Vancouver swimmer Jessi Harewicz attempts Georgia Strait crossing

As a Vancouver woman attempts to become the third ever to swim across the Georgia Strait, the sport of open water swimming appears to be gaining popularity and the cold, dark and unpredictable conditions seem to be a selling point.

Jessi Harewicz, 33, was a synchronized swimmer as a child but got hooked on open water swimming just two years ago. She says she realized how beautiful the waters off Vancouver's coast are.

"I'm not an environmentalist, but it's kind of pretty obvious that you might want to try it out if you realize you have it right on your doorstep," she said as she prepared to head to the Sunshine Coast on Friday.

Her 30-kilometre swim, from Sechelt to Nanaimo, will begin Saturday morning and could take as long as 16 hours.

"The weather needs to be good. The weather needs to maintain," she said. "The weather, and myself, and my mental focus. The point is when you want to get out is when you know you have to stay in."

Harewicz, who swims up to 12 hours a week in training, will have John Dafoe showing her the route as her pilot.

He helped Rachel Schoeler complete the Georgia Strait crossing two years ago and, like Schoeler, Harewicz will swim under English Channel rules, which means no wet suit or holding onto the boats supporting her.

• Challenges to Rachel Schoeler's Georgia Strait swim
• Grandmother dodges tankers on 58-km North Coast swim
• Canada's Weinberger swims to open-water bronze

When asked what she thinks about as she strokes her way through the dark waters of the West Coast, she chuckled and conceded that open water swimmers get asked the question a lot.

"My mind wanders, it kind of wanders in and out. You're very isolated in your own space a bit because you have no sense of distance when you're out in a channel right?" she said. "I have like an internal radio in my head where you have songs."

Her father will accompany her, as he does for many of her swims, and she says she enjoys stopping to tread water every 30 minutes to eat and chat with him.

Harewicz hopes to be successful and plans to keep on swimming in open water. She has already booked a spot to take on the iconic English Channel next summer, the waters of which are up to five degrees colder than those in the Georgia Strait.

Jim Close, 68, says he is seeing more people like Harewicz getting hooked on the adventure of open water swimming, something he's been doing for the past 20 years.

"Now that they've got the open water accepted into the Olympics, there's more and more people taking on more and more challenges," said Close, who is on the executive with the Vancouver Open Water Swimming Association (VOWSA).

"Even though the [triathletes] have given us a push, I would say there's a group of people looking just to adventure swim, that you don't have to be the fastest swimmer in the pool."

VOWSA organizes several open water events, including a Canada Day swim, which 2012 Olympic bronze medallist Richard Weinberger swam.

Close says the marker of the sports' popularity in Vancouver is participation in Monday and Thursday night swims at Kits Beach, which now involve 60 to 80 swimmers, up from 20 to 40. Still, Close says, the challenge of the sport is elusive to some.

"On practice nights we offer the opportunity for people to come out and ask someone to swim with them, and we often have people who don't make it to the first marker buoy 400 feet away that are very good swimmers — they just panic," said Close.

"It's just about as much mind over matter as it is anything else."