By Katie Vasquez
The temperature in February in New York City has been around 26 degrees Fahrenheit for weeks, and with a windchill it’s been feeling like six degrees outside.
But the chill doesn’t stop Rockaways, Queens native Margaret Tumelty from jumping into the water.
“I always feel like there’s been a cure in the water,” Tumelty, a parishioner at St. Francis De Sales Parish in Belle Harbor, Queens, tells Currents News. “My dad always used to take us down during the Feast of the Assumption and tell us about the cure in the water.”
She originally started her winter swimming with the New York Dippers club in April 2023 because she had heard about the benefits of cold water therapy.
“Everybody who can come, they go in every day and they got me started,” she explains. “They encouraged me.”
She usually makes it out three to four times a week, plunging her whole body in the water for one to three minutes.
It reminds her of a baptism, washing away all her sorrows.
“No matter what kind of a day you’re having, once you go in the water, you just like, have a cleanse,” she says of the experience. “It, like, totally washes away whatever happened that day, any stress you might have had, any emotional stuff that might have gone on.”
After losing her older sister Eileen to cancer in January, she felt lost.
“Watching somebody you love suffer is hard,” Tumelty notes.
But after the loss she experienced, the group convinced her to return to the waves.
“They got me in the water even when I didn’t want to go in, and it really helped me get through that period of time when she was in the hospital and even after she passed,” she recalls of that time. “So, it’s definitely like a renewal.”
Margaret Tumelty is never alone in the water with her fellow members and God by her side.
“It’s that power of love that you feel when you go in the water, joy, love, community. It’s a lot of great things. and, you know, God’s love of course is shown through the ocean,” sys Tumelty.
It’s a joy that continues for her even when she heads to land to dry off.
If you would also like to swim in frigid waters, just check out the Facebook or Instagram page for “New York Dippers Club.”