Sea Swimming Blog #76

Day 444 Sea Swimming.

#76 of the blog.

Air Temp 4 degrees - Wind W 8mph - Sea Temp 9 degrees

I didn’t get to bed until 1:30am last night.

Not because I was out in the ‘traditional’ sense of the word but because I’d seen on the news that there may have been a chance of seeing and possibly capturing the Northern Lights, and so at the last minute, I popped out to see if there was any sight of them along the north coast.

The stars were pretty impressive for a while (mainly whilst I was driving) but unfortunately it didn’t last long and so I returned empty handed in terms of images but invigorated by the experience of being out in nature, in the beauty of the all-to-brief starry, starry night.

Before bed I quickly checked the forecast and tides and saw that this morning was likely to be pretty nice, so I set the alarm early to see if I could make it for sunrise.

It only seemed like my eyes had been closed for a brief time before the opening chords of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ began ringing out, signalling my early morning alarm.

At first, I really wanted to ignore it but I thought I'd have a quick look out the window and see if it was worth making the effort to get up, out and back on it.

And once again I’m pleased I did.

With any type of photography that relies on atmospheric conditions, you really are beholden to the cards you get dealt by the weather gods.

Sometimes this will work in your favour and other times you’ll be left wishing you hadn’t bothered… but if you don’t try then one thing is for sure… you’ll never know.

Wanting to mix things up in terms of locations, I headed to the jetty near the Gunsite Cafe - with it’s strong leading lines it’s always a pretty safe bet in terms of creating an interesting image so I quickly set up the camera on the tripod and fired off a few shots.

After taking a few images I jumped in, the water was fresh and certainly helped to provide the wake up call I needed… with the sun on the rise and bouncing off the silky ripples, I spent just under 10 minutes bobbing about, alternating between looking out to the sun in the east, out to sea and back inland at Jersey’s coastline in the crisp and calm waters.

Despite my initial reservations about whether I should have bothered getting up at the crack of dawn, it turned out to be one of my favourite dips this year.

“Listen to the wind blow,

Watch the sun rise”

- Fleetwood Mac