A group of island women embrace the hot new trend in health.

Health & Sports

story by Larry Lindner

photography by Kit Noble

"I go in like Eeyore and come out like the Dalai Lama,” says Sally Ure, referring to her plunges into Nantucket’s frigid waters throughout the winter months. Ure is a member of Nantucket’s ever-expanding group of “Morning Mermaids,” tracking with the growing number of people across the country who take to the water in the winter to reap the benefits of cold water immersion. Those benefits range from the emotional to the physical to the spiritual. “For me,” Ure explains, “it’s a shortcut to gratitude.”

For Sandrine Legrand, who joined the Morning Mermaids last November, it was about being able to start going to the gym again after fifteen years of relative inactivity due to debilitating muscle and joint inflammation resulting from fibromyalgia. After just nine weeks of plunges into water whose temperatures dip into the thirties during the winter months, the one-time Ironman competitor was doing cardio workouts once more.

Whether for state of mind, exercise or to commune with nature (“To be able to float on my back in my bathing suit in the middle of winter looking up at the clouds and the sky is just fabulous,” says Hannah Judy Gretz), those adding to the ranks of the Morning Mermaids reflect that cold plunges are hot. Hard numbers are lacking, but the International Journal of Research and Public Health maintains that the activity has become “increasingly popular,” and sales of wet suits by Mountain Warehouse reportedly surged by 227 percent in the winter of 2021 alone.

Much of the recent surge has been attributed to the pandemic. The original Mermaids group, consisting of five women in their fifties and sixties, started in the fall of 2020, when the country was firmly in COVID’s grip. “Being outside was liberating and a release,” Gretz says. Their number has grown steadily since, and now women of all ages and walks of life take part, from a preschool director to a house painter to new mothers who say swimming or dunking in cold water relieves their postpartum depression.

Does it? A spate of preliminary studies suggests yes. One, titled “Winter Swimming Improves General Well-Being,” showed that people who swam in cold water at least four times a week during the winter experienced lower scores for “negative mood state,” while the scores of non-winter swimmers remained unchanged. Mermaid Larc Jaycobs doesn’t need a study to prove what she experiences. Cold water swimming, she says, is “incredibly uplifting. It’s magical. It’s spiritual. The serenity,” she adds, is yet “another kind of magic.”

And the physical benefits that the Mermaids attest to—improved circulation, a more finely tuned immune system—does the research jibe with those claims? Findings aren’t conclusive, but a review published last year in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health of more than one hundred studies on the matter found that cold water activity may reduce the risk for diabetes by helping insulin work more efficiently to remove sugar from the bloodstream. It may also ward off cardiovascular disease, strengthen respiration and, yes, increase various biochemical markers for strengthened immunity.

What the findings did not discuss, but all the Mermaids did, are the friendships they have formed. “I think it’s a very intimate group,” Ure says. “The people care about each other. Women are very good at talking about what matters, anyway. Within ten minutes, a group of women will always get down to the nitty-gritty. But this particularly makes for a sense of tribe.”

Cold water immersion also “doesn’t take any special equipment or gear,” says Ure, although she and others recommend neoprene gloves and booties. “My daughter’s friend just puts on a sports bra and some leggings,” she comments. “It’s not Palm Beach. It’s Nantucket. And you find what’s best for you. If a minute works, you do a minute. If you get in to your knees and decide that’s not the day, you turn around.”

While some of the Morning Mermaids actually do go out in the morning, not all do, and many don’t go every day. It’s whatever works. “Anyone interested in going around noon?” someone might text the group. One day the Galley might be the perfect spot for a small group. Another day some of the women might head to Willard Street, off Hulbert Avenue. There’s a little cut-through there. For others, Pocomo or Sconset is the spot. Wherever you end up going in, Ure says, “it’s grounding, it’s calming, it’s joyful.”

Interested in cold water plunges? Leave your cell phone number with Pete at The Sunken Ship, 12 Broad Street. A Mermaid will be in touch.