, who, in recent years, outfitted the flagpole with solar lights that illuminate the flag. The flag crew varies from year to year, but several of its core members, such as Hennessy and Haight, remain steadfast.

“It’s called ‘re-suspended sedimentation’ in the water column, caused by the sand that’s been shipped here and that has a high silt content that blocks sunlight from reaching the marine life below,” explains Hennessy, who has been featured multiple times on the cover of the Press Journal posing with 10-pound lobsters he caught on the Breconshire when the water was crystal clear. But the devastating effects of pollution and beach restoration efforts, especially, have taken their toll.

“Well, I’m very concerned,” says Richey, who shares Hennessy’s—and others’—sadness and alarm over the changes that have occurred. “Anywhere you see these beaches that have been restored with sand taken from a sand pit out west of town, it’s not the beach that we know,” he explains. “The more people we can get in the ocean with a mask and a snorkel, the more people are going to realize what a precious asset we have here and why it should be respected and protected.”

This year’s event is expected to be larger than ever, predicts Strazzulla, who shares in the hope that this annual event raises awareness. “People who came from as far as Miami and Jacksonville last year were blown away by what they experienced, saying it’s the hottest thing happening on the east coast.”

It’s that level of popularity and resounding awe that Strazzulla and many others hope inspires efforts to preserve what the Breconshire represents and heed the alarm that Blatus, Hennessy, and others began sounding long ago.

“The Swim to the Wreck event has brought so much awareness to what we have here,” says Strazzulla. “Just like our spectacular reef and waterfront, the Breconshire has given us so much. It’s time for us to give back.”