Warriewood wonders

Many moons ago Warriewood to Mona Vale was one of my first ocean swims. I well remember the panic that sprang in my breast as I surfaced for the 18th time (or so it seemed) to face yet another wall of surf roaring towards me. Nor the sense of relief and exhaustion that I felt when I finally got out past Warriewood's challenging break.

Oceanswims states  "The break at Warriewood at the start can be difficult, with rips, undertoads, gutters and shifting banks." and Paul is right (although I'm not 100% sure what an undertoad is - just spotted that in my cut and paste from the website) - it can be very challenging.

So in line with my new philosophy of avoiding swims that make me feel in imminent danger of drowning I checked the conditions on Saturday and decided - sadly too late for the on-line entry deadline - that my enhanced sense of self preservation wouldn't be challenged by a small swell at close to high tide. Foolish boy.

In fact, the waves weren't particularly powerful and not too big - but gosh, there was a lot of them to navigate. Luckily many of them were weak enough to swim over, but I still had to dive under four of five before hitting clear water - or as clear as it got.

Warriewood is a lovely beach and from the nicely positioned cafe - the only spot of shade near the beach on a hot and sunny day - Mona Vale seems just a hop, skip and splash away. Which indeed it is if you walk; less so if you have to swim out to the final tunring buoy positioned close to the headland.

So after forking out $40 including the $10 "missed on-line deadline" fee, enjoying a leisurely bacon sandwich and long black, watching the first couple of waves go out and doing a perfunctory warm up swim, I plunged in with the final wave of green-hatted wrinklies (it's strange how everyone in my age group looks so much older than me) to brave the pounding seas.

As mentioned it was a bit of a challenge getting out - not as scarifying as my first swim there some aeons ago, but hard work. Once I got into my stroke in the pleasantly warm ocean the medium swell from the north east was not particularly distrubing but somewhat less than helpful - on a scale of "flat as a tack" to "a perfect storm" it was around a "noticeable enough to be slightly annoying" level.

Prior to the swim I'd asked a local if the right line from the first buoy was to aim for the headland and had been answered in the affirmative. I'd also, rather unusually, listened to the pre-race briefing that stated all the buoys apart from the first and last were for navigation only and could be passed either side.

So I'm not sure why, when I was happily slogging into the wind and aiming for the rather large and easy to see headland, and a helpful water safety person told me I was heading too far right, I didn't just stick to my line. (It may have been that on the aforementioned swim years ago I did veer a little far out to sea, only realising it when I saw the high rise buildings of Aukland).

Whatever, I did listen and follow the new line with the result I swam too close to shore and had to readjust my line once I saw the final pink buoy far out to sea. I swear it cost me at least 60 seconds, not that my adjusted time would have improved my ranking just inside the top 90% of swimmers.

(This doesn't include a fair number of DNFs - I presume people who found the break a bit too challenging to get past. They have my sympathy and understanding.)

What looks not far from the shore can seem an awful long way in the water and such was the case getting to the final pink buoy. The run in from there to home, however, was relatively short and thankfully dump free.

For a comparatively short 1.6k it was quite hard but, waves and misdirections notwithstanding, rather enjoyable.

The respective surf clubs do an excellent job, the Harris Farm fruit was plentiful, the water safety (my tormentor excluded) excellent and it was a lovely day at two very pleasant beaches.

I don't normally have time to stay for the presentations but there were so many prizes available in the free lottery that I felt compelled to stay - needless to say I didn't win anything, unlike what seemed like 75% of the people there. Many thanks to the organisers for another great event.

It's also worth mentioning Pittwater Council. It's easy to knock councils - particularly Waverly Council, where they seem to think Bondi swims are put on to attract more ionospheric parking fines for their velociraptor-like parking fiends/inspectors - so many thanks and kudos to Pittwater Council for waiving parking fees when their various ocean swims are on.

Making swims special again

It’s interesting to watch the numbers each week, each year: which swims grow in popularity; which swims diminish; where the growth is overall; and so on.

The Cole Classic, for example, has been falling dramatically in numbers over the past few years, but at the same time its 1km swim has continued to grow so that, for the last two years, it’s been bigger than the Cole’s 2km swim.

We recall when the Cole first ran a 1km swim: it was after the Cole family switched the swim to Manly. Can’t recall exactly what year that was, but six or seven years ago. The Bros Cole weren’t sure how well the shorter swim would go in the marketplace of ocean swimming, but it was an immediate hit with, from memory, 650 punters on its first outing.

It reminds us of the very first Bondi-Bronte swim, which drew 850 on a poor day. It was a natural course; an iconic journey. Originally, the Bronte organisers intended to run over a circuit inside the bay at Bronte. The decision to start around Mackenzies Point at Bondi made that event an icon swim.

The schlepp along the beach is part of the beauty of Avalon.

It seems to show that certain things will draw swimmers. One of them, these days, seems to be shorter distances, which are attractive to new ocean swimmers. Another is interesting courses: especially journeys over circuits.

Ocean swimming has been booming, as the sports writers would put it, for years, but the growth particularly has been with shorter distance events: 1km or even shorter. Newport offers an 800m swim these days, which drew 30 per cent of their field this season. Even The Big Swim (Palm Beach-Whale Beach) now offers The Little Big Swim at 1km.

It appears that new swimmers prefer shorter distances to kick off their careers.

Around NSW, traditional distances have been around 2km, so 1km is very much the shorter event. In Victoria, traditional distances have been 1km+, such as 1.2km (the distance of last Sat’dee’s Lorne Pier to Pub, which drew 4,465). There, new events tend to be longer distances complementing the existing shorts.

Up at Whale Beach, the Big Swim is around 2.5km, but its numbers, too, have been dropping over recent years. 

Bondi-Bronte is just 2km, which is not long for these parts, but its numbers have been falling, too, until this season when they introduced shorter options, leading to reversal of the downward trend overall.

Head Babewatcher, James Goswell, was impressive in his start. (There, you happy with that, James?)

We’ve mentioned the Cole, which might be a withering event at their entry fees but for the 1km course holding up the event overall. (We acknowledge the significant role that the Cole plays, backed by Fairfax Meeja, in bringing new swimmers into the sport. The pity is that Fairfax does stuff all to tell those swimmers about other events that are available to them, most of which are run by the kind of charities they say they support.)

It’s the shorter distances that appeal to the swimmers who make the sport grow: new ocean swimmers.

The other appeal, we reckon, is interesting courses. 

Bondi-Bronte, a relative newcomer, is similar conceptually to The Big Swim, from Palm Beach to Whale Beach, this year celebrating its 40^th outing: it’s a journey swim around a landmark. 

This laydees wave start was the most sedate we've ever seen in an ocean swim.

In the olden days, when we set up oceanswims.com (coming up to 15 years ago), there were just 17 swims on the NSW calendar, costing $20-$25 each to enter. No-one, as we recall, offered different distances (the first shorter distance added to an existing, longer event in our experience was Shark Island at Cronulla, which introduced a 1km swim to complement the 2.3km journey around the island). While new swimmers, particularly, found this attractive, it took a few seasons before regular punters recognised the shorter option for the opportunity it was to warm-up before the main event).

At rates of $20-$25 per entry, punters had little trouble accommodating the entire season. Swimmers still do on average fewer than two swims per season, so little has changed in that regard. But regular swimmers are a different story. This season, we have 95 events on our books in NSW (many with multiple swims) and 227 ‘round Stra’a. Those swims generally cost $35-$40 to enter. If you did 10 swims in 2000/01, it would cost you, say $250 spread over the season running from mid-December through early March, maybe with Byron in May tacked on to the end. Now, those ten swims will cost you $400, or more if you do the Cole, whose base entry fee this season is $65 for the 2km (although you can get cheaper entry through early entry. The fact that the Cole this season offered a sliding scale of fees ranging from $50 when entries opened last year to $65 in the last few weeks suggests they are sensitive to this price issue. At last.)

The weed tickled our fancy in the run-out at Avalon.

The points are that it’s much more expensive to pursue your career as an ocean swimmer these days; there are many more choices to make about which swims you do, and swimmers are making more choices: you can't assume that if it's on, they will come; and newer swimmers prefer shorter distances.

Swimmers appear to be becoming more discerning about the events they choose for reasons both of season cost and of availability of options. They won’t drive as far: anecdotal evidence surrounding last weekend’s clash between North Bondi (1,158 finishers), in the eastern suburbs, and Avalon (450 finishers), up on the northern beaches, suggests that distance to Avalon was a common factor in punters’ decisions to stick closer to home at Bondi. In the olden days, a trip to Avalon was special. These days, there are plenty of opportunities to swim at special places. As well, North Bondi offered their Combo entry, which made it possible, at its extreme, to get four swims for an average $22.50. Avalon can’t do that. But they could do that if the five Pittwater swims, now loosely tied together in their Pittwater Series, also offer a Combo entry: do all five; or pick your four or your three, at reduced rates. Organising clubs might have to accept a little less per entry, but they may end up with more punters, and greater economies of scale if they combined costs, such as caps and timing. This seems to us a gimme.

Huey watches over us at Avalon.

We’ve long regarded Avalon as one of our favourite swims. We love the January trek along the northern beaches and Avalon, perhaps more than any other northern beach – apart from Bilgola – oozes exotica. Avalon is not a particularly expensive swim -- $35 this season, a price that’s held for a few years – and while a circuit swim, not a journey, it offered something special. For us, it was the January trek, and the northern run-out.

We’ve raved about the start at Avalon ad nauseum over the years. It’s our favourite in ocean swimming. The swim starts in the northern corner of Avalon beach, where a runout whisks one briskly seawards. Some years, we’ve swum so close to the rocks – yes, yes, we know, you’ve heard all this before – that we’ve felt the tickle of the waving weed on our bellies. It’s a sensation like the mischievous caress of the lip on our backs as we scurried along the face of a rapidly breaking wave. In our younger days. 

Hiding behind the water sculpcha.

At Avalon, we even knew the lifesaver who was stationed each year on the rock just by the start to keep the mob from straying too far over the rocks, and to pull out those who did. He was a photographer, Tim Hixson. We saw Tim shortly after we arrived at Avalon this weekend. We said, “We’ll see you on the rock, Tim”. But, “No,” Tim said. “I won’t be on the rock today. We’re starting you back along the beach.”

Incredulous, we just couldn’t believe it! We asked why? It was to do with a lady who injured her knee at the start last year, Tim said. Later, others said it also was to do with the Avalon club losing, or almost losing a rubber ducky – an IRB – in the break near the rocks the year before last, when the seas were running and the start was hairy for inexperienced swimmers. Remember that day. Our enduring image was of a little boy, who’d missed the start, crying on the beach. 

So the Avalon organisers pulled the start this year back from the northern corner, about 100m south along the beach. Mind you, they left the first booee in the same spot off the headland, so the start was on an angle across a shallowing bank as the tide fell, through the break, which was so small it almost wasn’t there at all. That was strange in itself: it meant that starters at the northern end of the line had a distinct advantage over the field. You could argue that everyone had the option to start at the northern end of the line, but thank goodness they didn’t because the crush would have been chaotic. It would have made more sense to bring the first booee south, too, so the start was straight out. That would have shortened the course, but then the booee could have been taken a bit farther out to sea, so the distance overall could remain largely unaffected.

A very noice recovering arm. Little kiddies, take note.

The mob remained free to walk or run along the beach to start in the northern corner if they wished, and we saw some do so. But that would have put them behind the peloton, particularly with the only gentle runout operating on a very small day.

We did that, too: we stood on the bank taking pitchers of the wave starts, which weren’t all that interesting given the shallowness of the bank. Before the sub-codgers and codgers got going, we gave up, came out of the water, and trudged along the beach to the northern corner. We entered the water as close to the rocks as we dared, and we swam out through the runout, such as it was, over the weed, the headland – Indian Head, so named for the face carved by naytcha into its face in profile, whom we prefer to regard as Huey watching over us – looming over us. So we still got to start in the runout, but most didn’t.

It is that runout that makes this swim special to us. Without it, even allowing for what a lovely place Avalon is, the swim becomes just another circuit. 

At times of diminishing numbers with inversely growing discernment amongst swimmers towards which swims they’ll do, we reckon the Avalon people need to have a close look at how they run their swim. We can understand their aversion to the risk of swimmers injuring themselves on the rocks in lively seas, but those seas did not obtain this year; the risk was minimal. If you take out that wonderful start, you need to have a very good reason for doing so. 

They might also consider offering a shorter distance. The main event is only 1.5km, which ain’t long, but it is to someone who feels anything over 1km is an ask for one of their first swims. Avalon ran a 500m Fins swim this season, but that’s not for everyone, as suggested by the fact that it drew only 12 punters, most of them kids. They need to do something to give their swim that special something that makes them different.

You'll have to watch that shoulder, comrade.

Avalon regularly clashes with North Bondi. Sometimes, earlier there are five Sundees in January, those swims get their own dates. Now, with Newport claiming the first Sundee in January, North Bondi must weigh up who’d they rather run against, not to mention the value or weight of running too close to New Year. Chances are that these two swims usually will clash again.

There is another course, however, which either swim could take. Sydney is devoid of swims on the weekend between Xmas and New Year, or the public holidays surrounding them. There’s nothing in Sydney between Manly on the third Sundee in December, and Newport on the first Sundee in January. 

In Victoria, there is a tradition of making a virtue of this holiday period: the Xmas-New year week sees a run of good swims at Pt Leo on Boxing Day, then Anglesea and Pt Lonsdale later in the week. Granted, these swims run on Victoria’s holiday coasts. But plenty of punters travel down from Melbourne to take part in them, as do holidaymakers in situ.

Someone should have a look at that space in Sydney. There are plenty of swimmers around. At the moment, Yamba runs around that time, way up on the North Coast. Who will fill the void in Sydney?

One thing is certain, as they TV news people say, only time will tell… er, they would get the date to themselves, and that, on the ocean swimming circuit these days, is one of the most precious commodities of all.

Our GPS-in-a-plastic-bag said 1.62km.

Go left old man

In days of yore, when waves thundered onto the beach, the North Bondi Roughwater earned its name. Just making it past the break by diving under repeating sets was far too onerous a task for an ageing Pom so on those days the Bondi Express was a valued friend. Run far left from the start, into the rip and over the rocks and voila - a few strokes and a couple of waves to negotiate and you're spit out near New Zealand - or at least pretty close to the first buoy.

Yesterday, however, the person who crossed out "Rough" and replaced it on the whiteboard with "Smooth" (plus a smiley) had it pretty much right. If you're looking to test yourself against pounding seas and a high swell the conditions were less than ideal. If, on the other hand, you're an arrant coward like me fearful of waves, cold water, bluebottles and Mitchell Johnson, conditions were close to perfect.

Pity the poor Bondi Express on such days, reduced to a shadow of its former self. But I'm not one to abandon a friend so on hearing the 10.48 old farts gun I sprinted (well, lumbered) sharp left, past tourists frolicking in the shallows, toddlers gurgling happily in the 6 inch waves and more water safety craft than there are freckles on Ron Weasley, into the place where the Express begins.

If it shoots out like a Bondi Tram on rough days, this day it was more like an all stations on the North Shore line with track work going on. There was minimal, if any, assistance, but it did get me away from the madding crowd and thrashing arms of disturbingly fit geriatrics and out to the first buoy unhindered.

In past years the Bondi water safety has had a tendency to herd the peleton in narrow channels but, at least for me, they were sweetness and light, paddling out of my way as I ploughed a lone furrow over the rocks and clearly visible seaweed on a perfect day. In fact the water safety people were numerous, polite, excellent and had very cleverly chosen exactly the same shade of orange vests as the buoys to add a touch of challenge to my navigation.

Due to the light swell - just enough to make it interesting and to stop the water from resembling a duck pond (as well as the absence of ducks, of course) - it was easy to see the buoys from a long distance, so it was only the confusion of orange dots on the water that allowed me to maintain my traditional zig-zag "where the f am I going?" trajectory.

From the beach the far buoy, towards Mackenzie's Point, looked further than in previous years, leading me to expect a long course, but in the water it didn't seem that far at all, aided I'm sure by the warm water and excellent conditions.

My condition at the next buoy at South Bondi was less than excellent however as, slipping briefly into breaststroke to check directions (well past the buoy, of course, I'm not one of THOSE) my calf began to cramp up. Faced with the alternatives of swimming on or looking like a wuzz I chose the former and luckily it eased off.

The trip back was easy - loooong but easy - thanks to the yellow flag some kind soul had placed on the far cliffs/flats, making navigation simple and I finished strongly, comfortably avoiding the wooden spoon and wading the last 20 metres. It was then that terror struck in the form of a floating bluey, which encouraged my finishing sprint.

All in all a lovely swim - hot sun, warm sea, well organised, all the waves went off on time, lovely people. The new Bondi Club is great with fabulous views and plenty of room, let down only by an absence of decent beer. Put on some Little Creatures (in honour of the bluebottles) and Three Sheets (for the nautical theme) and it would be perfect.

Gerringong... Somewhere on the Stra'an coast

Over the hill to Boat Harbour, to swim start at Gerringong. Werri Beach is one of the more spectacular ocean swim venues.

There’s a bloke down at Gerringong who’s known as Rust. Why’s he called rust? “Because he gets into your car whether you want him to or not,” says a Gerringong local. This is one of life’s vignettes that you discover by going to little swims such as Gerringong’s and enjoying a quiet little drink on the deck of the surf club afterwards, overlooking the beach. You didn’t really need to know about Rust, but it’s nice finding out: one of those whimsical asides that add a dimension to your swim day.

Not that you need more dimensions at Gerringong. It’s a beautiful, even spectacular beach, a long, gently curving arc set between two spectacular headlands, with a rockshelf at the southern end prompting a runout in the corner which can be deadly if the seas are running. To get to swim start, you must traipse up one of these headlands, the southern one, then down through the cemetery on the other side to Gerringong’s Boat Harbour.

Boat Harbour is little more than fjord-like inlet, protected from the worst of the southerlies by another headland, almost an island, which juts a half kilometre or so out to sea on the southern side. Around 150 years ago, there was a jetty at Boat Harbour, where the merchantmen would berth to pick up cedar, which grew on the hills around the town. Those hills are newd now. The merchantmen would take the cedar to Sydney and Brisbane. Now there’s none left, and the jetty is long gone, although there’s a bit of maritime detritus on the bottom off Boat Harbour to remind you of the place’s heritage, to inspect as you swim seaward from swim start on the boat ramp now used by fishos to launch their tinnies.

There once was a jetty where the boat ramp now lies, and Capt. Christie would berth there to collect timber.

 The swim skirts the rockshelf under the headland between Werri Beach, Gerringong’s main beach, and the harbour. The rockshelf is square and bluff at its southern end, generating a backwash that can be problematic and bumpy as you head north. But it eases as you go, and by the time you get to the point off Werri Beach, the bigger problem is the run-out.

The organisers set the final booees off the beach at an angle to the point, so they take you across the run-out rather than making you swim through it inwards towards the beach. When the seas are running, that run-out quickly could take you a few hundred metres seawards. It’s a prime example of the adage that you don’t swim against rips, you let them take you out, around, then let them drop you back behind the break, which is what they’ll do. Or you swim across them. But definitely not into them.

Each time we come to Gerringong – we haven’t been for four or five years – we’re struck by how stunning this coastal town is. The business centre, a string of shops along Fern St, stretches along a ridge above the beach. Towards its southern end, the ridge arcs eastwards, forming a cradle around the flatland and the beach below. At the bottom of the hill, below the ridge, the caravan park and camping area bursts with holidaymakers at this time of year, many of them annual regulars. Many of them spend their lives coming to Gerringong for their holidays, then they move there permanently as they mature into nicely aged grandparents. And their grandkids visit them annually, and they develop affection for the place as their parents and their grandparents did before them.

We’ve seen Gerringong on some blustery, unpleasant days. When the wind blows from the south and the swell rises, it can be a nasty, open beach of shifting banks and nasty breaks and swirling gutters. But on a good day, it’s the ideal of gentle coastal beaches. Today is a good day. Indeed, we don’t reckon we’ve ever seen Werri Beach so beautiful. There was a swell of less than a metre, a cloudless sky, water of 20 degrees, which is cool enough to stop you overheating on a midsummer’s Sundee, but warm enough to be pleasant. Mind you, we carry our wettie built in, so perhaps we’re not the best judges of coolness. We weren’t here five or six years ago when the cold water came in overnight, the black nor’-easter blew, the seas ran, and the swim was shifted around to Gerroa, a couple of kilometres to the south, protected from the black winds. The cold water arrived overnight, literally, and it affected the coast from Newcastle in the north down past Gerringong in the south. Its cause was day after day after day of those black nor’-easters, which pushed the warmer summer current out of place, against the Coriolanus effect, sucking up the cooler water from below. On this day five or six years ago, in mid-summer at Gerringong, the water was 12.5 degrees Celsius. Swim organisers put a 45 minute time limit on the swim at the emergency location at Gerroa. We remember our cobber, Barry “The Lurv God” Lang, who has a problematic history with his ticker, was pulled out as the time expired, and he was glad to be.

No such problem today, however. There was a light offshore breeze blowing in the early morning, which switched to a light nor’-easterly as we left the surf club to head over the hill to the start. The seas’s were smooth. Ish. On the boat ramp at Boat Harbour, the breeze was almost indeterminate in the shelter of the headland, and even as we emerged from the shelter around the rock shelf, it remained gentle. It exploded into a black nor’-easter as the presentations ended, but by that time, it bothered no-one who was there for the swim.

It was good, good water. A little rolly rather than bumpy; clear; cool without being cold; plenty to watch on the bottom; an easy run-out to cross from the point; and after you turned the final booee, there was a nice little swell to run with into the beach. 

To sea, to sea... and the masses surge seawards.

 This swim is named for Captain Christie, who was skipper of one of those merchantmen that would call into Gerringong’s Boat Harbour to collect loads of cedar. In 1879, so the story goes, Capt. Christie bet a crewman a bottle of whisky that he could swim around the rock shelf to Werri Beach. No-one thought he could do it, but he did, and he won his bet. Now, all finishers in the swim also collect a miniature bottle of whisky, to mark the swim’s provenance.

It’s a nice, community swim, with people such as Rust, and Jungle, involved in the background. And the bloke who runs the PA system has been doing it for years, for clubs and schools up and down the coast. There’s a fish auction, when the local fishos sell off their weekend catch with all funds going to the surf club. It used to have a fashion parade, too, but that doesn’t happen any more. The briefing prior to the swim concludes, annually, with a short memorial service for Bob Churton, a Gerringong surf club stalwart, who died some years ago. There’s a memorial garden for Bob in front of the club, where the flagpole’s planted into the earth. They haven’t forgotten you, comrade.

There were 198 starters at Gerringong, paltry compared with the 688 or so who swam the same morning at Newport on Sydney’s northern beaches. The organisers would be concerned if the field grew past 250: would they have the resources to cope with the crowd? But it’s swims like the Captain Christie Classic that give ocean swimming its culture. One of the caper’s beauties is that we can drop into a beach like Gerringong once a year, or once every few years, and the weekend after, we can drop into another beach, likewise visiting only once a year. The following week, another beach. And on we go through the season. We go to places we’d never go to but for ocean swimming. We’ve discovered places that we’d never have discovered but for ocean swimming. Gerringong is special amongst them.

No swim at Bongin. Was that wrong?

Dawn at Bongin Bongin Bay. Just after dawn, anyway... Well, quite a way after dawn. The wind is howling.

This morning -- Sundee morning -- we went for a swim. But we didn’t swim. And we’re just trying to work out whether that was wrong.

We went to Mona Vale to swim in Bongin Bongin Bay with our good friend, Glistening Dave. Dave has been away for 10 days, in Adelaide for Xmas, and we’d missed him. Normally, Dave swims at Bongin every day with his cobbers.. Yes, Dave has cobbers... Yes, yes, we’re surprised, too…

Dave and his cobbers refer to themselves as the Dawnbusters, swimming at Bongin every weekday morning of the year at 6:30, and at 7:30 on weekends. All year ‘round, summer, autumn, winter and back into spring, cold days and balmy; stingers or clear. About the only thing that will stop the Dawnbusters, according to Dave’s daily reports, is a sea that makes crossing the bombie that lies in the centre of the bay foolhardy.

It’s just a short hop across from the spit at the southern edge of Bongin to the headland, just a few hundred metres. The Dawnbusters usually swim over to the headland and back. On weekends, they will go out of Bongin, around the rockshelf with the Mona Vale pool and into the beach at Mona Vale proper. On Sundees, they’ll head south towards Warriewood then swim or walk back along the beach, to get a bit more distance. Once a year, the Dawnbusters marshal their significant others, who drive them over the hill to Bungan, on the other side of the headland, from where they swim back to Bongin. It’s the Bungan to Bongin swim. It’s barely a kilometre itself around the headland, but it justifies the annual Dawnbusters barbie in the park behind the beach afterwards.

Otherwise, the normal daily swim is barely half a kilometre. Not a long distance; not a big ask. But it’s every morning; it’s a swim; it maintains their feel for the sea; it forms the raison d’etre for a whole bunch of mugs to get out of bed every morning; and it performs that vital function: it qualifies the Dawnbusters for that climactic culchural phase of ocean swimming: the morning cuppa, which they take at one of the cafés just off the beach past the other end of Mona Vale surf club.

Show me your huddling, seething masses, for they will swim, whatever the conditions.

 There are groups like the Dawnbusters on every civilised beach in Stra’a. In more populous areas, there’ll be several groups, and they’re made up of a wide diversity, a disparity, of ocean swimming mugs in the ultimate egalitarian environment: in the sea, dressed only in cossies.

This morning, we took our other friend, Jane -- yes, yes, we have another friend, too -- and all three of us left Meadowbank at 6:30am for the hour’s drive to Mona Vale. We knew when we left that all was not well: when we arose from our beds at 6, the southerly was blowing briskly up the river. And if the breeze is brisk at Meadowbank, an hour from the beach, at 6 in the morning, then it’s likely to be howling over Bongin at Mona Vale.

We could feel the wind strengthening as we headed, within the speed limit, along Mona Vale Road, through S’nives, past the showground, past the Sundee morning cyclists with their colourful lycra stretched tight over their expanded middle-aged bellies, by the Bahai temple and down the hill into Mona Vale. The drive was across the wind all the way. We felt it blowing the vehicle around, the gusts swirling around us as we dropped down hills through gullies and rose up the other side again. The wind was so strong by along the Terrey Hills highlands, we wondered how some of those cyclists – some of them in particular – managed to stay upright as they pushed across it.

We were amongst the first to the beach. It was truly howling there. A couple of punters braved the pool. One or two hung around the car park overlooking the beach, huddling in the shelter of fatted pine tree trunks. We stayed in the car, fogging up the windscreen from inside. Or was that the salt deposited in layers by the angry southerly that blurred our view? As we sat there, we could feel the wind, gusting, rattling the vehicle, rocking it from side to side. We wondered about the physics of motor vehicles, and how strong a wind need be before it flipped a car over. The surf was blown out. It wasn’t a heavy swell; it was all wind chop. It came in from the sou’-east, blowing what waves there were onto the beach and across the sandspit, picking up the salt and layering it across our windscreen, and whipping up the sand, dropping it into Bongin Bongin Bay.

7:30 ticked over. There were a dozen or more punters here by now, including Dave, who greeted them all effusively. Much more effusively than he greets us, in fact, leaving us with a tinge of jealousy. Maybe… maybe Dave has other friends who are more important to him than us… Just wondering…

Mrs Sparkle and Jane, who doubles as our roadie when we haul our branded tent along to weekend ocean swims, jumped out of the car to greet the assembling, shivering Dawnbusters. We alighted gingerly. We didn’t like the look of the sea, the sky, the feel of the wind, or anything much outside our cocoon. As we stood there in the wind, we lost three layers of skin from the back of our neck, sandblasted by a smash repairer’s hose.

The sea looked worse from outside the car. It was blown-out flat on shore, on the southern edge of Bongin Bongin Bay, but as wind reached across the bay, the chop rose up again towards the headland. It would be a quick trip over, but it would be a blustery, barging, head-butting swim back.

The Dawnbusters readied themselves. They were going in. Weather doesn’t stop them. They shifted onto the beach, like a sandhill inching across the desert. They disrobed, pulled out their goggles, and shoved their towels into the packs. Some of them clutched fins under their arms. A lonely dog, a beautiful patchy collie/border collie, was left, tied by his master to the fence. The puppy panted with worry. He couldn’t see the beach from behind the overgrown grass that followed the fence line, and he didn’t like it. He knew his master was down there somewhere... He barked that high-pitched, squeaky bark that dogs do when they sense a loved one is in peril.

The Dawnbusters launched themselves into the sea. They surged through the break, blown almost completely flat by the southerly, and they plunged across the bay, a series of grey splashes against the grey sea and the grey, grey sky marking their patchy tracks. They swam across the bay almost to the headland. Then they turned and swam back, much more slowly this time, for the return journey was like squeezing through a gap in a wall, repeatedly.

It was blown out.

We didn’t swim. We stood on the grass between the carpark and the beach sullenly, watching the brave, dour Dawnbusters straggling from the sea, the wind blasting the water from the amongst the greying hair on their middle-aged bodies – and that’s not an easy thing to do -- our emotions a mixture of relief, that no-one had forced us to go in; and guilt: that we hadn’t swum just because the weather was no good, that we hadn’t taken upper body exercise since Xmas Eve, five days before; and that we’d disappointed ourselves, yet again, because we’d failed the test of “What would you do when conditions turn bad?”

We’d looked forward to a swim at Bongin – we’d been telling ourselves for months that we wanted to get up to Bongin early one morning to swim with our good friend, Glistening Dave – but we swam often enough that we didn’t feel the need to discomfort ourselves in such unpleasant conditions just to prove a point, whatever that point might be.

We went all that way, and we didn’t swim. Even more brazen, we still had a cuppa afterwards.

Was that wrong?

The usual spirited exchange following a cancelled swim

We endured a spirited exchange of emails the week before Xmas a punter aggrieved that the Bilgola swim was called off due to heavy seas. He was not the first aggrieved punter to complain about a cancellation, and he certainly wasn't the first to feel he'd been ripped off.

We can understand the disappointment felt when a swim is called off. It happened twice that weekend: North Curl Curl was cancelled on the Sat'dee, then Billie was called off on the Sundee. Last season, there was a rash of cancellations and postponements that left hundreds and thousands of us swimless for weeks and lighter in pocket. Last season, one punter complained that he'd entered himself and his bride into the Bondi swim, only for it to be postponed due to seas. After the postponement was announced, he entered himself and his bride into Long Reef, which then was cancelled. The weekend cost him a bit, and he didn't get to swim.

We can assure you that amongst the most disappointed at cancellations are the swim organisers, who've toiled for months to bring these events to you, only to be thwarted at the final moment by the weather. Postponements are almost as bad. One of the hardest jobs for the awgies is to find the voluntary day labour. It's very hard, sometimes impossible to get them back for a second day.

Swims face significant costs just getting to swim day, which is what we explain to cranky punters after a cancellation. The vast majority understand and they accept it. But you get one or two who take it to another level.

Charities

When we're accosted by aggrieved punters, we notice one thing in particular: almost invariably, they are new to ocean swimming. We mention this not to put them down -- to be sneering, as one punter accused us, we think unfairly, a week or so back -- but to highlight the phenomenon that newer ocean swimmers aren't as acquainted with and accepting of the traditions, the conventions, and the exigencies of ocean swimming in the way in which regular swimmers are. Ocean swimmers essentially are generous: in our experience, the vast majority of you like the fact that, by entering an ocean swim, you're supporting a charity, to wit a surf life saving club. That's one of the reasons -- a big reason -- why most of you understand and accept when a swim can't go ahead: the funds are going to a good cause. Organisers of swim in the ocean cannot predict the seas (which is something the people at Fairfax Meeja overlook when deciding that earlybird entries should close seven weeks ahead of the Cole Classic). Ocean swimmers generally know this and accept it. The unpredictability of conditions on race day is one of the reasons they get up to this caper.

Some don't get it, however. They think all the money goes to a private organisation, and usually they think that is us. They can't understand, or accept, or they don't want to understand, or accept, that in the vast majority of cases of ocean swims, the awginizahs are surf life saving clubs who can ill afford the cost of a swim without the revenue they receive from entries. For when a swim is called off, there are some costs they still cannot avoid, such as the food for the barbie that they'd planned to sell you, the swim caps they've bought and had printed, the promotional leaflets and entry forms, and so on. That still must be paid for.

Punters generally get all this and understand.

Various punters have tried different techniques to get their money back. One punter a couple of weeks back claimed, several days after he'd missed a swim that took place in unpleasant weather, that we'd got the date wrong on oceanswims.com therefore he'd missed the swim, therefore we should refund his money or credit it to another event. We reckon he just couldn't be bothered getting out of bed on a rainy day and this was a try-on. Another punter, after the cancellation of The Big Swim (Palm-Whale) a few years back, tried a technique that we won't tell you about, because sure as hell some smarty pants will mimic it. This punter got his money back, but not through any honest dealing. We paid for it. We haven't seen his name pop up on the online entries list since then.

Where it goes

We take online entries on behalf of swim organisers. They are the oganisers, not us. The funds are theirs, not ours. As soon as online entries close, we prepare an acquittal of those funds and we pay them over to the events. In the cases of larger swims, we pay the funds over in instalments as entries come in prior to swim day. (We retain a commission from the funds, which represents the prime source of income to oceanswims.com.) But we don't retain the funds. When grumpy punters accost us afterwards for refunds, the funds almost invariably already have been paid over to the organising surf life saving clubs.

The numbers of grumpy punters are miniscule, but they make a lot of noise and cause considerable grief, such as the bloke this week who, last we heard, was complaining about us to the Department of Fair Trading. Even amongst those miniscule numbers, however, most of them are accepting when we explain the situation to them. Most swims have a clause in their waivers stating that there will be no refunds in case of event cancellations, and every punter agrees to this when they submit their online entry. That doesn't stop them trying to renege on their agreement after the fact, however.

Why are we telling you all this? Because while we have a reasonable understanding of the conventions in ocean swimming, some out there don't, and we want the word to get around.

Happy New Year to you all, and thank you for supporting us.

Thoughts and distractions in Cabbage Tree Bay

My thoughts and distractions during an ocean swim...

Jen Gwynne's GPS-in-a-plastic bag measured the 2km swim at 1.67km.

Manly LSC Blue Dolphins

The starting line
the rope in the sand
the feet on the start
getting a photo
clearing my goggles
listening to the briefing
5 booees
count down
go - press start on the watch
running into the water
knees up
dolphin diving
starting to swim
sighting the booee
finding a path through the swimmers
trying to get a good rhythm
trying not to go too hard at the start
forgetting all that
other swimmers in front and next to you
swimmers' togs
other swimmers' kicking
swimming pace
breathing rhythm
the clarity of the water
sandy bottom
ripples on the sand
other patterns caused by shifting sand on the seabed
the booee
around the booee
getting a heading across the bay
rocks of the bower
sandy seafloor
sunlight patterns in the water
other swimmers nearby
the commotion in the water from swimmers
rocks
fish
patterns on the rocks
fish in the rocks
feeling the pull of the ocean
thinking maybe it's faster over to your right
not worrying about it
swimming with the ocean
booees again
the crush of swimmers
finding a space again
red togs
finding a pace after turning the beach booees
seaweed now to look at
finding fish in the seaweed
wondering if I will see the groper
or the turtle or sharks
more fish
red togs still
yellow building to sight the booee
still fish
round another booee
divers down underneath!
a Santa hat (did I really see that?)
neon fins very bright
would be a good photo
they could take a good photo of us!
too late
more fish
very colourful fish swimming right around me
sighting the final booee
breathing
red togs still there
another pair of red togs on my left
wondering if I can get a better pace
taking on water when trying to breath
changing your stroke to get your pace right
forgetting to keep that rhythm
trying again
realising the swim's almost over
remembering to actually try harder
getting a better catch in the water
forgetting about that when you go past more fish in the rocks
turning the final booee
sighting the shore
aiming for the waves
feeling the pull & push of the ocean
swimming with it
going nowhere
catching waves
missing waves
touching the sand
catching the last wave
running up the beach to finish
done.
That was fun.

Jen Gwynne

The "sore shoulders swim"

Did anyone see him?  The ghost with the lump of coal on his shoulder where the chip should be!

Old Pat Date.  Died 2 days after he retired in 1987.

Railway Man. Hard as nails!

Novocastrian… Old Newcastle!

He used to say that there were 2 types of people in this world: “Those who come from Newcastle and those who drive past.”

I reckon he saw the entry list and the addresses of the Sydney-siders and it was he who blew that southerly in just before the start.  Just to make them welcome and know they’d been to Newcastle.
He loved his footy played in the forwards too.  Hard! Uncompromising! Simple!

And that was what this swim was today. 2.5km straight into a southerly breeze, not a buster because that would be rude to our guests, but strong enough.  Hard!

No 2 strokes were the same. There was no length to the swell; chop, chop, chop. You had to concentrate to maintain stroke and momentum otherwise you’d stand still.  Especially when you were tired.  You could see who the pool swimmers were. They struggled.  Uncompromising!

I spent most of this swim not taking in the scenery (this really is a postcard swim) or watching the ever-changing sea bottom but instead I went back to my youth rowing surf boats recalling lessons from Mick & Don Ellercamp (osc.c’s uncle) “long and strong” and “catch and drive”.  This was secret to today’s swim. If you got a bad stroke, make sure the next one was better.  A long stroke with a good catch to get drive you through the chop and the rips coming out of the Cowrie Hole and Shark Alley. Simple!

This was a swim that demanded attention to detail and your stroke.  This was an Ocean Swim in the best way.  Most of the talk on the beach and in the sheds was disbelief.  ‘How hard was that?’  What about the chop!’  ‘My bloody shoulders!’  But the faces told a different story; smiles and a glint in the eye were the order of the day.

I loved seeing the old photos on Nobbys and Newcastle surf clubs and again being immersed in Old Newcastle.  Good to compare with my alma mater Caves Beach SLSC.  Same but different!

Then into New Newcastle for breakfast with The Hyphen at Scotties.  Bacon and eggs with coffee.  Simple but fancy.  I reckon Old Pat would be happy with that.

The Grey Nurse

Killer Swim 2013 - it really was the BEST EVER

The Killer Swim runs from the manicured riperian lawns
before the Mur'bah Rowing Club.

Best ever everything - best ever water quality; best ever number of swimmers (170 individual swimmers entered); best ever Celebrity Starter - Olympic Legend Mike Wenden; best ever Charity group of swimmers (Cantoo brought 22 swimmers down from Brisbane, including Cantoo Founder, Annie Crawford); best ever after presentation music, Mr Tony (ex- Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs band member) - with apologies to James T and Tomahawks; and best ever swim -past by a brace of  dolphins cavorting upriver, past the Riverview Hotel deck, just after the presentations were finished. What a magnificent sight!

Killer called it the "Loved Up" swim - the number of families, in all their glorious combinations, was a feature of this year's swim. Husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, parents and children, siblings - we had them all. Local heroes, Brass Monkeys, Donna and David Dalzell, won their age groups in the 1.2 swim. Gomer Pile, who had the original idea for the swim, swam with his daughter Kelly Bond, and everywhere you looked there were family members giving each other encouragement and support. The Cantoo group brought their enthusiasm and energy and created a great buzz. Huge thanks to Amy Bridle for her efforts in coordinating the group. The crew from Casino Crackups, once again, added their smiles and friendliness to the mix. Everywhere you looked there were loyal supporters for our swim from corners far and wide.

CanToo's new Brisbane chapter made
the Killer Swim one of their goal swims.

Winners everywhere you looked, but prizes can only go to a select few. Gareth McClurg got a "Nailed It" in the 400 metre nominated time swim - how does a precise 7:02 sound! Young guns Morgan Buzzell (watch this space) and Alexander Milliken were first female and male home in the 1.2 km swim. Michael Sheil blitzed the field in a superfast 30:43 in the 2.5 km swim and Tina Duckmanton went back-to-back to be the first female home in the 2.5.

Amanda Sterling was presented with one of Glistening Dave's superb calenders, to recognise her being the first online entry this year. The free BBQ provided by Bort, amiable publican at the Riverview, proved a real winner. The best sausage is always a free sausage.
Mark down the last Sunday in November for the 2014 edition of the Killer Swim.

Marc Vining

Some days, it all comes together

Start of the 1km: Chris Ivin - 1 World Images

Island Challenge, Coogee, Sunday, Nov 24, 2013

Some days, it all comes together: the water is clear, not too cool; the wind puffs across your noggin, not too strident; so there might be some chop, but it’s not too difficult; the swell drives you rather then confronts you; the course strings out the peloton rather than bunches it; there is a nice bottom to watch, so you’re endlessly amused; and there are no blueys.

Today at Coogee was one of those days.

We reckon Coogee is the bumpiest beach in Sydney. We put it down to the swell and chop being caught in the bay inside the island and between the northern and southern rock shelves. So often, swimming at Coogee is more up and down than straight ahead; no two strokes are the same; and you spend so much precious energy – all the more precious as you get older – building your momentum after each chop hits you in the face and brings you to an halt.

Laying down the law? Or a bit of advice?

Today was Coogee bumpy, alright, but it wasn’t a difficult bump. The water was lively, and it seemed to push us forward. The swell was coming from the nor’east, but the breeze came from the sou’-east. A set would come through and we’d rise and fall on it, but as we fell, we seemed to accelerate down the back, sliding as if on a toboggan down the hill at Thredbo.

We felt good all the way out to the island. The only pity with this swim, come to think of it, is that they take you so far to the side of the island, then out behind, then so far to the southern side, keeping you out of harm’s way all the way around, that you barely see the clump of rocks that goes by the Wedding Cake moniker. If you’re lucky, you will see the foam of crashing waves, but they won’t let you get anywhere near it for fear you’ll get caught up in the break and dumped onto the rocks. They’re sensitive about the course here: a couple of years back, we stopped out behind the island at the far out turning booee, and we noticed that, if you swam a straight line between that far out booee and the next one, just inside the island but on the southern side, the course actually took you straight across the rocks.

That was an aberrant course, that day, and it won’t happen again, we’re sure. The corollary is that the closest we got to Wedding Cake today was to glide over a seaweed wafting reef, glorious in itself, but at well more than arm’s length from the island. (To swim closer, you need to come down to Coogee on a Sundee morn in autumn, winter or early spring and swim with one of the regular, informal groups that round the island most mornings. If the conditions are right, you can almost touch the island as you head around it. There’s no-one there to keep you out to sea out of harm’s way.)

1km start - Chris Ivin - 1 World Images.

Never mind. There were glories of another kind out behind Wedding Cake Island today. We stopped, as we do, by the far out booee to take pitchers, as we do. Within five minutes, we’d drifted 50 metres south in the current that rages along the coast just out to sea. There’s always some kind of current out behind Wedding Cake. One year, we were bobbing around, and we drifted 50m in five minutes that day, too, but that time, it was 50m in towards the reef. It is a precarious course, and you can see why the awginizahs must be careful in where they set the booees.

It was a surreal swim. The ocean of jellies just below the surface provided a grab bag of half-set jelly to pull us through the water. What were they? Salps? Like the jellies that infested Long Bay on the day of the Malabar Magic swim a few years back? They weren’t stingers, thank de Load.

This laydee was there to enjoy the swim, not to win it.

The other glory out behind the island was the swell. The sea was an intriguing combination of the nor’-east swell with the sou’-east breeze. Once you got out there, even before reaching the far out turning booee, the swell picked you up from behind and continually thrust you forward. Through water that was already lively, it was a double rush, a double thrill, the push coming through as dependably as the pendulum on a grandfather clock. You’d be pulling yourself along on a handful of salps, then suddenly your legs would lift and you’d be rushing downhill. You could feel the acceleration; you’d leave that leading arm out there a bit longer to make a better torpedo, to minimise the resistance and maximize the streamline… Then you’d drop off the back, slowing. But in that lively water, you wouldn’t come to a dead stop: you’d keep some of that momentum, and you’d build on it when the next swell came through, picking up your feet and thrusting you down its face.

Normally, when you get a following swell, there is an optimal angle to the swell that allows you to get along the course with maximum assistance. Today was different, we suspect because the breeze out there was coming from a different direction to the swell. Once you veered from the optimum direction for swell assistance – you couldn’t keep on that bearing if you wanted to stay on the swim course – normally, you’d swim through a flat patch: not dead, but not as helpful as it had just been. This time, though, when you turned in and a little north of west towards the beach, you picked up the chop driven by the sou’-east breeze, and it was on again. There wasn’t quite as much of a drive, because it was breeze and chop driving you now, not a swell, but the forward thrust was there, and the momentum survived the drop off the back as the chop trotted through. Maybe, with the sou’-easter blowing from an early hour, it was starting to build its own swell. We said Coogee was bumpy, and this is one reason why.

Salps? Some kind of jellies.

The water was crystalline. You could see that as soon as you got through the break and past the dancing clumps of weed that played around your legs as you surged seaward. One elite laydee came up from beneath a wave with a broad, uprooted leaf of spiny weed on her head, hanging down over one eye, like a fascinator on Cup Day. She grabbed it and threw it aside, as an abdicating queen.

But the clarity of the water was clear and forceful as soon as we got through that break, and it sustained that clarity all the way around the island. There is something very sensual about swimming in clear water, when every grain of sand sparkles from its beige background, allowed at last to speak for itself.

Yes, it was a lovely day at Coogee.

Our GPS-in-a-plastic bag said our course around Wedding Cake was 2.44km.

• Flick through Sevadevi's pictorial essay of the Island Challenge at Coogee... click here
• Check Greg Hincks's blob... click here

Re-run of a day a bit like this one

 Dawny's Cockatoo Challenge, Balmain

Wave 2 heads across Thunderbolt's Strait.

“It was a day… you know, it was a day, a little bit like this one… You remember how it was, Steve?...”

Thus, Bruce Springsteen introduces his rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, about a night, just a’fore Xmas, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, when Santa came a’visit’n’.

Thus it was today, at Dawny, on the 11th iteration of the Dawny Cockatoo Island swim, the 10th anniversary of the first inaugural Dawny’s Cockatoo Challenge… It was a day, a little bit like this one…

Quite a bit, in fact. The morning of the 1st inaugural Dawny’s Cockatoo Challenge in November 2003 was grey and damp. There was a mist over the harbour between the Dawny pool and Cockatoo Island. The kind of morning on which we’d all shun a swim in the harbour, because it looked sharky.
It was the morning after the Rugby World Cup Final at the Olympic stadium, and you could be excused – understood, at least – if you’d had a sore head. The cloud was low, on the verge of rain. It was quiet, still, no wind, and the mist seemed to hang there over Thunderbolt’s Strait, between Balmain and Cockatoo Island, and out of it could have stormed a thousand screaming Scotsmen, freeballing across the heather, their sporrans jiggling and their battleaxes a’swinging… But out of the mist instead, at the end of the 1.1km swim, sprinted Deke Zimmerman, then the usual suspect winner of many of Sydney’s ocean swim events. On that occasion, the 1.1km swim was run ahead of the 2.4km main event and you could do both.

(Randomly, we ran into Deke at Circular Quay a few weeks back: he was casually deckhanding on the river service, from which we’d just alighted. He has a beard now. He was cheerful, as usual. It was good to see him.)

Anyone can be a mug lair.

On this iteration, it was grey and damp. There wasn’t a mist over the harbour, but the rain squalled through as the peloton rounded the western end of Cockatoo Island. That’s what ocean swimming… er, open water swimming on this occasion, is all about: you take all conditions in your stride, shoulder to shoulder, cheek by jowel, finger tip to cracked heel. It’s what makes our caper different from swimming in a 25m indoor pool. It was humankind against the elements: Throw at us what you will, oh Lord!, as they no doubt were shouting hallucinatorily up the road in The Hills at that very moment. We can take it.

It was a day more than a little bit like that one…

There is something about swimming in Sydney Harbour that makes it a different experience to swims in the ocean. It's not just that it's the harbour, thus the water quality and nature are different. It's more than just that the over-riding stream of sub-consciousness whilst swimming in the harbour is focussed completely on the prospect of being taken by a bull shark. And it's not only that you're surrounded by an evocative maritime heritage and built environment blended with some of the most stunning natural topography available. In the world.

It's all those things together and more. So much more that we can't tell you. We need you to tell all of us. So, please, comment (use the link at the bottom) on your own consciousness about swimming in the harbour. What does it mean to you? What's happened to you whilst swimming in the harbour? Over in San Francisco, our cobber, Gary Emich, recently racked up his 1,000th Alcatraz swim. Swimming in San Francisco Bay also is different. A cobber at Dawny today, Susan Tutt, told us a story that she'd been told by her dad.

Susan's dad used to sail in Sydney Harbour (he worked at Garden Island). Sometimes, he'd capsize, but he reckoned there was no history at all of sailors from capsized yatchets being taken by bull sharks. Why? We thought it may have been something to do with the rigging of the yatchet -- the mast, the stays, etc -- discouraged the noahs, much like sticking cable ties on your bike helmet and making yourself look like an eejit discourages maggies in September.



The squall we mention was just one element thrown at us during this 11th Dawny’s Cockatoo Challenge. It ran anti-clockwise, as it has the last couple of years, due to a timing issue with the ferry services into Cockatoo Island. They ran us under the wharf, in fact, which was a little hairy at high tide: it was a narrow gap under the walkway out to the wharf proper, and the stream of peloton compressed as we approached the opening. Did you know, the underside of the wharf is a mess of cables. Thank goodness it wasn’t a spring tide or a king tide. We coulda bin lectrocewted.

But through the wharf, we spread out again. It kept us close to the wall, though, so we were swimming also through the backwash from the wall, through the chop from the swim. Any second now, we thought, we’ll find out what it’s like to be sliced by an oyster. Other than when it slips in our hand whilst opening with an oyster knife. It was a Melbourne-way-of-running swim, and some swimmers, like the horses, cannot handle it.

At the end of the island, we spied the squall approaching. The leaders of the peloton were into it already, and when it hit us, a little later – for we are not leaders-of-the-peloton type of people – it blotted out our views of Drummoyne and Spectacle Island, and even much of the heritage sheds towering over us on Cockatoo Island. We crossed docks, hugged stone-stacked breakwalls, slipped by formworked wharves and wove our ways through the mess of mob swimming. Every now and again, some mug would draw up alongside, and it would spur us into trying harder, for we’d decided this was a trying harder swim for us. We stopped briefly twice to adjust our gogs, but otherwise we didn’t stop at all: not for pitchers, not fer nuthin. Cept for one, and you can see that on this page.

Eventually, we spied the final turning booee, which most of the mugs around us seemed to have missed. The brief at the start had been that we should turn right at the first turning booee, but most of these eejits just seemed to keep going along the Cockatoo Island littoral. We headed on an angle across the peloton, past the booee, and lit out across Thunderbolt’s Strait.

The crush of the peloton.

About half way across, something surreal happened: we found ourselves staring into our own goggles. Two orange caps had hoven up next to us, apparently putting on something of a final sprint. It spurred us on and we accelerated – all things are relative – and at one stage, we turned to breathe right, and one of them turned to breathe left, and we were so close that we could have played tonsil hockey, were that our predilection. But it was like looking into a mirror, for this character was wearing exactly the same goggles as we wear: View Fully Sicks (V200A-MR). They’re a distinctive gog, with their pale blue frame, their clear silicone straps, and their orange mirrored lenses. That’s why we call them Fully Sick. They’re very groovy. We sold some to a friend who, when she put them on, her 7-year-old son said, “Mum, they’re fully sick”. We love them. We’ve been wearing this model gog for 15 years, and they’re still perfect for us. Whilst we rave about them constantly, however, we still don’t see that many of them around (we sell them online, by the way, just in case you’d like to try them out). So it was surreal to see them staring us in the face, up close and personal.

Passing through the final bit of moored squadron of yatchets off the Dawny pool, we struck out left, a bit too far left, then had to correct, but we reached the stairs to the pontoon at the same time as this cove with the mirrored Fully Sicks. And as we entered the walkway to the shore, we remarked to each other about our gogs. And we said to him, “Where did you get them?”, expecting a response that would then lead into our sales pitch. But he said, “From you”. It’s good to know that the sales pitch works sometimes.

Under the Cockatoo Island Wharf... Can you pick the gap?

A bit of a footnote: one of the sponsors of the Dawny swim is Balmain Sports Medicine, a bunch of youngsters of allied disciplines led by James Sutherland, our physio by appointment (if you can get an appointment to see him), accompanied by Aaron Pigeon, our masseur by appointment (easier to get an appointment to see Aaron), et al. It was good to see James, Aaron and various of their professional cobbers do the swim, too. The trouble is they’re all such fit looking characters. They make us feel inadequate.

Another lovely morn on the boardwalk in the rain.

Norm McIntyre won the Olympus camera as part of the fine ocean swimmers' series 2014. And Gavin Mahoney won the carton of James Squire.

Real footnote: There was a bit of an incident in the laydees' showers at the Dawny pool afterwards when a young lass who doesn’t carry much in the way of insulation was being treated by her mother for hypothermia: mum had her under the hottest shower she could draw from the change room taps. Luckily, Mrs Sparkle, a registered nurse, and her cobber, Judy Playfair, a teacher also with a deal of commonsense, happened by and influenced the treatment. Mum resisted; thought she knew best.

Rather than throw an hypothermia sufferer under a scalding shower (we learnt the folly of this when we did it to ourselves in mid-winter Victoria once), the sufferer must be re-warmed slowly. Dry them, remove them from wind, rain, etc, wrap them in warm stuff, eg blankets, space blanket, dry clothes, a sleeping bag, shower them (without the blankets and clothes) in a lukewarm shower, warming gently. Feed them warm, sweet drinks. Warm them slowly and gently. No direct high or sudden heat.

Mums don’t always know best.

Our GPS-in-a-plastic bag told us we swam 2.51km around Cockatoo Island.