Epilepsy Foundation Benefit –

A Sunday Swim In The Sound

By Steve Bigham

You might say that Newtown resident Jim Bayles is taking it easy this summer. His scheduled swim across Long Island Sound on Sunday is not the hardest swim he’s ever done.

Heck, it’s only 16 miles across and the tides aren’t nearly as unforgiving as, say, those of the English Channel (which Jim is slated to swim next summer).

This will be Jim’s eighth “marathon” swim for charity. His previous efforts, in honor of his father, raised over $80,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. This swim, in honor of his daughter, Kate, 16, who has epilepsy, will start on a beach near Westport and end in Port Jefferson.

Joining the 49-year-old Butterfield Road resident in the water will be a handful of 15- to 18-year-olds from the YMCAs in New Canaan and Wilton, masters swimmer, and world-renowned long distance swimmers. Each person will be raising money for the Epilepsy Foundation of Connecticut.

Jim, who figures he’ll be in the water for eight hours, hopes to raise $10,000 or more from this year’s swim.

Last year, Jim became the first person in history to have completed the task of swimming under all 25 major New York City bridges. The final bridge was the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, under which he swam on his way from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to Manhattan, an 18-mile swim, as part of his annual iron-man fundraiser. Two years ago, he swam the 28 miles around Manhattan and, in 1998, he swam from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Manhattan. Before that, he swam the Hudson River from the Tappan-Zee Bridge into Manhattan.

An interesting side note to this year’s swim is that Jim will be returning to where it all began for the Bayles family of Long Island.

“I will be retracing my ancestors’ ‘wake’ and returning ‘home’ to where many of my ancestors came from,” said Jim, who is the fourth person to have this famous Long Island name. “There’s some history there. My ancestors owned a shipyard in Port Jefferson. My great, great, great grandfather rode across Long Island Sound to Bridgeport to become a ship building apprentice. Then he started his own business in Port Jefferson around 1820. I’m going to swim into Bayles Dock in Port Jefferson.”

The first James Madison Bayles and his son, James Elisha Bayles, were shipbuilders and prominent citizens whose successor company was eventually purchased by the government during World War I to help the war effort against Germany, 80 years after the founding of the shipyard.

 Jim, who wakes up each morning at 3:30 and makes his way to New Canaan’s YMCA to train, has had a lifelong passion for swimming. He began swimming competitively at age five and recalls charting his “extra” laps using a map of Manhattan. “We used it as a chart to determine how far we had gone. It took me all summer to make it around,” Mr Bayles recalled.

This past Sunday, Jim was part of the New Canaan Y Aquatic Club, which captured the 10K swim at the US Championships in Daytona, Florida.

Mr Bayles went to the nationals while at Dartmouth College, where he excelled in the 400 individual medley and barely missed qualifying for the 1972 Olympic trials.

Jim and Trina Bayles moved to Butterfield Road in Newtown five years ago along with their three daughters, Jen, Brooke, and Katie.

To help support Jim in his planned benefit swim, call him at 270-0840.