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 in New York. He was 38. Relatives and friends gathered in Manhattan on Sunday, September 6, for his funeral.
Korwin, the father of two young daughters, entered the water around 8 a.m. that Wednesday from the dock of the Pridwin Hotel, where he and his relatives were staying, 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. Dispatchers were alerted at about 12:03 p.m., and 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. Nothing in the public record explains the four hours between the swim and the call.
Crews worked the Crescent Beach-North Channel area of Shelter Island Sound and the surrounding waterways. A Coast Guard boat and helicopter searched, a Southold Town police drone unit joined them, and marine units from the East Marion, Greenport, Southold and Orient fire departments worked the water alongside Southold Town police divers.
Divers located Korwin about 3 p.m. Investigators, working with the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office, believe the death was accidental and that no criminality is suspected, police said. The case remains open, and the medical examiner has yet to set an official cause and manner of death. No ruling had been issued as of September 18, and no outlet has reported one.
Police have not said what caused Korwin to go under, and no witnesses have been reported. He was swimming alone from a private dock rather than a lifeguarded beach. By the next morning a “Swimming Not Advised” sign had gone up near Crescent Beach.
Conditions on the Water That Day
John Kirincic, a master mariner for the Southold Town Police Department’s Marine One, told the Shelter Island Reporter there had been nothing unusual about the conditions. “There was no fog or anything bad,” he said. Even so, the current in that stretch runs strong, because the tide is forced through a narrow passage. Police Chief Jim Read told The Suffolk Times the area is not normally considered dangerous, but added: “These are open waters where tides, currents and boat traffic are always considerations.”
Korwin’s death was the second drowning in Shelter Island waters this year. Timothy Magambo, 18, of Pelham, N.Y., who had just finished his freshman year at the University at Albany, was swimming the channel from Wades Beach toward Shell Beach with a group on Saturday, May 16, when he became separated; companions found him face down and brought him ashore. He was taken to Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, then transferred to Stony Brook University Hospital, where he died that day. His injuries were described as consistent with drowning, and no cause was ever formally ruled. Residents told the Reporter that visitors are unfamiliar with the waters around the island.
A Fixture on the East End Circuit
Korwin graduated from Syracuse University in 2010. He competed for Team USA at the 2012 Barfoot and Thompson Age-Group Triathlon World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand, finishing 36th in the men’s 20-24 field in 1 hour, 20 minutes and 43 seconds, and he became a Gatorade-sponsored athlete that year, a partnership that ran for five years.
He was a familiar face closer to home in Long Island’s endurance-sports scene, collecting podium finishes at races across the East End. 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 jewelry firm 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 page had raised $433,088 from 993 donations against a $500,000 goal by Friday, September 18, with the pace slowing to a trickle over the past week; 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.
His funeral was held at Temple Israel, 112 E. 75th St. in Manhattan, at 1:30 p.m. on September 6, with burial afterward at Beth Moses Cemetery in West Babylon. No memorial fund or foundation has been announced beyond the education campaign, and the Pridwin has not commented publicly. No new reporting on the death has appeared since September 8, and no police statement since September 4.
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 East End 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.
