Buoy 10 Swim Organizers Issue Advisory About August 11 Event

Organizers of the 5-mile “Swim Across the Columbia” fundraiser this afternoon are now putting out a wider advisory to Buoy 10 fall salmon anglers and other boaters on the lower river about their Sunday, August 11, event.

“Please be advised a small group of swimmers will be in the Columbia River, swimming from Knappton Cove (WA) to the Maritime Museum in Astoria,” reads the notice posted by Columbia Memorial Hospital this afternoon. “Swimmers will have bright caps, buoys and a cadre of support boats and jet skis.”

According to spokeswoman Sarah Bello, as of this morning 14 people had signed up for the early-morning swim above the Astoria-Megler Bridge. They will gather on the Washington side of the river at 5:30 a.m., wade in at 6 a.m., and are expected to be done by 10 a.m.

It has genuinely alarmed Chinook and coho fishermen, who know better than many the power and dangers of the estuary this time of year – international shipping, ocean tides, river currents, weather off the Pacific, wakes from the hundreds upon hundreds of boats that will be on the water that day, and more. One local guide urged those in charge to just cancel the event “before someone gets killed.”

It fell on deaf ears.

“The event organizers have worked with the Coast Guard, ODFW, WDFW, the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office and other local businesses to spread the word about the swim and ensure swimmers’ safety,” Bello stated this morning.

The swim is part of a larger fundraiser for a multi-million-dollar hospital expansion and also includes an option for not swimming across the Columbia.

The idea came from Dr. Paul Silka of the hospital’s Emergency Department. “This is actually a resurrection of a trans-Columbia River swim that first occurred in 1934,” he stated in a press release last month. “When I first got to Astoria and I saw the river, having been an open-water swimmer, I said, ‘That’s got to be done, we’ve got to cross that river.’”

The event didn’t register on the frontal cortex of this close watcher of all things Columbia fish/ing until he spotted an overnight post on Ifish Thursday morning, but it had been the subject of brief blurbs in local newspapers and Portland TV stations, web searches show.

An email to co-organizers at the Astoria Regatta had not been returned as of 6:03 p.m. Friday.