Sea Swimming Blog #32

Day 71 Sea Swimming.

#32 of the blog.

Due to the timing of the tides (plus the greyness/rain/wind in the skies) I went for a run this morning and decided to do my swim in the afternoon.

I headed to Belcroute as I knew the sea would be pretty choppy at St Aubin and I hadn’t the time to venture much further outside the parish due to the fading light.

Parking on the hill, I thought I was going to be the only person there but as I walked down with my swim and camera gear I saw a fisherman with a couple of rods cast into the water… after checking with him that I had a safe channel to swim in, I slowly started getting ready, wondering what on earth I was going to photograph today.

Shells on the tree… nice… I’ll have that.

Errr… sneaky one of the fisherman…

Then another chap arrived with a kayak.

We had a quick chat, discovered he was called Lee, and after he busted me slyly/not-so-slyly taking a photo of him bringing his kayak on the beach, I asked him if he minded if I took a few photos and he gave me the ok. He seemed a nice, jovial guy, but not wanting to push my luck, I thought I better get in and go for my swim whilst it was still light.

As well as the fading light, the water was cold (as always!) and pretty rough… ‘good’ I thought, another test.

I swam out inline with the large white buoy I usually try to reach when I’m at Belcroute but made sure I was well to the side to avoid the fisherman’s line… the water pushed and pulled at me as the incoming tide came into the beach, creating a fairly big swell which made it slightly tricky to breathe at my regular ‘every-three-stroke’ rhythm but I eventually fell into a rough sync with the waves and just about avoided drinking too much salt water.

Once inline with the buoy, I bobbed about for a bit… simply enjoying the present moment… the contraction of how peaceful it felt in a quite turbulent sea not lost on me… then after a minute or so I began the journey back in to the shallows of the beach with the incoming tide helping to propel me in.

I didn’t really feel like I'd been in that long (and once again thinking about the need to become accustomed to longer spells of cold water exposure) I thought I’d repeat the process - safe in the knowledge that there were at least two other people on the beach and that I was clearly visible with my bright yellow inflatable.

So off I went, ploughing back through the wave and swell until I once again reached the invisible inline marker with the buoy, then headed back in… I nearly went for a 3rd time but saw that Lee was about to make his way into the water with his kayak.

This might be my only chance of some half decent photos I thought.

So I quickly jumped out got dressed and started taking a few photos of Lee in the wild, churning seas, with St Aubin Fort lit up in the background as well as a late visit from Condor helping to add a little scale to the images.

With twilight about to descend into full darkness I packed up and headed home.

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor”

- Franklin D. Roosevelt