Sea Swimming Blog #57

Day 96 Sea Swimming.

#57 of the blog.

It was time to get together with the Swim Smart team this weekend which meant retiring the gloves and the booties, donning the budgie smugglers and reacquainting myself with the unsaturated cold in it’s rawest mode… without the creature comfort of neoprene that I’d admittedly grown a little too fond of.

We won’t have those luxuries whilst completing our Channel swim as we need to adhere to the same (lack of) equipment and rules as Captain Matthew Webb - the first ever successful crosser of the English Channel back in 1875.

Webb’s record breaking crossing occurred on his second attempt and took him over 21 hours to complete - he ended up zig zagging his way across the 21 mile distance swimming closer to 40 miles as he battled against the currents.

Thankfully the conditions in Rozel harbour were a little less intimidating than that today and Andy, Phil and myself were able to get a decent swim in without too much interference from the tide… there was a little chop but none of the raging white horses seen at St Ouen’s recently - although we did see a beautiful Scewbald horse who appeared equally unsure about the water temperature as we first did.

Phil was in quickly and ploughed on ahead whilst I took a few photos - firstly of the horse - and then of Andy as he eased his way in… there’s something quite reassuring when seeing him (an experienced sea swimmer with multiple solo English Channel, Jersey to France and double round the island swims) still suffer like the rest of us!

With a few photos secured, I quickly got out and put the camera away, before returning to the water and setting our sights on the large white buoy beyond the pier and out to sea.

With the sun illuminating the scene and piercing through the surface of the water it felt like Spring had arrived - although my hands and feet might have disagreed.

Once past the pier and into more open water you could definitely feel the force of the waves a little more and I practised lengthening my stroke as much as possible in order to be able to keep a constant rhythm and pace… better to be graceful rather than wasteful with your energy over these longer distances.

With all three of us having made it successfully to the buoy it was time to head back in… Andy pointing out that now, beyond the secluded pier wall, there was in fact a current that would pull us to the right (as we looked back in at shore) so we were best veering a little to the left and letting the current straighten us up in order to get back to the beach… it is undoubtedly a great help to be in there with someone who has seen it all before and knows how to deal with the conditions that Mother Nature can throw at you whenever she likes.

Back in, we got changed and grabbed a burger from the Hungry Man cafe (bacon cheese burger to be precise) and I was kindly offered a free coffee from a random lady who was stood in the queue - a random act of kindness of which I was most grateful for to help accelerate the warming up of the insides.

We were just about to head off when we noticed a few interesting and familiar looking swimming hats in the distance - about to make their way into the water… it was Lisa and her friends who I had photographed at La Rocque harbour a little while ago.

As I had the camera with me I thought I may as well pass the ‘RAOK’ onto others and so took a few more pics of them before/during and after their Sippers and Dippers Dip.

“Wanting something is not enough.

You must hunger for it.

Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order

to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way”

- Les Brown