Surprisingly, it was almost balmy on New Year’s Day when, at 1 p.m., around 500 intrepid people plunged into the ocean at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach with at least twice as many fellow citizens cheering them on.
Though the skies were to become a bit grayer and the wind was to pick up, an hour later, at the end of Wainscott’s Beach Lane, around 150 plunged with Colin Mather. A proselyte for daily cold showers who around two decades ago was the first to greet the new year in this manner, he ran the 1.6 miles from his Seafood Shop on Route 27 on New Year’s Day to the ocean with his son, Jack, Harrison Regan, James Burns, and Wayne Duncan.
The eldest Main Beach attendee, Joan Tulp, 95 — “She’s the Queen Bee of the Polar Plunge,” John Ryan Jr. says — dipped her toes into a small tub of ocean water that had been brought up to the pavilion where she sat in a wheelchair, wearing a red jacket and a crown of sorts. Ostensibly the second-to-eldest there, the 89-year-old John Ryan Sr., was among the plungers, convinced as he is that the rite has contributed to his longevity. Asked why he plunged, the elder Ryan said, “Why not?”
Mrs. Tulp, whose birthday is Aug. 18, said, when asked why she thought people plunged, that “it’s a ‘Happening.’ You remember those? It’s a way for people, for families, to gather together. And, look, the sun came out for us.”
The prediction had been for rain, “but,” said Mrs. Tulp, who used to work for the East Hampton Food Pantry, the event’s primary beneficiary, “I said, ‘I’m coming, rain or no.’ ” She added, “I go every day to the beach at Indian Wells [in Amagansett] where I get a feeling of peace and happiness.”
When Anthony Providenti was asked if his and Erin Fitzpatrick’s almost-1-year-old daughter, Claire, had been the youngest to plunge, he replied, with a laugh, “If she had, the Suffolk D.A. would be down here.” As for his “reason for freezin’,” the proud father, whose other children are 24, 22, and 18, said, “To start the new year off right . . . it’s like a summer day!”
The air temperature was said to be 51 degrees, the water 46, leading a non-plunger to ask Craig Brierley, one of 30 East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue squad members there to assure the plungers’ safety, to say, “It’s cold no matter what.”
“This is my first time,” said Claudia Quintana, a teacher of English and Spanish to young East Hampton students, as she adjusted her swimming cap along the 100-yard-long starting line. On emerging a few minutes later, she said, “It was cold! People said if you keep on going it will get better, but I can’t swim
. . . . This was good for me to do — it will help me overcome my fears.”
“It’s a great family tradition,” said R.J. Allan as he was toweling off. “My kids,” Leni, 4, and Jack, 8, “made me come.” Jack, when asked why he had plunged, said, “It’s only once a year.”
A couple of days later, as he was giving a tennis lesson at the East Hampton Indoor-Outdoor Tennis Club, the same question was posed to Dennis Ferrando, who said, without skipping a beat, “Because I’m crazy.”
The businesses that donated food and drink at the Main Beach plunge included Bonfire Coffee, East Hampton Kitchen, the Montauk Deli, the Wainscott Seafood Shop, Estia’s Little Kitchen, Hampton Coffee, Brent’s General Store, M&R Deli, the Golden Pear, and the East Hampton Lions Club. The East Hampton Village and Town Police Departments were also on hand.
Vicki Littman, who chairs the East Hampton Food Pantry’s board of directors, said a few days afterward that the plunge had raised about $31,000 for the organization. “The need continues to be great,” she said before the plunge got underway. “We served 40,000 individuals in 2024, the highest number ever.”
Counting donations received from the plungers and from Sag Harbor businesses, Mather said around $7,500, “about the same as last year,” was raised for his plunge’s beneficiary, the Sag Harbor Food Pantry.