Mourners filled a Manhattan funeral on Sunday, September 6, 2026, for Spencer M. Korwin, the former Team USA triathlete and wellness entrepreneur who drowned during a morning swim Wednesday, September 2, while on a family vacation on Shelter Island, N.Y. Korwin was 38.
Korwin, a father of two young daughters, went into the water about 8 a.m. that Wednesday off the dock of the hotel where he and his relatives were lodging, Shelter Island Police Det. Sgt. Jack Thilberg said. Divers found him underwater near that same dock about seven hours later.
Reports have identified the property as the Pridwin Hotel. Shelter Island police have not confirmed the name themselves.
How the Search Unfolded
His wife notified hotel staff when he did not come back from the water, and staff called emergency services at about 12:03 p.m. on September 2. Officers from Shelter Island Town Police responded shortly after noon to a report of a missing swimmer, joined by firefighters from the Shelter Island Fire Department and crews from Shelter Island Town Emergency Medical Services (EMS), police said. Police have not said what caused Korwin, an experienced open-water swimmer, to go under. No witnesses have been reported, and he was swimming alone from a private dock, not a lifeguarded beach.
Crews worked the Crescent Beach-North Channel area of Shelter Island Sound and the waterways around it, with police helicopters overhead and multiple marine units on the water. Shelter Island EMS added two ambulances and several volunteers to the marine and air crews.
Divers located Korwin about 3 p.m., and authorities concluded that drowning had killed him. Detectives working alongside the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office regard the death as accidental and have found no indication of criminality, according to Thilberg. The investigation remains open, police said, and the medical examiner will set the official cause and manner of death.
Conditions on the Water That Day
John Kirincic, a master mariner for the Southold Town Police Department’s Marine One, described the weather that day to the Shelter Island Reporter. “There was no fog or anything bad,” he said. The current in that stretch runs strong much of the time, Kirincic noted, because the tide is squeezed through a narrow passage. Preliminary findings placed low tide around the time Korwin entered the water, but investigators have not determined whether tides, currents or other water conditions played a role. Thilberg said authorities do not generally consider the area particularly hazardous for swimmers, adding: “However, these are open waters where tides, currents and boat traffic are always considerations.”
A Fixture on the East End Circuit
A 2010 graduate of Syracuse University, Korwin qualified for Team USA Triathlon in 2012 and raced at the World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand. He also became a Gatorade-sponsored athlete in 2012.
On Long Island, he was a familiar name in endurance sports, piling up podium finishes at races across the East End. His LinkedIn profile listed wins at 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 alike 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, Irving Korwin, a World War II veteran, founded Wideband Coin Jewelry and died in 2020 in Arizona.
Friends launched a GoFundMe for Korwin’s daughters two days after his death. Organized by Josh Grosbard and Jeffrey Witten, the page had raised more than $262,000 from 600 donors as of the morning of Sunday, September 6, against a $300,000 goal, and the largest gift listed was an anonymous $38,000 donation. “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.
Funeral Service
The September 6 funeral was held at Temple Israel, 112 E. 75th St. in Manhattan, with burial to follow at Beth Moses Cemetery in West Babylon, per Star of David Memorial Chapels. The family sat shiva at a private home in Mamaroneck through Wednesday, September 9. His widow, Carly Korwin, said in her eulogy: “This is a nightmare. This is the worst day of my life.”
Korwin is survived by his wife and their two daughters, Sadie, four, and Colette, one. He was a regular presence in the Hamptons, and he and his wife were married on the beach in Bridgehampton.
A small island town set between the North and South forks of eastern Long Island, Shelter Island fills with vacationing families through the summer, and town police and volunteer emergency crews patrol its waters. The missing-swimmer call on September 2 drew departments from across the area before divers ended the search that afternoon.
Police described the drowning as accidental, but the investigation is continuing, and the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office has yet to issue its findings on the official cause and manner of death.
