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If New Year’s Was Today…

… would so many have come to frolic and play?

It is winter, after all, but it was easy to forget, just a few days ago, when the WaveMasters held their 17th annual New Year’s Day Polar Plunge.  The tradition began with a group of surfer friends who got together on New Year’s morning and celebrated by jumping into the ocean, and just gained momentum over the years.  Regardless of temps and weather conditions, they came.  It’s great.  It’s like the entire neighborhood (of several hundred people!) gathering on the beach to wish each other a happy new year morning, then dashing like crazy maniacs into the water.  Awesome.

So the temps on Sunday were hardly polar,  but we’re sure feeling it now.  We can’t help but wonder how many people would have shown up to do it if New Year’s day had today’s temperature?  Who’d have run pell mell into the ocean with the wild and happy abandon we saw on Sunday?  Well, whatever.  It was a glorious and mild morning and the ocean herself was serving up some pretty warm waters at 64 degrees. Judging from the large turnout under a bright blue sky and warm sunshine, everyone had a blast.

 

Afterwards, it was announced that there were three eighty-year-olds  – a woman, and two men; a two-year-old girl, and three-year-old boy, as the eldest, and youngest Polar Plunge participants.   They were given free tee shirts; this year’s Polar Plunge design was a collaboration by Cameron Siciliano, Jessica Becker, and Michael Whitaker.  The tees were sold for twenty bucks to commemorate the beaches/WaveMasters annual New Year’s tradition.

There wasn’t a single shirt left over.

Largest crowd ever?

Check out our pictures.  See if you can find yourself, or someone you know!  And Happy New Year, from The Beaches Online.  Hey, go check out our Facebook Page and give us a ‘like’ would you?  Then bookmark or subscribe to this website because you’re going to want to be plugged in to everything that’s going on here in our beloved beaches community.

 

 

 Dan Gurzi and his son Diego Moreno

The Mustache is everywhere!

 And they’re off!

What a great day!

 

It’s a Viking!

The lineup.

Kurtis Loftus and all.

“Help!  I don’t want to get my camera wet!”

Eighty years old and Polar Plunging?  Yes.

Triumphant!  Exhilarated!

Two eighty-year-old guys went into the water.  Will you, when you are eighty?!

A popular spot for photos ops.

The youngest male who plunged:  this three-year-old kid.

And the youngest one of them all: this two-year-old girl!

Thanks, WaveMasters, for sponsoring this great event, and for making this just another to love about living at the beach!

Happy 2012

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About the Author

Jeannie Greenwald is a freelance photographer, neighborhoods evangelist, and editor-in-chief of The Beaches Online. She is also a degreed psychologist and occasionally works as an adoption social worker for Jacksonville area families. She founded The Beaches Online, LLC, in 2011 to write about the happenings in 'the beaches' - the island-without-a-name, in Duval and St. Johns Counties, Florida. Always equipped with cameras, she roams the beaches, the string of barrier islands from Amelia to Anastasia, and also journeys inland, to the rural banks of Florida's blackwater rivers, and the pristine, freshwater springs. Jeannie's lived at the beaches for twelve years, and considers herself a common-law native. She celebrates the joy of living in a coastal community that prides itself on its beautiful beaches and strong, independent local business community.

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