Sea Swimming Blog #48

Day 87 Sea Swimming.

#48 of the blog.

Who ordered this wind?!?!?

I got myself down to St Aubin’s for just before 9am and was greeted by a beast of a South Easterly that was whipping its way into shore… great… here we go again!

Thankfully the tide was a little higher today so it wouldn’t quite be the same long walk out to the sea, but with yesterday’s experience still pretty fresh in my mind, there was an element of trepidation.

The sea birds were out in force with gulls and geese gliding on the powerful gusts, flags were flapping around and for a moment I wondered whether I was the only human in the vicinity… would anyone else show up to take on the elements?

Luckily Leila arrived shortly after, followed by Cath and Lynda… a team of likeminded something-or-others had assembled.

Remembering how cold my hands had got yesterday whilst trying to take photos, I took just a few shots then decided to set the camera up and allow it to film without the need of constant supervision - allowing me to get in, swim/dip/dunk, and get out.

It’s weird how the nervousness of the situation dissipates once you make your mind up and begin the journey in… there’s definitely some truth in the idea of just getting on with it rather than over thinking it as once I had taken the final layer off, I began the march down the slip with a skip in my step - fear and anxiety replaced by an excited anticipation.

When you first hit the water there’s a sense of “oh it’s not that bad” (in comparison to the -1 air temperature and force 6 wind) and so I carried on, intent on reaching a greater depth, getting my shoulders under and ‘out of the cold’.

And if you’re going to do that, well, you might as well stick your head in!

I picked the next little incoming wave got my arms set to dive and… ‘splash!’… in we go!

What a rush!

I imagine it’s the adrenaline coursing through your body as your whole being responds to this extreme external environment in a fight/flight, sink/swim kind of way.

Some (most) people reading this who are not into sea swimming are probably thinking “f-that!” but it really does make you feel alive in a way that our comfortable modern lives often shy us away from… to paraphrase a man who I’ve quoted a bit recently, we often choose that path of least resistance… the easy option… but I’ve realised that I feel really unfulfilled by that.

Having said that(!) with the sea temperature around 7.8 degrees today (combined with all the other factors) it wasn’t a day for long distance swims so after a few minutes we decided to make our exit, into our cars, with jam doughnuts kindly provided by Jenny (who was there for moral support) to look forward to.

To finish off today’s post a big thanks to Gallery Magazine for the 3 page feature… as I have said to them in a thank you email, the number of pages/images is great but I’m even more happy with the words - both what was written by Lucy - but even more so the percentage of the word count that was assigned to the safety aspects that need to be considered before dipping your toes into the water.

With that said and to follow on from the feature (which you can read in the images above), if you are interested in exploring the benefits of cold water and fancy a little dose of vitamin sea, check out the guidance provided at www.jerseyseaswims.org/safe-sea-swimming and with those lessons learnt, remember…

“Pushing the wheelbarrow is easy -

thinking about it is the hard part”

- Ajahn Brahm

British-Australian Theravada Buddhist monk