Spencer M. Korwin, a former Team USA triathlete and wellness entrepreneur, drowned during a morning swim on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, while his family was vacationing on Shelter Island, N.Y. He was 38. Relatives and friends gathered in Manhattan on Sunday, September 6, for his funeral.
The father of two young daughters went into the water about 8 a.m. that Wednesday from the dock of the Pridwin Hotel, where he and his relatives were lodging, according to Shelter Island Police Det. Sgt. Jack Thilberg. Divers found him underwater beside that same dock about seven hours later.
How the Search Unfolded
When Korwin did not come back from the water, his wife notified hotel staff, who called emergency services at about 12:03 p.m. Shelter Island Town Police officers, Shelter Island Fire Department firefighters and Shelter Island Town Emergency Medical Services crews responded shortly after noon to a report of a missing swimmer, police said.
Crews worked the Crescent Beach-North Channel area of Shelter Island Sound and the waterways around it. A Coast Guard helicopter searched from the air, drone units from the Shelter Island and Southold police departments joined it, and multiple marine units worked the water. Shelter Island EMS added two ambulances and several volunteers.
Divers located Korwin about 3 p.m., and authorities concluded that he had drowned. Thilberg said detectives, working alongside the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office, regard the death as accidental and have found no indication of criminality. Police said the investigation remains open, and the medical examiner will set the official cause and manner of death. No ruling had been issued as of September 15, and no outlet has reported one.
Police have not said what caused Korwin, an experienced open-water swimmer, to go under, and no witnesses have been reported. He was swimming alone from a private dock, not a lifeguarded beach.
Conditions on the Water That Day
John Kirincic, described by the Shelter Island Reporter as a master for the Southold Town Police Department’s Marine One and by other outlets as a master mariner, told the Reporter there had been “no fog or anything bad” that morning. Even so, he noted, the current in that stretch of water is frequently strong because of the narrow passage the tide runs through.
Laurie Eckardt, identified by the Reporter as a Shelter Island resident, told the paper, “People are not familiar with the waters around here.” Korwin’s death was the area’s second apparent drowning of the summer. Timothy Magambo, 18, of Pelham, N.Y., a freshman at SUNY Albany, was pulled from the water off Wades Beach on Saturday, May 16, and died later that day at Stony Brook University Hospital after a transfer from Stony Brook Eastern Long Island; his injuries were described as consistent with drowning, and no cause was ever formally ruled.
A Fixture on the East End Circuit
Korwin graduated from Syracuse University in 2010. He qualified for Team USA Triathlon in 2012, raced at the world championships in Auckland, New Zealand, and that same year became a Gatorade-sponsored athlete. At the Barfoot and Thompson Age-Group Triathlon World Championships in Auckland, he finished 36th in his age group in 1 hour, 20 minutes, 43 seconds, including a 13:27 swim.
He was a familiar face closer to home in Long Island’s endurance-sports scene, piling up podium finishes at races across the East End. On his LinkedIn profile, he noted that he had won both the Montauk Point Lighthouse Triathlon and the Mighty Montauk Sprint Triathlon.
In 2021 he founded Korwin Health & Wellness, advising competitive athletes and ordinary clients on rest, nutrition and balancing the demands of daily life, all while logging his own training hours for Ironman and Ironman 70.3 events. He described his work as helping people “achieve goals that once seemed out of reach.” His grandfather was Irving Korwin, a World War II veteran who founded the New York charm maker Wideband Coin Jewelry in 1951 and died in 2020 at 99 in Paradise Valley, Ariz.
Two days after Korwin’s death, Josh Grosbard, David Himmel and Jeffrey Witten launched a GoFundMe campaign for his daughters’ education. The fundraising page showed $432,038 from 987 donations against a $500,000 goal on Tuesday, September 15, unchanged from the day before; Greater Long Island reported that one anonymous donor gave $38,000. “He was the sun around which so many of our lives orbited, and his loss is being felt deeply by everyone who knew and loved him,” the organizers wrote on the page.
His funeral was held at Temple Israel on East 75th Street in Manhattan at 1:30 p.m. on September 6, with burial afterward at Beth Moses Cemetery. No memorial fund or foundation has been announced beyond the education campaign, and the Pridwin has not commented publicly. No further reporting on the death has appeared since the week of his funeral.
A small island town between the North and South forks of eastern Long Island, Shelter Island draws heavy summer traffic from vacationing families, and town police and volunteer emergency crews patrol its waters. Departments from across the area answered the missing-swimmer call before divers ended the search that afternoon.
Korwin is survived by his wife, Carly Korwin, and their two daughters, Sadie, four, and Colette, one. The couple married in Bridgehampton, and he was a regular presence in the Hamptons.