Sea Swimming Blog #37

Day 76 Sea Swimming.

#37 of the blog.

I met up with the Salty Sea PUPS at Anneport at 9:30am this morning.

As I was driving down the hill I wondered whether I could park on the slip… the next wave that I saw came over the wall so I thought best not.

I parked up across the road and started getting ready… once the boys arrive there’s not usually much time for hanging around so you’ve got to be ready to go.

This always makes it a bit of a challenge to get decent photos as half my attention is focussed on sorting myself out… and with only 50% attention focussed on photography it’s easy to miss stuff or not be in the right place at the right time.

No matter, at least I’ll get one of us all getting in…

2 seconds later Will was off by himself entering the water… followed by Ben… then Oonagh… guess not then!

I took a couple but there’s only so many shots of peoples backs that are worth snapping so I put the camera away and headed in.

As much as I want to shoot cool photos, wanting to get in the sea myself means I’m not always getting the best ones I could… it’s a bit different when I’m there specifically to take photos for another group as I’ll do whatever it takes to get the images I need.

The flip side is also true… when I’m worrying about taking photos I’m not the first in the water and I’m not the last out.

Something probably has to give and as the training ramps up I think I already know which one it’ll have to be.

Having quickly swam out and caught up with the other guys, Jason, Sam and myself swam out left across the bay - not getting too close to the rocks as the sea was fairly rough and the visibility underwater was pretty shocking so none of us fancied getting smashed by the waves into them… we got within about 15-20 metres of the coastline then turned around and covered the entirety of the bay back the other way… again, not getting too close to the coastline once we got to the other side (according to Sam’s watch that’s a distance of approx 600 metres).

“Right”, I thought, “I’ll make sure I get a team shot of everyone getting out the water” so off I swam ahead of the others to try to get back to our base first.

I got halfway back then realised Ben and Will were already out… never mind… maybe next time!

Once we were all out we had a quick beach clean promoted by Oonagh - it’s both amazing and sad how much stuff is left down the beach.

After a quick chat and a few chocolate biscuits Sam took a few photos of me with my Salty Sea PUPS t-shirt (which Will had done the awesome design for) and I also got given a sweet Bouley Bay inspired print by Ben along with a couple of wicked little ‘zines’, sketch tributes to ‘Havre des Pas’ and another titled ‘7 Bays A Week’.

It’s great to see how the sea has prompted both an increase in our physical & mental wellbeing as well as our creative juices.

Let’s keep it flowing.

“Everyone has got creativity.

Dive within to the infinite ocean of creativity”

- David Lynch