Mystic—On a brisk 37-degree February morning, Justin Fornal, wearing just swim trunks, swim gloves, swim boots and flippers, lowered himself off a dock at the Mystic Seaport Museum into the Mystic River for a test swim.

When he emerged from the 36-degree water, he had two cuts on his arms from the razor-like ice in the river.

Fornal, journalist, explorer, co-host of the Science Channel’s “The Unexplained and Unexplored” series, and cold-water swimmer, was preparing for his part in the museum’s President’s Day weekend event: Wintertide, where he will talk about his attempted swim of the Nares Straight in the Arctic last summer before swimming from the seaport to downtown Mystic.

“I’ll swim there and then walk into town and have a beer with whoever will join me,” he said of his plan to head to Bank and Bridge Brewing at 54 West Main St. after he gets out of the river.

For Fornal, who has been swimming since he was a child growing up in Killingworth and managed to swim 11 miles in the Arctic Ocean last August, the thin sheet of ice on top of the 36-degree Mystic River was not an impediment to his test swim.

“Obviously cold water swimming-- and cold water plunges-- is definitely gaining popularity in terms of the health benefits. So, a lot of people are doing these soaks, and going in and shocking their bodies and all of the great things that happen from that process, but one thing we aren’t doing is long distance swimming in that same water,” he said.

But Fornal is.

Now 45, Fornal began swimming as a child and swam the breaststroke on his high school swim team. Years later, while working as a food writer in New York City, he said he had put on weight, and wanted to get back in shape. He decided to train to swim the Bronx River.

He said he lost 40 pounds training, and when he finished the Bronx River swim, he immediately wondered what his next swim would be. Thereafter, each year was a different swim.

He began planning swims based on where he was traveling for work. In Egypt, he swam in the Nile; in Scotland, he swam 100 miles around Isalay, an island in the Inner Hebrides.

“We were going to one of the most remote areas on the planet where you have zero support. The closest village was 100 miles away,” he said. “That kind of chess game of trying to figure out how to achieve a swim is an interesting aspect.”

As part of the museum’s Adventure Series, Fornal will discuss his expedition to the Arctic in depth at the Mystic Hilton at 1:30 and 7 p.m. on Feb 16, before his February 18 technical lecture at 2 p.m. and cold-water swim at 3:30 p.m. Tickets for both events are available at www.mysticseaport.org.

“The talk will be about the kit that I built and the wetsuit I’m using,” he said. “It’s like a prototype for long distance Arctic swimming, and that’s what I’ll be using from the Seaport,” he said.

“It’s open cell neoprene, and it basically almost sticks to your skin, so, as opposed to a classic wetsuit where you’ve got a lot more room for the water inside, this is a wetsuit, but it almost fuses—it’s almost like wearing blubber in a way, more like a seal or a walrus in the way I’m able to interact with the water,” he explained.

Despite thorough planning, unforeseen obstacles kept him from completing the Arctic swim. His carbohydrate and calorie dense food, intended to provide energy and stave off hypothermia, fermented, leaving him hypothermic after seven miles, and thick Arctic ice blocked the 27-mile, carefully planned course from Pim Island, Canada to Refuge Harbor, Greenland after 11 miles.

Nevertheless, he spoke with wonder of the vistas, unaltered by human hands and endless blue depths of ocean beneath him and around him.

“It’s almost like being on another planet in terms of how isolated, and almost like violently beautiful. And it’s just these big crackling mountains shooting up out of the ice. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen on this planet,” he said, adding, “to swim in that was just this serene, intoxicating environment.”

The barriers he faced have not deterred him, and he said he will try again with a different route.

“We’re going to keep pushing how far humans can swim in the Arctic.”