2024 is Team Carolyn’s third season at Swim Across America. It has been another amazing year with SAA as we have learned so much and the friendships and support in the swim community have been a blessing.Team Carolyn in its first 2 years raised over $500,000 thanks to everyone. to become a stronger team we have also had Team Excel join our team for our 2nd and third years and have done so much!!.  Also all our friends and family have been beyond words incredible. The 2023 swim was the most amazing charitable event that i have ever attended as we outmaneuvered Mother Nature. All the cancer researchers speaking at the swim and telling everyone what they had accomplished in the previous year. One set of researchers from MSKK cured rectal cancer with the money they received from SAA and the swim.We also want to give thanks and recognition to all the amazing researchers from the very best Labs and Hospitals in the world. Cold Spring Harbor Labs, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Weil Cornell, MD Anderson Childrens Cancer Hospital, Feinstein Institute Northwell Health, and SHARE Cancer Support. We are looking forward to our third year with SAA a community dedicated to fighting cancer, the disease that took Carolyn Jaenisch from us, while simultaneously doing something she loved : swimming. This year our beneficiaries have promised us some new incredible discoveries and miracles!!

Carolyn’s adventurous and passionate nature led to her running the NYC marathon, completing a relay and double relay across the English Channel, swimming around Manhattan, driving cross-country solo, and hiking Machu Picchu at age 60. She could most recently be found open water swimming every month in the Long Island Sound, and had just earned a Masters’ Degree in American History, completed May 2021. She was in the midst of training for the TransRockies run with her sister & a neighbor, learning how to sail in hopes of traveling to visit her son in Australia, and, as always, signing up for more open water swims/relays. Nothing stopped Carolyn from DOING; and as far as her COVID lifestyle was concerned, a swimming friend of hers put it best in a letter, “while most people were going nowhere — WE were going somewhere”.

The diagnosis of Terminal Adenocarcinoma in July 2021 came as a shock, and Carolyn fought to stay with her family for one last Thanksgiving. Carolyn's passing left behind her husband, Steven Chestler, 26-year old son Gregory& 21-year old daughter Caitlin; and they are the founders of her team at Swim Across America. Please join us in a swim to honor Carolyn if you can, or volunteer to support the event as a kayaker,  registration or beach volunteer.  If you knew Carolyn, you know she’d tell you to set a goal and go for it! If you would like to contribute to Team Carolyn, any amount is appreciated and helpful towards fighting cancer. Thank you for your time and we hope to see you in the water :) 

XO, Steve, Gregory and Caitlin