Every year on the second Sunday of June, right around our oldest daughter Kate’s birthday, about a thousand swimmers gather to participate in the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. There’s a one-mile swim off the eastern shore, along a course set with large brightly colored buoys; you swim clockwise, about four tenths of a mile out, then a short leg to the right, then the home stretch, along a jetty made of enormous black jagged boulders that is the landing area for the east-bound Bay Bridge span. The finish line is at a small sandy beach near Hemingway’s restaurant on Kent Island. The 4.4-mile swim begins at Sandy Point State Park, on the western shore of the bay. Swimmers cross the bay between the two giant bridge spans. Competing for the first time in any event is stressful. Everything is foreign -- from what to bring to where to park to where to check in. You’re afraid of not being in the right place at the right time. The Bay swim is no exception. My first open-water swim was