OW Swimming meet-ups 2014

Kurt Godel

2 or 3km planned this evening from 6pm, Wicklow Harbour, all welcome!

Kurt Godel

Brittas Bay South Car Park, 6pm tonight

About 4 or 5km planned, there'll be about 5 or 6 of us there if anyone fancies joining in. Water is lovely and warm these days, suit optional!

Amage

Hi I'm a newbie to this board but just wanted to let any southerners know of more OW swim training in Youghal. Every Sunday morning at 9 & Wednesday evening at 7 there is an open water swim session at Claycastle beach with 750m course laid out and a safety boat present. All levels welcome, this is being run by the new club in Youghal, South Coast Tri Club. Those looking for a longer distance we have plenty of swimmers doing the course multiple times. Sunday morning sessions are followed by a run

Kurt Godel

For anyone at a loose end, Brittas Bay South Car Park, 5:30pm tonight.

5km planned, should be a little choppy, tasty salty fun guaranteed.

Kurt Godel

Brittas Bay South, 5pm in da water, 6km planned, anyone looking for swimming company welcome.

MojoMaker

Fair play to you for throwing these out there KG, time is too early for me personally but these sound like a great opportunity to get some OW practice in. Do you ever venture northside?

Kurt Godel

MojoMaker wrote: »

Fair play to you for throwing these out there KG, time is too early for me personally but these sound like a great opportunity to get some OW practice in. Do you ever venture northside?

I'm rarely Northside I'm afraid. I just throw these up in case someone might be looking for company- its always better to swim in a group. As it was this evening, we just got 3.75km in, and got a valuable lesson that you can't take water safety for granted. There can be weird drags and currents at Brittas, and with the supermoon the tidal drag is ferocious today. We (myself and my buddy) swam the length of the bay, about 2.8km in 42 minutes. Turned at a headland, took a bearing and started for home. I checked on my watch a couple of times- after a further 30 mins swimming we had travelled just 450m, and were being dragged too far out. We decided to make for the beach, but that was a battle in itself. There was a strong riptide that was stopping us from getting in. It took a whole lot of hard swimming to break through for shore, and we were pretty glad to make it out unscathed. The sea itself looked relatively flat, but you just can't fight that tidal drag.

No matter how strong a swimmer you are, the sea is always stronger!

MojoMaker

Very interesting, and a sobering bit of advice - thanks for letting us know. Were the lifeguards aware of this?

Kurt Godel

MojoMaker wrote: »

Very interesting, and a sobering bit of advice - thanks for letting us know. Were the lifeguards aware of this?

There were signs up warning of strong currents, but we swam further than the area patrolled by the two lifeguard huts (still within their vision though). Talking to them afterwards they knew it was rough down there. We had the failsafe of letting the current pull us along, and we could exit by rocks at the headland, as a last resort, but it didn't come to that.

I don't want to make a huge deal out of it, we are good OW swimmers, and were always in control (in the sense that we could exit), just that every now and then you get a reminder of the power of the sea, and that reminder is no bad thing.

MojoMaker

Yes definitely. Pays never to get complacent.