Big seas and a fast current

No swims in Sydney with heavy seas, but Pier to Perignon went ahead, as did Sandridge-Williamstown in Victoria, and Rottnest in the West, where we were. Two reports on oceanswims.com now on the Pier to Perignon, one of our fave swims, one of which is rather critical.

At Rottnest, conditions weren't ideal but they weren't terrible, either. But as usually applies, the days either side of the swim were close to perfect. Tweetybirds will file a report in due course.

Pity about Sydney, but what can you do when you swim in the ocean. Those who feel worst about this are the awgeenizing clubs themselves, who build up to their one day of the year only to have it snatched from their grasp. Be understanding, please: clubs have considerable expense in gettng to swim day, and that's why general practice is that there are no refunds in the case of cancellation.

Bondi is not cancelled, however: it's postponed, with the postponement date yet to be confirmed. Keep your eye on oceanswims.com for the new date.

Read our reports and tell us what you think...

Give me a break! Plea from ordinary mug

In the hope that one day an ordinary mug like myself could win something other than a lucky dip, how about a real handicap calculation which doesn’t only adjust for age and gender, but also ability?

I originally thought about this years ago and may have even written about it in your old feedback columns. I thought it might be time to revisit and develop something.
 
Thinking back to the Dezzie idea from a while ago where times were compared to the event winner, there are a number of anomalies:

1. Was the winner be particularly fast/slow? Was it an Olympic gold-medal standard or just a Commonwealth Games gold medal standard?
2. Were the conditions that the winner swam in significantly different from the rest of the field? This could make your Dezzie look better or worse, and you don't have any  idea if you have improved against the field based on your previous efforts.
3. On longer swims, the winner is always significantly faster than those finishing further back in the pack, probably because they’re toiling for a much shorter period.  This gives you a worse than expected Dezzie.

So, I reckon we need to come up with a way to adjust for these problems and develop a world-first oceanswimming handicap system.
 
Where to start???  I’m not a golfer, but, in golf, payers of all abilities are rated and there are similar problems and a well-developed handicapping system.  So, I did some golf reading:

• Different courses are assigned course ratings and slope ratings. The course rating is how difficult a course will be for the scratch golfers and the slope rating adjusts according to how difficult the course is for those further back in the pack.
• Scratch golfers are those who’d score “Par” when playing to their ability on a course, so they’re not necessarily the pros, just very good golfers. It seems there are teams of scratch golfers who visit different courses, play them and rate them.
• In Australia, there’s even a daily scratch rating to adjust for conditions, but that’s really getting complicated.  Some interesting reading... click here and here

In oceanswimming, having a daily scratch rating may be impractical, so to get started, I thought we should find the “scratch” swimmer in each race and use their time as the basis for the handicapping. My thought was that the swimmer finishing 12.5% of the way through the field in each swim could be the one who provides the time base for the handicapping. So, if there were 504 people racing, then the time of person who finishes 63rd is the course rating time. I came up with this a while ago and can’t quite remember where it came from. I think it was from the now defunct Australian Golf’s CCR (Calculated Course Rating) which was determined by taking the 15th percentile score (ie assuming that 15% of players played to their mark or better, with 85% worse). Not exactly the same concept, but something to work from.

The next step would be to compare each swimmer’s “Event Handicap” (for the swim just completed) with their “Handicap average” taken from their last five swims. The swimmer with the highest “Event performance compared to Handicap average” (the greatest improver in the particular swim) would be the week’s handicap winner. The idea is that the handicap award would be restricted to those swimmers who completed at least five swims over the previous 12 months.

Summary of steps

1. Calculate finishing time for the placegetter who finished 12.5% of the way through the field (our scratch swimmer)
2. Calculate each swimmer’s time compared to the scratch swimmer. This is the “Event handicap” time for each swimmer.
3. Calculate each swimmer’s “Event performance”. This is their event handicap compared to their average handicap from their last five swims.
4. The swimmer with the best “Event performance” is the handicap winner.

(Rob attached a spreadsheet with his results since 2004 showing this event performance handicap system: os.c)
 
With all the data (oceanswims.com) must have, this, or something even better, must be achievable. Anyway, I’m not a statistician, or a great mathematician, just a guy who, even after eight years and 70-odd swims, is still trying to figure how he’s going in this oceanswimming caper.

Anyway, it would be interesting for ideas/feedback from your resident stats guru oceanswimmers.

Rob Salomon

Magic at Malabar, Half Moon in Vic, full moons at Cobblers

How do we rise on a Sundee morn to find cloud covering the blue bits in the sky? Quite often. But how often do we then get to the beach to find the sun burn off the cloud and the glory of a Sydney summer emerge? Almost as often. So it was today at Malabar, with Murray Rose's Malabar Magic. Organiser Rob Lloyd remarked during a remembrance ceremony for Murray that he was there, watching down on us. And so he might have been, using his sway with whoever might be upstairs, if anyone -- it might just be a rag-tag mob of spirits just like all of us with no-one in charge -- to give us a glorious day.

And it was a glorious day. The beauty of Malabar is that it's a terrific beach for new swimmers to get a feel for the water. There's no break, it's generally straight into swimmable water, and it's wide, flat, open and gentle. There was a bit of roll as the peloton moved seawards, but what do you expect? Let's hope the organisers shift the start/finish away from those rocks next time. It was perilous.

A report in The Sydney Morning Herald from Cobblers Beach, where the newd swim took place, said it was a lovely day enjoyed by all, whilst other reports were critical: "...the swim organisation was atrocious," tweeted Wett One Lindy Woodrow. No detail yet, but perhaps that will emerge from Murray Cox, who paddled over to Cobblers with his Go-Pro to video the swim. We're looking forward to Murray's report.

Half Moon Bay, the Cerberus swim, in Port Phillip Bay on Sat'dee, had a very nice day, too, according to our entrist, @KAOSVIC. Rockingham and Mandurah ran in the West, Auckland in NZ, Henley in SA and Mooloolaba in Queensland... What did you think? Click the Comments link below to tell us...

Lake Bondi at its best, until the breeze cooms in

Lovely day at Lake Bondi, showing itself at its best other than that some could have done with a bit more swell. It was warm, but not hot, with a gentle, refreshing breeze blowing from the nor'-east. Good numbers for this swim, too: 1,235 online entries, up from 1,039 the previous season. Distances as measured by the os.c GPS-in-a-plastic-bag were 1.27km for the shorter swim, and 1.91km for the longer.

There was hardly any swell at the nor'-eastern end of Bondi Beach -- North Bondi itself faces almost due south -- and that is what makes this sport such a good ocean swim venue. All those CanTooers who got crunched in the break at Palm Beach two weeks earlier can have had no complaints this time, as there was virtually no shore break through which to crash this time. Looking sarf, there was swell. Indeed, swimmers reported that, past Ben Buckler, around the first turning booee, things began to get bumpy. That's because the swell out there was from the nor'-east, and it didn't wrap into the northern corner, but it did give swimmers a push along the outer reach towards Mackenzies Point.

Good timing, too: as the final mug swimmers schlepped into North Bondi at the end of the 2km, the southerly hit. A brisk, trenchant breeze, cutting up the water's surface and, over time, kicking up some windswell in the northern corner which, as the tide dropped, created that beach break that we'd lacked earlier. We'd been planning to make our return to the sea after a break of more than three months, but when that southerly blew in, we decided to leave it until next week at Malabar.

A couple of unfortunates were stung (blueys, but you didn't need us to tell you that), but all in all, they reported, conditions were triffic.



It made us wonder, though, to see a pod of punters pulling on wetties in this weather. We tweeted the pic, only to have (apparently) one of them, Jeff Sapier (who tweets as @getmeabucket), respond: "These events are great for triathlon training, happy to support other surf clubs if you don't like it". We understand Jeff's point. It's a comment on triathlon, though, that wetties are such an established element of the gear that training for one of these events ipso facto means swimming in a wettie. Surely they hold triathlons in warm water sometimes, and surely this requires practice, too. The water was warm at North Bondi today, and so was the sun. Swimming in a wettie raises OH&S issues, also, such as hydration. Another twit, Tamera Lang (@discokitkat), responded: "This makes it awfully tempting to turn up to a tri and do the 'run' in roller skates and still claim I finished the event".

We love the debate; the to-ing and fro-ing.

The only negative we heard was that the swim was crowded with many "newer" swimmers (read, CanTooers, according to more established swimmers), still apparently coming to terms with the corollaries of breaststroke, particularly around booees. CanTooers are a positive, actually, with so many coming into our sport through this admirable charity organisation. There's a lovely spirit about the CanTooers, such a warm, positive sense of personal achievement. Not all skills are learnt upfront.

One other carp was that, yet again, and at the last minute, the starter combined the final wave, the Codgers, with the Back of the Packers. Some Codgers don't like this.

It was tweeted afterwards, too, that some names were missing from the results. If you're not there, send us an email and we'll pass it on to the timers... click here

In Victoria, it was the weekend of The Bloody Big Swim, 10km from Frankston to Mornington. And, in Devonport, 40kmh winds forced the courses to be reset into triangles inside sheltered waters. How lucky that they had those sheltered waters offering such ready succour!

But tell us about your swim(s) this weekend... click the Comments link below...

Swims in many weathers

Glistening Dave attended Mona Vale, but didn't swim.

A varied weekend for ocean swimming around Stra'a, with reports from Dromana in Victoria on Sat'dee of glorious weather, contrasted with postponement of Caves Beach in NSW due to forecast heavy seas, and the Cole Classic going ahead on its permanently, it seems, modified course in and out of Shelly Beach.

There were classics in South Australia, at Brighton, and Cott-Swanny in Perth. How did they go?

Back to NSW's only swim, the Cole Classic, until recently the season standard bearer in the ocean swimming growth state. Judging by the times, the courses were long: the winner of the 1km did the swim in 13:38, which would put the course at 1.2-1.3km, while the winner of the 2km did 25:18, again a long course for that time, probably around 2.3-2.4km. We heard that the Cole re-positioned marker buoys part way through the 2km event, which would render time comparisons difficult, to say the least. Is this true? Does anyone know for sure?

Numbers were down at the Cole, but that's hardly surprising, given the weather. They were lucky to get their swims in, which ran despite a Beachwatch warning that Shelly Beach was likely to be polluted after the heavy rain of the past few days.

The 1km at the Cole again was bigger than the 2km, with 1,520 finishers against 1,319 in the 2km. Even judging by entrants, rather than finishers, numbers were down at 3,872, down from 4,508 last year. Perhaps the market is commenting on the Cole's entry fees.

These graphs are interesting -

This first graph (left) shows the trend of Cole entrants over the years since 2009 when Fairfax Meeja took over the event from the Cole family. There was strong growth at the outset, reflecting the meeja push behind it. But then entries tapered off.

The second graph shows the trend in Cole finishers over the same years.

Two things stand out: one is the drop off in finishers in the last two years (mirroring the drop-off in entries); the other is the 1km event overtaking the 2km as the event's marquee swim.

There are two overall trends we've noticed in the sport in the last couple of seasons. One is that the growth in the sport is in the shorter distance swims: new swimmers are coming into shorter events, which are surging in numbers in comparison with established, longer events. The other trend is resistance to large events with high price tags. And they hardly come higher than the Cole Classic. Only Byron Bay at $65 ranks with the Cole, which also charged $65 for their 2km swim after their earlybird period closed.

Some swims in Victoria, particularly, charge hefty amounts, too, but they usually come with event shirts which really are souvenirs. Does Byron still give a shirt with swim entry? We're not sure.

Anyway, how did you swim, wherever it was?

In defence of drafting

Apart from open water swimming, drafting is considered a legitimate tactic in many sports, including cycling, running, speed skating, cross-country skiing, kayaking, horse racing, and motor sports. Studies in several of these sports have proven its efficacy and have looked at the reasons for the energy savings achieved by drafting and the relative positions between competitors that provide the best place to draft.

Studies of swimmers have shown that drafting reduces the metabolic cost of swimming by between 11-38%. One study of swimmers (Bassett et al, 1991) conducted over 450 metres at 95% of maximum speed found that drafting reduced oxygen consumption by 8%, blood lactate by 33%, and perceived exertion by 21%. Factors such as swimming speed, body shape, direction of the current, water viscosity, distance between and relative position of the swimmers, will all alter the magnitude of the advantage.

Perhaps open water swimming’s greatest asset is that it is much more interesting than swimming in a pool. There are so many variables in an open water race that can influence the result, especially in ocean swims. A competitor’s ability to select an advantageous position at the start, to choose the best route through the shore break, to spot a rip and take advantage of it, to keep calm in a pack, to draft effectively, to use the direction of the prevailing current to time a ‘surge’, to round a buoy efficiently, and to ride a wave into shore -- all of these require knowledge that might allow an astute competitor to outperform a faster swimmer. Good open water coaches try to impart this knowledge to their charges.

It is hypocritical, on the one hand, to laud a swimmer for being clever enough to utilise a rip, yet on the other hand describe someone who has utilised a draft as “dishonest”, “disrespectful”, or “bludging on someone else’s efforts”. Both tactics are ‘part of the game’; neither are cheating.

Part of the problem is a misconception that, if a person drafts off a competitor, the lead swimmer has to work harder than if swimming solo. The erroneous rationale behind this is that the lead swimmer effectively has to tow those drafting like a truck and its trailers.

In fact, drafting works by utilising the reduced drag forces encountered when swimming in the leader’s slipstream. The disruption of these drag forces by the leader occurs irrespective of whether anyone is drafting behind them, so the energy cost to the lead swimmer is no greater than if the leader was swimming solo.

Ocean swimming should be playing a greater role in developing Australia’s young open water swimmers. The huge number of exciting ocean races scheduled each summer ought to provide an opportunity for young distance swimmers to practice their open water skills, and to receive rewards for the countless hours of hard training needed to be a distance swimmer. But if this is to develop further, Australian ocean swimming has to conform to the open water rules and codes of conduct that are accepted world-wide, and that includes acceptance of drafting as a part of the sport.

Ken Thorley

Frenetic weekend celebrating Stra'a

It is indeed the start of a frenetic weekend of ocean swimming celebrations of Stra'a. Sydney, Newcastle, Mt Martha, Williamstown, Kingston Beach, WScarborough, Wollongong and Henley-Grange. So many swims, so little time...

Tell us how you went. What was good about your swim; what was not so good. In Sydney Harbour, for example, they looked like having a major problem with results when bunches of swimmers, confused, went the wrong way near the end and cut their course short, whilst other swimmers did the entire course. One swimmer reported her wave had been led in the wrong direction by the water safety, and she'd remonstrated with them, but to no avail.

You must have your own stories. Hit the comment button and tell us all...

Sad clash of two good 'uns

Two good swims clashed today in Sydney. Avalon and North Bondi both are very good events. At least with North Bondi, it's reprised in February, which is why we went today to Avalon, which is once a year. We'll be at North Bondi next time.

The clash didn't favour Avalon, which suffered drop in entries, whilst North Bondi experienced a healthy increase on last year, albeit off earlier peaks, at least in terms of online entries. These two swims used to run on the same day regularly, but a few years back, January had five Sundays and they could separate. Not so this year, particularly now that Newport has established itself on the first Sundee in January on the Northern Beaches. Avalon has nowhere else to go.

That said, conditions were superb at both locations: Avalon had swell enough to make it interesting, but it was breaking into a high tide, so the swell was boisterous but forgiving, apart from a nasty little dump right on the shore. North Bondi is usually gently, in the corner at the northern end of Bondi beach. The water was warm, relatively clear and, very importantly these days, bluey-free.

Tell us about your swim.. click the comments button below...

Lovely morn for a swim

Looked like a lovely morning for a swim, both in Newcastle, where the mob swam Nobbys to Newcastle, and in Sydney, where they swam through Cabbage Tree Bay at Manly. Was it noice at Bicton, too? We couldn't be there in person, although we had entrists in both events.

Where did you swim and how was it?

The curse of the monolateral breather

Perhaps it was because, for one of our first times, we were  mingling with the mob at the finish as a spectator rather than a swimmer, but we have never heard before so many punters whingeing about swallowing gobsful of sea water as we heard post the Bilgola Ocean Swim.

It was a blustery, bumpy day, of course. Glorious at the outset, the southerly blew through perhaps an hour prior to swim start, turning Billie beach into a sand-blasting cell. We were sitting under the registration tent. By the time we stood up, we had more sand on our heads than we had underfoot.

Out to sea, you couldn't see the booees, despite Billie organisers' best attempts. They are the masters of attaching helium balloons to the booees. The idea is that the helium balloons stand up above the booee, making the marker much easier to spot, particularly in a swell. On Sundee, however, the wind was so fierce that the helium balloons spent most of the time "sitting" on the surface of the sea. Every now and again, but, they'd bob up, just long enough to be of use to an otherwise hopelessly lost peloton. Which was just as well because you really couldn't see the booees otherwise. Not the organisers' fault, of course. They did their best. It was one of the most blustery southerly changes that we've witnessed blow through to change the personality of an ocean swim.

We're reminded of Bondi-Bronte last year - when, from our positions at the top of the park, with our cobber, Murray Cox, we watched the change come through like a curtain descending on the first act. Like South Curl Curl at the end of last season, when the change blew through as the starting waves left the beach. The swim to Freshie was essentially one reach, head first into the southerly. It was one of those swims in which we spent more time going up and down than forwards, or even backwards.

Billie was different: it was a circuit swim off the beach, so roughly half the legs would be into the southerly one way or another, whilst the other half - there were six reaches - were in some way with it, or at least across it. Organiser Cap'n Foran wisely changed the direction of the swim prior to the start, sending the mugs off anti-clockwise rather than the customary clockwise. This made the swim a little better, but perhaps not much. Mind you, we wouldn't know. We weren't out there. It was very, very blowy, and very, very bumpy. In such conditions, it's difficult to settle into a rhythm; difficult to get more than one decent stroke in succession. Into the southerly, it's just hard. The secret is to put your head down, lengthen and slow your stroke, and optimise your streamline. This will allow you to finish your stroke with an oomph and give you some push through the onrushing swell and chop until you deliver further momentum with your next grab. The optimal streamline means you will minimize the resistance through the water.

Sideways, it's different. A good streamline still will stand you in good stead, but the swell and the chop are coming at you from side-on. The difficulty then becomes one of getting clear air, as much air as you can to allow you to keep that long, slow stroke going. As soon as your air flow stops, your rhythm will stop, and so will your forward momentum.

The problem is, of course, that most punters breathe only one side, and if that side also happens to be the side from which the weather is attacking them, then every time they roll to breathe, with every breath they take, they'll take in an amount of sea water.

The causal problem is that most punters never were taught to swim proper as urchins, so they were never taught to breathe bilaterally.

Every decent swimmer should be able to breathe bilaterally: to breathe both sides. This is not to say that you should always breathe bilaterally: 3-stroke breathing, say, alternating your breath side to side. This also helps tremendously with your line. Bilateral breathing helps to neutralise your stroke defects: if you pull one way by breathing one way, then bilateral breathing will neutralise, or at least offset the damage. Interestingly, for us, anyway, many, if not most punters have different strokes according to which way they're breathing. And which arm is pulling through. For example, our right arm stroke is different when we're breathing right to when we're breathing left. It's probably true that we have four different strokes: one for pulling and breathing right, one for pulling right, breathing left, etc, etc. We know we have these different strokes, and we know that we pull to the left with some of them - ie go off course to the left - and we know we pull to the right with others. But breathing bilaterally at least will offset the damage.

But, as we say, it doesn't mean that you should breathe three-stroke or five-stroke. It means that you should be able to breathe both ways so that you have the choice. Our late mentor, Coach Sandra, once told us: "Breathe bilaterally, but breathe one way going up the pool, the other way coming back". The reason for this is that it allows us to breathe 2-stroke, which means we get more air. Some mugs need more air. We're one of them. So we generally breathe right heading up the pool, and breathe left coming back. (It also means that we always breathe away from Coach David, but that's so that Coach David can't remonstrate with us and get us to stop for a good telling off if he reckons we're doing the wrong thing. We don't like eyeballing the coach whilst we're swimming.)

But, the important thing is that we do breathe bilaterally, so in situations such as we witnessed at Billie on Sundee, we then have the choice whether to breathe into the wind and the chop - thus to risk the gobsful of water with each stroke - or to breathe away from the wind and the chop, allowing us clearer air.

It wasn't always so. We traditionally were left breathers. It wasn't until we were in our late 30s that we taught ourselves also to breathe right. It took some time, but we managed it. Indeed, every thing you try to do better and differently takes time, particularly when you're an old fart. You must simply persist. Us old farts are supposed to have a better perspective on life because we've been around longer, so we should be able to apply that longer term perspective to things such as stroke changes. Not to do so simply is lazy, physically and intellectually.

So how do we learn to breathe to an unfamiliar, unnatural side? Now, there's the question.

Some advice, we can give. When you swim to train, you have the opportunity  to work on your streamline. One of the good ways to do this - apart from doing torpedoes out from the wall - is to swim catch-up, or three-quarter catch-up, at least. It's not hard. It's all in the mind. Most people hate catch-up because they think they're going to sink. That's why they pull through early. But try this: when you're swimming along, no pressure, just you in the pool, try to swim as absolutely slowly as you can. And leave that leading arm (the one that's out in front waiting to pull through) out there just that little bit longer. One way to do that is to that is to stretch it out, deliberately, rather than pulling through as you normally would. Keep your head and neck loose, too, so that they follow the natural movement of the body. As you stretch your leading arm, a natural function also is to allow your corresponding hip - right arm leading, right hip - to drop just that little bit. Almost imperceptibly. That hip drop, however, is a key part of your rotation. As you drop your hip, your body, from the hips, will rotate, also almost imperceptibly. That rotation will bring your head around, very slightly, but enough to allow you, with your forward momentum, to take a breath. Breathing should not be a matter of throwing your head around - throwing your head around destroys your streamline - rather it should be a matter of your head rolling naturally with your body. Have a look at the good swimmers: when they breathe, their mouths actually are below the water line, but their forward momentum means the water rushes past their mouth, not into it, allowing them to breathe whilst not disrupting their streamline.

This will be easier on your natural breathing side. But stay relaxed; leave your body as loose and as supple as it can be; try very hard to swim as slowly as you can. And try that with your non-natural breathing side, too. Leave the leading hand out there, drop the hip, ever so slightly, as you stretch, allow the head to roll as your hip drops and your body rotates, and suck in that air from your unnatural side, just as you did on your dominant side. Try it with fins, if you really can't get your head around it at the start, then gradually lose the fins.

You'll have to keep at it until it starts to feel natural. But you can teach yourself to breathe bilaterally, and breathing bilaterally will help you to escape that horrible curse of the monolateral breather.

Another grey, bumpy day at Bondi-Bronte

We didn't do Bondi-Bronte today, so we can't tell you about it. We did... rather, we attended North Curl Curl on Sat'dee, although we didn't do it, either. North Curly has become a bit of a favourite for several reasons, but the overwhelming one in 2012 was that, not being in a position to swim, we could prop ourselves up at a pitcher window at the front of the surf club at North Curly and supervise proceedings, laid out before us. It's a lovely spot there, at which supportive punters were able to ferry us cuppas, bacon and egg rolls, watermelon, even a beer, had we wanted one, which we didn't. We'll mount a separate report on North Curly later on Mondee.

In the meantime, Bondi-Bronte...

A couple of generous punters sent us pitchers, and thank you for that. We couldn't do this without support like that. And some sent us whinges about the fairness of allowing wetties in 19-20 deg water. We've said our bit on this event's wettie policy, which we reckon is silly, but at least it was clear and displayed prominently on the event's website well before entries closed, so everyone who entered should have done so in full knowledge of what that policy was.

It certainly looked like a bumpy, grey day, which we've come to associate with the Bondi-Bronte swim. Any less-than-glorious weather means you're probably heading into a sou'-easter around Mackenzies Point, which they were today, apparently. Was it really cold? Our cobber, Murray Cox, who took the pic at top, told us: "Really a near perfect ocean swim, warm and windy, a challenging chop and swell most of the way, a calm entry to Bronte..."

Plenty of you lot did Bondi-Bronte, so please tell us all about it... What did you like, what did you dislike. Click the comment button below...

Glenn Muir called us via Skype a couple of weeks back from Cyprus, where he'd been enjoying long, solo swims along the coast. Earlier, Glenn had been doing the same in Crete. Lucky lad. He arrived back in Stra'a yesterday, and headed straight down to Bondi, from where the water safety chaps at Bronte found him bobbing around in the break off Bronte. He'd have made it anyway, lads... Well, he did make it, but this pic makes it look as if they had to pull him out, which we're sure they didn't.

Lovely day, but bludgers were afoot

We weren't there, but we hear the Island Challenge at Coogee was a lovely day, but we expected it would be. From our bolthole, cosseted in an oasis of greenery in Sydney's inner east, gaoled, we could see the sky, we could feel the breeze, and we could smell the late spring air. Typical Coogee, we thought. And from all accounts, it was.

Our cobber, Murray Cox, looking for something of a flagship nature to do this season, is to be the male lead in a Tropfest movie about insomnia. Murray was at Coogee early -- he couldn't sleep -- and sent us a few pics of punters on the beach. We have no idea whom these punters are -- apart from  one of them -- but, since Murray was kind enough to send them to us, we feel we should acknowledge and use them. As for Murray's movie, Insomnia, his producer/director will be appealing very soon for supporters -- $10 a pop will get your name in the credits, for example -- so we'll let you know and you, too, can become a movie mogul. The bottom line is, if they don't get enough supporters, they won't make the movie, which is a bit extreme, we'd have thought.

Anyway, most of the accounts we heard from Coogee were positive of a smoothly run, friendly event. The only slightly negative bit of feedback -- apart from the heel wafting of one recidivist of which we heard -- was of the presos conducted in the surf club. One punter told us they were terrific, whilst another told us they weren't. We have to say, any presos conducted inside a surf club immediately exclude the bulk of the entrants, who don't feel able, for one reason or another, to go inside just in case they win a random draw.

Speaking of heel wafting, Mrs Sparkle was the victim of one, but she also tells us she swam past another woman heel wafting on some bloke, who seemed to have his heels painted with bright stripes, targets, perhaps, so she could find him?

We've said it before, and we shall keep saying it: heel-wafting -- drafting -- is cheating; it's bludging. There is only one reason to draft, and that is to get around the course under someone else's steam. The leader effectively drags the heel-wafter along behind. There's only one person really trying: the leader. The heel-wafter is bludging, using the lead swimmer's effort to get much of their speed. They do it in triathlon, but they're an eccentric bunch in that sport, spending thousands just to be a part of it in the first place. They do it in elite open water swimming, but they also generally take turns leading at the elite level, so that everyone does their bit, much like cyclistes.

Genuine, honest ocean swimmers don't draft; they don't bludge on their comrades; they don't steal someone else's effort.

Otherwise, we're told, Coogee was a lovely day. We heard noice reports from the Killer Swim in Mur'bah, too, and from Redcliffe, where the Great Australian Swim Series had another outing. Whom of you swam where? Tell us abart it...

Response to gratuitous comments

We're not big ones for being sucked into a debate with "Anonymous", and it's always disappointing when punters submit blobs to us which don't include their names. Why should we have to say, "If you're game enough to express an opinion, then you should be game enough -- and decent enough -- to put your name to it"?

The blob below came in a couple of days back. We posted it as is, but overnight it nagged at us. Our idea originally was to respond to it ourselves, to leave our own comment. But the problem with that is that it loses context. We decided instead to run it as "Anonymous" submitted it, but in a way that allows us to set its context. Unfair? Well, it's our blob, as Kerry Packer would have said, and did.

Here's the original blob -

There doesn't seem to be anywhere sensible to put a general comment for this blog - but in case this gets through to the esteemed keepers of the keys, here are a couple of gratuitous remarks:
1. All those surveys.
I've filled out a lot of response forms for you, and sometimes made the effort to add comments, not just give you numbers. Has anything happened with that data? Was there much difference between swims on the dimensions you assessed? What did people put in the suggestion box? Were there any common themes? It'd be really great to know - even if it's not all beautifully statistically crunched.
2. Bondi to Bronte.
I appreciate your site a lot. I also love the B2B. Your entry "privately run event for Bronte SLSC" seems a bit pointed. How are the other events not 'privately run'? Is there any difference between the way Bronte runs this event to the way other SLSCs run theirs? It's a really fantastic and iconic swim. Is there a reason for not at least putting a link to their site? Or providing some details of the swim? I am sorry if I am wide of the mark, but it does appear a bit churlish or spiteful. Which is a shame for a site that's generally way above any suggestion of pettiness.
best wishes for the season.

Best wishes to you, too, Anonymous. We appreciate your positive, constructive and generous comments, and we even appreciate your negative comments as part of the overall yarn.

To respond to your points:

1. The surveys

We, too, feel guilty -- we feel guilty about everything, although we were raised Anglicans -- that we haven't reported to you comprehensively on the results of those post-swim surveys from last season. We did report progressively in our weekly email newsletters as the season went on, of course. Perhaps Anonymous doesn't see these. The surveys were a fascinating exercise and we gathered considerable data on individual swims. All winter, we planned to write a report bringing all that data together. But we travelled much in Concord… er, around swim spots over winter, and we haven't yet managed to get to it. We apologise. But we will. We know the most important point is not our failure to divulge the information gathered; it's our failure to honour our duty to all you mugs who filled in those surveys. It's coming. We're about to have a couple of weeks of relative inactivity, and it's one of the things we're planning to get to then.

2. Bondi-Bronte

This event is described as being privately run because it is. Bronte SLSC uses a private organiser to run its swim. We know of no other surf life saving club which does this, although two other clubs last season used the same private organiser: Coogee, which retook control of their swims later in the season, and Tama-Cloey, which is not running this season. A few years back, Manly used Craig Riddington's company to revamp their swim, but they, too, took the event back after a couple of years. (That said, Riddington and his business partner, Scott Wood, both Manly members, made some excellent changes to revamp that swim.) Many surf clubs have benefited enormously from an influx of new, mature members in recent years, many of them driven by initial exposure to the movement through ocean swimming. It's ironic, however, that many of these members are time poor: city workers, professionals, people running their own businesses. So many numbers don't necessarily equal many new members with the time to devote to running an ocean swim for their club. It's difficult for the clubs, and it's one of the reasons why some of them have turned to private organisers. Given the amount, whatever it is, that surf clubs might pay private organisers, however, swimmers are entitled to wonder how much the club needs the money from their fundraising, and how much of their entry fees goes to the club that's the cause of the fundraising.

Links to events

On the point about links to the Bondi-Bronte website, we have a policy, stated clearly on our website (see swims/event services), that...

oceanswims.com cannot provide links to (NSW or Queensland) events which take on-line entries through 3rd parties.

oceanswims.com also cannot provide links to private (commercial) events unless they take Featured Swim status.

We won't provide links to events that use 3rd parties -- groups outside the sport -- for online entries because we won't support the leeching of funds to outside groups whose only interest is in taking the sport's revenue. We earn little enough revenue ourselves from our activities within the sport; we're certainly not going to assist outside groups to leech that revenue. One of the things of which we're proud is that, while providing online entry services to swims, we also bring swimmers to those swims. Outside groups don't do that.

(We draw a distinction between NSW and Queensland events, on the one hand, and those in other parts of Stra'a, on the other hand, because NSW and Queensland are our primary areas of commercial activity, where we have worked most to build the sport. Swims in other states generally had relationships extant when we came along. We have not been commercially active in those states, and we're not about to take such a position in relation to them. It would be nice if swims in other states decided to use our services, and we are working towards that.)

With regard to the second policy, on links to privately organised swims, we reckon that, if an event is privately organised, and if they want us to support them to make their profits, then a private/commercial swim should pay for that support. Bondi-Bronte falls into a grey category: it's run by a commercial organisation in the name of a surf club, and that's why we use that descriptor on our calendar. Swimmers have a right to know: When you enter an event that uses a private organiser, you're not just supporting the club, worthy as it is, you're also supporting its commercial organiser. In Bronte's case, the irony is that, while the club uses a commercial organiser, the club still provides the water safety and race day volunteers.

Bondi-Bronte runs over a magnificent course. Before Bronte ran its first swim, the original organiser, the then club president, Graham Ford, phoned us to discuss the proposed event. Graham said they planned to run a swim inside the bay between Bronte and Tamarama. We responded, "If (Bronte is) going to run a swim, you must go around Mackenzies Point". That was the obvious course, we reckoned. Someone had to do it. Ford took that advice, and the iconic event we have today is the result. The swim's first outing drew around 850 swimmers, for goodness sake. That's all about the course itself.

Open slather on wetties 

Now, don't get us started on Bondi-Bronte's wetsuit policy... It offers three options for different wettie stati: if the water temp is greater than 20C and the air temp is over 25C (no wettie allowed), if the water is warmer than 20C but the air is less than 25C (wetties allowed), and if the water is cooler than 20C and the air cooler than 25C (wetties allowed). You'll notice that the 2nd and 3rd options produce the same result.

The event's website says that, in such circumstances:

Any type of wetsuit or speed suit is approved in all categories and WILL qualify for age group prizes.

One swimmer pointed out to us that the mean maximum temperature in December in Sydney is 25.1C, so there's a very strong chance that that condition will be met and it will be open slather on wetties. Some people feel the cold, of course, and they should always be allowed to wear a wettie if they wish. But wetties should never be allowed in open company in a NSW swim. They should have their own divisions.

North Bondi's wettie policy is far more sensible: if the water is below 18 deg C on swim day, as measured by Bondi lifeguards, then you can wear a wettie. Otherwise, you're Back of the Pack or you're newd. Full Spot! (Thanks to Moose Moore for that last witticism.)

os.c

Wussie at Wamberal

Great day at Wamberal (Forresters Beach). Disappointing no ocean swim at Forries but Wamberal Lagoon swim was far better than expected.

No encounters with eels only some weed when my tow lead me off course. Just returned from holiday where I did a swim in the warm Mediterranean 29 degrees water and air same temperature. Not acclimatised to the cold waters. I was a wise woosie old lady and wore a wet suit. Well done to all who braved the cold water.

GPS showed 1.65 kms for short and 2.54 for long swims.

Great collecting hand carved wooden awards. They work well as bookends.

Rozanne Green

Tough day at Northcliffe

Northcliffe’s Dolphin Ocean Classic day is designed to help get ready for the surf lifesaving season, especially the Coolangatta Gold and the Kellogg’s series. So there’s lots of people around who’ve been on TV. There are five and 10km races for boards and skis – and for fine ocean swimmers, a 1km swim.

Which for the first time, is the first leg of the os.com Fine Ocean Swimmers series. But it seems most people have missed the opportunity to grab early points. Except Killer, who chanced his arm on a limited preparation to pull off third place in the over 50s narrowly in front of fellow Tweed River swim organiser Marc Vining (without putting the shoulder in). A few years ago, Killer announced proudly he felt he had arrived as an ocean swimmer because someone had dragged off him. Now he has the final brick in the wall ‑ a podium finish. I imagine his hard-won drink bottle prize is going straight to the pool room.

And it was a tough day despite a relatively short course by ocean swimming standards. A howling north westerly in the morning hard turned into a tough north easterly by the 1pm start time for the swims, coinciding with the bottom of the tide. The course is like a giant surf race: out, along and back to shore. In these conditions, the toughest part of the race is the leg out to sea into the teeth of the wind-blown swell. The key is to be very aggressive and lift your head just about every stroke so that you can see the oncoming swell and adjust your stroke – shorter to get under a chop or longer when you can. You can afford to push hard on the first leg because when you turn at the first can and head downwind, it’s all a little easier.

The final homeward leg is also with the conditions but it gets tough. You increase your stroke rate to maximise the lift from each swell. Then you get dropped off the back and have to work hard to pick up speed again. It’s a relief to finally hit the wave area and properly catch a wave.

In terms of overall numbers, even with all the craft competitors, it’s not a very big day despite boards and skis being up for grabs in the random draws as well as the Fine Ocean Swimmers series underwater camera. But be warned. Parking is a nightmare. Northcliffe has only a very small parking area at the clubhouse which is reserved for gear trailers. The rest have to make do with the narrow streets and a fairly long walk. In the past, I’ve ridden my push bike over from Broadbeach but if you have to bring a car, I don’t really have a solution.

Northcliffe run a barbecue all day and there’s plenty of shade tents. But upstairs in the club is pretty swish with recent renovations.

Roger Muspratt

Pretty in pink...

Swims run by surf life saving clubs in Queensland this coming season will require all swimmers to wear high visibility singlets. Fluoro pink high visibility singlets. The requirement comes under a rule adopted by Surf Life Saving Queensland which comes into force in September, intended to enhance competitor safety in events run by surf clubs. Not just ocean swims, but other events, too, such as surf carnivals.

The rule will have a significant impact on the finances of ocean swims run by surf clubs, with the organising club providing the singlets which, presumably, will be returnable after the swim. Clubs will be seeking sponsors just for the singlets. They'll also be guessing at how many they'll need and the mix of sizes, and working out ways to ensure they get them all back.

We understand the SLSA in Victoria also is bringing in the rule, although we're not sure whether it will extend to ocean swims as well as to internal SLSA events, such as surf carnivals.

In NSW, we understand the NSW SLSA State Centre will introduce it for surf carnivals,  but not for ocean swims, and that requirement will become compulsory only after another year.

A trifle over the top? Seems so to us. Sure, there have been tragic deaths at the SLSA national championships over past years -- and we don't dismiss them at all -- but nothing has ever happened in ocean swims in Australia, to our knowledge, to justify such an extreme step.

A more effective policy, and a more constructive step for the SLSA, would be to stipulate cap colours. Fluoro pink, for example, along with fluoro yellow, green... bright colours that stand out in the rolling, restless sea, would be a far more effective safety measure than something that's going to be below the surface anyway. And certainly far more effective than the "lost at sea" range of colours that many swim organisers dispense to us -- charcoal, light grey, navy blue, dark purple, black, etc.

This new rule doubtless is inspired by the deaths at the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships. However, the rule applied to the most recent championships, we believe, and they still couldn't find the unfortunate competitor who was lost.

Turn your attention to caps, SLSA. That's where you can make a difference.

A swim to remember

Many will have varying views of the Byron Bay swim in 2012. It was called off on the beach, at the start at Wategos, just a couple of minutes before the first wave was to leave the beach. We reckon few would argue about it being called off. The start was difficult, but the finish, with a rising swell dumping onto a shallowing bank, was a nightmare. There was no doubt that the organisers had to make that decision the way they did. But why leave it until punters were waiting on the beach ready to start? Anyone watching at Byron main beach could see what the swell was doing on that bank as the tide dropped. It was a decision that could have been made a couple of hours earlier. Mind you, had they called it before we schlepped around to Wategos, we wouldn't have got to swim the course at all.

It is one of the great traditions of ocean swimming that, if a swim is called off, we swim the course anyway, conditions permitting. And so it was today. Indeed, it was a glorious swim, rolling through the swells over the bomboras as we were sucked from east to west in a ferocious sweep.

But there were three little issues along the way. At the start, those who tried to crimp the distance by starting at the western end of Wategos found themselves swept back into the rocks by the sideways sweep. Some were pulled out by lifesavers (which points to the other issue in organisers' minds when they call a swim: the safety of their own volunteers, particularly life savers on water safety duty). What you had to do, and what experienced swimmers did, was to head straight out from the lighthouse end of the beach for 50-100 metres until finding clear water, then head west towards main beach. Indeed, you had to follow the course set by the booees. If you did that, the sweep took you around The Pass into main beach, not into the rocks before The Pass.

Then, half way across the bay, there was the little issue of the bomboras. On the dropped tide, one of those bomboras was exciting but benign. But the other, shallower bombora, was boiling. One very good swimmer told us afterwards how he helped to rescue a punter who'd been caught on the shallower bombora. He'd gone under twice. Probably didn't know himself the danger he was in. The swells were rolling through, but out the back there, they were big and they packed a punch. This punter was lucky there was a strong swimmer close by with the presence of mind to support him.

Then the dump at the finish... The tide was dropping, the sweep was ferocious, the swells were standing higher in the dropping tide, and crashing onto the bank. The unwary or inexperienced would have been mushed like overcooked peas in that break, so easy it was to break your back or your neck.

So it was right that the organisers called off the swim. No argument there.

But they said it was a postponement, not a cancellation. Normal policy for the Byron Bay swim is that any postponement is for a month, with the rescheduled date a month after the original date. This would make it June 3. Indeed, that's what the event's downloadable entry form says and what is reported the following day, Mondee, in the Northern Star, the local newspaper. For many, if not most visiting swimmers, however, it is a cancellation since they can't get back to the Bay for the re-run.

Most cancelled swims provoke some complaints, but most swims are clear in their entry conditions that if seas force cancellation, there are no refunds. Even the cheapest swims provoke whinges from some -- Warriewood at $20 provoked two punters in particular to whinge to us to high heaven. Byron Bay at $65 would be expected to prompt more complaints.

Many, if not most visiting swimmers will not be able to make the postponement date. Many shape their ocean swimming season around a finishing swim in Byron Bay, planning the air travel, the local accommodation, etc, around it. Most cannot come back from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, even Perth at such short notice. At least there is a postponement date. Most swims in Sydney, for example, don't have such luxury because the season is so jam-packed that no other dates are available, not to mention the difficulty in re-assembling their volunteers for another, unexpected day.

That said, now the Byron organisers are saying their "midweek" meeting will consider whether to re-run the swim at all. So much for the long-standing one-month postponement policy. The swim has raised a lot of money for local charities. We reckon, by a quick calculation, around $130,000 in entry fees alone, without taking into account sponsorships. Swimmers would appreciate knowing where these funds go. Who gets them? What charities benefit? What are the swim's overheads? This should be something all swims are only too happy to disclose.

The Byron swim 2012 will go down in folklore.

A swim of two days

South Curl Curl was a swim of two days: glorious, light autumn offshore breeze early holding up a sprightly swell, then changing rapidly to a brooding, blown out sou'-easterly that hit between the third and fourth waves leaving the beach. As we swam out, with the third wave, we still were diving under swells held up by the breeze. But by the time we reached the first turner, behind the break, it was blowing into our faces from down past South Head.

"That was a real ocean swim," said one punter, leaving the water at Freshwater.

"That was my favourite ocean swim of the year," said sometime os.c correspondent, Glenn Muir.

How was your swim?

Coogee-Bondi - A swim for Anzac Day

We marched on Anzac Day, but Coogee-Bondi had record numbers. Online entries alone were up around 42 per cent on last year's earlier record. And it was a lovely day for this kind of swim - flat sea, offshore breeze, clear air...

How did you enjoy this swim... Leave your comments below...

Murray Rose

 

Good to hear that the The Rainbow Club, who run the Malabar Magic swim in Sydney on the 3rd Sundee in February, will rename the event the Murray Rose Malabar Magic, after their patron and swim organiser who died last Sundee.

Murray was no longer a young bloke -- 73 -- but that doesn't make his loss any easier. We were one of that generation who grew up revering Murray Rose. His celebrity from the mid-50s was all-embracing, and it proved to be enduring because it was based on substance of character. He was no passing, sporting fad. He was every boy's role model, a man with dignity, bearing, a grace, a presence that inspired respect and admiration, and he remained himself throughout those years of adulation. When we were littlies in the '50s in Newcastle, we never dreamt that, one day, we'd meet Murray Rose, that we'd come to know him and to regard him as a friend. One of the glories of life, for us, was that that's what happened.

Murray was a very private fellow. He'd suffered for a year or so with a troublesome foot that had interfered with his swimming and his capacity to get about comfortably. When he received his diagnosis of leukaemia around the beginning of this year, he set about carefully making arrangements, but discreetly. He called us and asked us to remove reference to him leading this year's tour to the Dardanelles in August. He wouldn't tell us why, apart from saying he wasn't well. When we altered one section of the website but we'd neglected also to amend the downloadable information document, Murray called back and drew our attention to it. "I won't be going to the Dardanelles," Murray told us. "And I won't be at the Malabar Magic, either." That's what alarmed us. At that point, the Malabar Magic was only a couple of weeks away, yet he already knew that he couldn't be there.

We heard he also headed down, about that time, to North Bondi surf club, where he was a member, and cleared out his locker. He swam regularly from North Bondi, several times a week, point to point, with cobbers.

Which raises the other thing, at least, that we reckon should happen now: Murray loved North Bondi; he was an eastern suburbs lad and a North Bondi man. North Bondi has two swims, The Roughwater in January and the North Bondi Classic, in February. We'd love to see North Bondi SLSC rename its second swim to The Murray Rose Classic. And maybe as a further tribute to Murray, they should team up with The Rainbow Club and offer combo entries to the Murray Rose Classic on the second Sunday in February, and to the Murray Rose Malabar Magic, on the third Sunday in February, offering a special prize to someone who does both, The Murray Rose Memorial Award. It should go to an ocean swimmer of any age who exemplifies the character, the values that made Murray Rose such a special person.

We -- by "we", we mean "us more mature Australians" -- we won't need awards to remember Murray Rose, but it will help our kids and their kids to know of Murray and the contribution he made to us all, by his achievements and by his example. A lot of younger swimmers may not have heard of Murray, or may not appreciate the role he played in Stra'an swimming. We recall a story Murray told of a swim a few years back. Murray entered this swim online (not through oceanswims.com), and the organisers, apparently not knowing him, figured he was a lady who'd entered his name the wrong way around. So they changed him from Murray Rose, in the Male Codgers division, to Rose Murray, a lady. Murray said later, "I won both the Male and Female divisions that day".

A wonderful, wonderful man of grace, style, culture and substance. Our thoughts are with Murray's wife, Jodi, and their son, Trevor.

The best piece we read about Murray in the meeja over the past few days -- there's been an awful lot of dashed-off guff -- was the Herald's obituary, run on Tuesday, April 17. But while it stood out from the other pieces we read, it still skated all too glibly over that vast bulk of Murray's life between his swimming career and his return to Australia in 1994. Apart from his swimming, Murray had a career in TV in the US and played roles in a couple of movies. He also was a senior marketing executive (we thought he'd been Marketing Director) of the LA Lakers, one of the two biggest sporting franchises in the world (the other being Manchester United). Maybe someone, one day, will write a definitive piece. For the Herald's obit... click here

We ran a story in our email newsletter when we knew Murray wasn't well, indeed was seriously unwell, but it wasn't for us to announce this to the world. We just reckon all Australians should know how wonderful a person Murray was. A bit out of left field, perhaps, but it's not surprising that Murray married a ballerina. He was, as they say, a fine style of a bloke.

(A version of this story appeared in our email newsletter of Thursday, April 19. We've had a few responses to it, so we figured we should post it as a blob, too, so that y'all can have your say, too. If you want to add your thoughts, click the Comments link, below.)