At 6:30 on Saturday morning, the fog blanketing Casco Bay was so thick and stagnant that officials from the Portland YMCA knew they could’ve called off the 25th annual Peaks to Portland Swim right then and there.

But they waited. It was the fair thing to do. The race wasn’t scheduled to start for two more hours, so there was a chance the fog would burn off. When it didn’t, they waited some more.

Swimmers had come from as far away as Texas to participate in the event. They had trained for months, rearranged schedules, taken time off from work. They had been up since 5 a.m. or earlier. They had boarded the ferry and helped lug kayaks to the starting line.

The YMCA owed the swimmers. At 9 a.m., when the fog started to dissipate and more and more sailboats became visible off of Portland’s East End Beach, two of the officials, Leona Accuosti and Anne-Marie Brown, spoke with hope into their walkie-talkies.

Their self-imposed deadline had come and gone, but they weren’t ready to give up yet. Just a little more time. That was all they needed.

Unfortunately, for the 180 swimmers still waiting patiently on Peaks Island, though, they needed more than that. But Mother Nature stood her ground stubbornly. At about 9:30, Accuosti, the assistant to the executive director, got word that the event had been postponed.

She passed it along to the crowd of spectators that had gathered on the beach and also announced that the event would not be held the next day, which was the original make-up date – the weather was forecast to be even worse Sunday.

Since then, race organizers have gotten together with the Coast Guard, the City of Portland and the ferry lines, and set this coming Saturday as the new make-up date. As of Tuesday, an official time had not yet been determined, but Brown, the marketing and membership director at the Y, said it would start at either 9 or 9:15 a.m.

“We certainly know that there’s going to be some drop off in the number of participants, which is unfortunate,” she said. “But the safety of the swimmers and the volunteers and participants is much more important than if everyone can make it on a rescheduled date.”

Safety was the issue on Saturday. The Coast Guard Sector Northern New England had a boat in the water and was advising YMCA officials throughout the morning. Eventually, the Coast Guard advised the YMCA not to hold the swim.

“The visibility was less than a hundred yards and because of the traffic density that was scheduled to be arriving in and out of the port the race directors decided to take the recommendation and cancel the race,” said Lt. Connie Braesch, the Coast Guard’s public affairs officer.

According to Accuosti, the Coast Guard also nixed a potential plan to bump the event back to 4 p.m. that same day. The reason the YMCA couldn’t keep waiting on Saturday morning had to do with the tide turning.

“Once the tides turned at high tide, which was at around 10 o’clock, if the swimmers had gone after that they would’ve been coming in against the tide,” said Brown. “That would’ve severely slowed them down, kept them in the water much longer and then you run a much higher risk of cases of hypothermia and swimmers that become too exhausted swimming.”

Saco resident and South Portland High School alum Mark Strickland left his house at 5:15 a.m. He swam in the first YMCA-run event 25 years ago, and decided to do it again this year to celebrate turning 40 years old.

“It was frustrating,” he said. “By the time you got the kayak and everything over there it was tough. In the directions they said they were going to call the race at six o’clock, and I think they decided, because the harbor was closed, just to run with it.”

When the official cancellation was announced, Strickland and his kayaker headed to Denny’s for breakfast.

“It was a real bummer,” said Strickland, “but I’m still looking forward to it (next week).”

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