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Somewhat to my surprise, I completed the swim round Burgh Island just fine. As I’d thought, the swim was a bit easier once we got round the back of the island, and easier still once we were on the home strait swimming into the shore. When we landed, one of the Cornish ladies said that she hadn’t been able to see Olivia at all, but she could always see my bright orange towbuoy, so she followed that. And Ian’s wife Jill, who had walked over to the island and followed our progress from the top of the cliffs, remarked that she had been able to see us the whole way – or rather, she’d been able to see my towbuoy.

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Burgh Island from Bantham

They’re fabulous things, towbuoys – if you’re an open water swimmer I strongly recommend having one for those times when you want to be seen. And, let’s face it, if you’re out in the sea or in a large body of water, why wouldn’t you want to be seen? And they in no way impede your swimming; in fact, to call them a towbuoy is a slight misnomer, since you don’t tow them. They actually draft you, riding along on the water you pull in your wake, so that there’s absolutely no effort at all in wearing one. (In fact, at a couple of points during the Burgh Island swim, my towbuoy swam faster than me and I turned to breathe to see it merrily passing me).

It was interesting after the swim talking to Kathrine and Ian, both much better swimmers than me and much more experienced in the sea.  Kathrine had loved the swim, and came out grinning hugely. Ian too had enjoyed it. It was me, with my lack of experience in that sort of swimming, who hadn’t.

I had the chance to test this a week later, when I went down with a bunch of other SLSC’ers to Knoll Beach in Studland Bay to do the wonderful Seahorse Swim, organised by East Dorset Open Water Swimming Club. This is a swim which has taken place for the last four years around a 2 kilometre course around the bay. You can either do the 2 k course, or you can do the 4 k (ie, you go round twice!), and you can do it wetsuited or non-wetsuited.  I signed up for the 4 k wetsuit.

On the day, we were lucky with the weather. When we arrived, the sky was overcast and the sea almost flat calm, but it was forecast to get choppy later. There was also a bit of swell, and once we started at 10, the first problem I had was coping with the currents. I’d set off swimming as I thought towards the first buoy at 1 o’clock, and then look up a few strokes later and find myself swimming towards 3 o’clock, or 11 o’clock. I just could not work out a line, and spent the first ten minutes or so of the swim zig-zagging to and fro. After rounding the first buoy, at the sharp end of the diamond, I headed off to the second buoy only to find myself swimming into a friendly paddle-boarder stationed on the outside of the swim area to prevent any stray swimmers heading off into the Atlantic. She grinned and pointed “That way”.

After that I kind of worked it out, although tide and swell were still a bit of a problem (even the huge buoys used in these swims are not massively visible from half a kilometre away, particularly not if you’re short-sighted like me. In swell, my sighting tends to go “Sight – billow. Sight – billow. Sight – bugger, was that the buoy? Sight – YES, that’s the buoy!”)  However, I got round the first lap, no worries. It was during the second lap that things got a bit interesting.

More tomorrow.