By FloridaKeysNewsBureau for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Sept. 20, 2015 – ISLAMORADA, Florida Keys — A Colorado man garnered top overall honors Saturday at an open water swim in the Florida Keys designed to raise awareness of the need to preserve six aging lighthouses off the subtropical island chain.
Boulder’s Yoelvis Pedraza completed the 9-mile Swim for Alligator Lighthouse Saturday in 3 hours, 18 minutes and 3 seconds, besting his 2014 victory time by almost 17 minutes.
“I like to come to this swim, it’s such a long swim and it’s only once a year,” said Pedraza, who recently moved to Boulder from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ” What ‘makes’ the swim is to get to the lighthouse.
“Right underneath it, is just a gigantic diversity of life,” he said. “You see reef, you see fish, you see everything.”
Alison Hayden of Kinnelon, N.J., won the women’s title at 4:31:07.
“I would meditate in the water, exhaling and counting the buoys one by one,” Hayden said, explaining her strategy. “There wasn’t one time where I picked my head up and looked at the lighthouse. I kind just kept going.”
Belleair, Fla., residents Cyle Sage and Mandy Zipf won the two-person relay division with a time of 4:34:53.
Swimmers Emilienne Allen, Janice Haramis, Kimberly Nordheim and Michala Nowak, all of Hypoluxo, Fla., won the four-person class in 3:52:54.
The event attracted 200 entrants.
Because of Global Positioning System (GPS), the 142-year-old Alligator Lighthouse and five other lighthouses off the Keys are no longer primary tools for maritime navigation.
