A 36-year-old St Paul man is about to embark on a never-before-done swimming adventure in the chilled waters of Lake Superior and its off-shore archipelago of the Apostle Islands.

Daniel O’Kane, who lives in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood with his wife and cats and works as a bartender at Fitzgerald’s, was planning Saturday to set off on a nearly monthlong journey that will feature him swimming to each of the 22 islands, which lie off Wisconsin’s Lake Superior shoreline near the town of Bayfield.

“Everything is just about ready,” he said in a telephone interview Friday. “Two days of sunshine will make it almost safe in the water. Couple of bear issues on a few islands, and the wind hopefully will change to make it so I can have the wind at my back during some early stretches.”

Others have swum from island to island before, but here’s O’Kane’s distinction: “It’s the first self-supported, people-powered circum-tour of the Apostle Islands,” he said in a phone interview Friday.

His route — “pinballing between the islands” — will not be entirely submerged in the waters, which ranged between 45 and 54 degrees Friday. “I can’t swim in anything colder than 48 or I’ll get hypothermia too fast,” he said.

He’ll swim, in a wetsuit, from one island to another “and then get out of the water as soon as I can.” Nearby, his partner, attorney Paul Voge of Duluth, will paddle a kayak filled with their supplies — and towing a paddleboard. The paddleboard is essentially a life raft for O’Kane should he need it.

Then, depending on the island, O’Kane will bicycle, hike or, most often, stand-up paddleboard along the shore of the island until they reach the a point close to another island. Then he’ll swim to that island. Related Articles Mike Lynch’s Skywatch: Roll down the big river of stars

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As such, O’Kane is expecting to swim “only” 48.75 miles, while Voge will paddle 100. In all, O’Kane expects to paddleboard 20 to 30 miles, hike 10 to 20 miles and bike for 30 miles on the route. He expects it will take 24 to 28 days.

The trip required a special blessing from the National Park Service. Much of the islands are within the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, which is administered by the agency. The park’s regulations don’t allow people to stay for more than two weeks, so O’Kane and Voge received special permits for the endeavor.

“If we don’t make it out after 30 days, we have to call for a water taxi,” he said.

O’Kane said he decided to do the trip after he completed a swimming race from Bayfield to Madeleine Island, the largest of the Apostles.

“There was a woman there greeting us who handed me a Popsicle stick and said ‘Welcome to Madeleine Island.’ It was this really cool feeling that washed over me that everyone with a pioneering spirit can reach anywhere they want under their own power,” he said.

O’Kane has a satellite-connected device to update his family on his whereabouts and an Instagram account, but there will be no practical way for the public to follow his adventure.