Swimming in Lake Lucerne: A Cautionary Tale

So… ‘what the hell happened on that boat trip?’ You might be asking after reading this…
Well, have you ever thrown yourself into a situation without thinking about it too much? Well, this is how Lloyd likes to live. He just loves to throw himself in head first and think about things later. As much as this causes me horrendous anxiety, it really is something that enhances our travels and pushes me to do things I wouldn’t normally consider.

Now, have you ever thrown yourself into a situation without thinking about it too much and realised pretty quickly that you are in way over your head?

Here’s what happened:

We rented the boat, all was fine. Lloyd was on the peddles and I was lounging on the back enjoying the sun and the unexpected 25°c temperature. We had asked some of the locals where was best to swim and headed straight over to the area which was marked out and happened to be right beside a restaurant which had its seating area jutting out over the lake.

To our surprise, there didn’t seem to be anyone else swimming and we thought how boring they all must be to rent a boat in such a beautiful location and not want to get into the water for a quick dip. Oh, how naive we were.

We peddled up to the location and jumped in, out of opposite sides of the boat.

Here’s where a little back story is needed. Lloyd has always had trouble with his ears, he’d recently had his perforated ear drum repaired and he has never been able to swim due to the risk of infection so is not a strong swimmer at all.

As soon as we hit the water we realised how absolutely freezing it was and our bodies went into a bit of shock. I watched the colour completely drain from Lloyd’s face as we clung to the sides of the boat. I was trying to shout to him to start swimming so that he could get some heat through his body but I didn’t realise he had put in ear plugs to stop the water from getting in his ears. He couldn’t hear a thing and he’d failed to mention to me his deathly fear of open water…typical man!

He was in an absolute panic by this point because the water was so deep (we later found out up to 200m in places…oops) and it had such a strong current (which I’d promised him it wouldn’t because who knew lakes had currents?!…second oops)

The boat started drifting towards the restaurant and out of the designated ‘swim’ area so I tried to cling to it to get it back into the right place. However the current was strong and we couldn’t co-ordinate our efforts due to the ear plugs! At this point Lloyd couldn’t see me anymore and started swimming away in panic trying to find me in the water.

He couldn’t hear me calling, but of-course, everyone at the nearby restaurant certainly could so now we had an audience gathering for our undignified performance.

I tried to pull myself back into the boat but soon realised I just simply did not have the strength in my arms, but I could see Lloyd swimming away and was starting to worry things could turn really bad really quickly at this point. You know that moment when your stomach drops and realise how much you’ve messed up? Imagine that very private horror plus the added bonus of an audience.

It was honestly equal parts terrifying and embarrassing but I EVENTUALLY managed to flip (more like flop) myself onto the back of the boat like some kind of beached whale (I had so many bruises from the multiple attempts).

Eventually, I managed to pedal over to Lloyd and rescue him from his state of panic. We literally laid on the back of the boat almost in tears as if we’d just washed up on a desert island after some sort of horrific disaster.

You can see the sheer exhaustion on his face in the picture above.

Anyway, we absolutely do recommend renting a boat on Lake Lucerne, but be VERY wary of the water and know your abilities before you jump in!