29/01/2011 – Round The Head Super Swim Accomplished

Over 83 Bold & Beautiful swimmers.

The regular swim was led by John Bond and Jenny Knapman, thanks guys, and guess what…..

THEY SAW A TURTLE !  How cool is that 🙂  I’ve been swimming this area close on every day for over 6 years and I have only ever seen a turtle at North Steyne once and in the harbour twice.  A very rare treat, how very special.

10 Swimmers decided to attack the Round the Head Super Swim: Little Manly to Manly and we survived, we’re all back and accounted for 🙂

As we were walking to our start which was Little Manly, I do recall some random comments such as I can’t beleive there are 10 “beep” idiots that are actually really going to do this… oh yes they were, namely:

Ben Hutt, Brendan Maher, Collie Kinsela, Iain McGregor, Jan Beacham, Julie Isbill, Kelly Johnson, Michael Christie, Richard Agius and Roberto Suares.

We also had the extremly fortunate company of:

• James Ley, our ever faithful, loyal labrador present paddling right by our sides, along with
• Christine Armour, who came with ski, pladdle and first aid kit in a back pack – what a super star
• Olly Rees driving the extremly useful inflatable boat accompanied by the ever diligent look out girl and blue bottle remover, Aelwyn Norton
• Tony Stuart arrived for the regular swim, heard we were going round the heads, so after finishing his B&B swim raced home with Sheri Deacon and Peter Bowes in tow to get his fabulous boat and arrived full of smiles and cheers just as we were approaching North Head, it couldn’t have been more perfect timing.
• Sheri and Aelwyn were busying taking photos amongst all their other ‘duties’ so I’m sure we’ll see some great shots soon.

This was an amazing gesture by all the unofficial support crew who made our adventure possible – THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH YOU GUYS ARE THE TRUE UNSUNG HEROES OF THE MORNING !

Despite Magic Seaweed’s swell report of n/a updated this morning to 3ft there was some serious swell out there by anyone’s standard resulting in a few pale faces on the craft and a fish feeding session from one of the swimmers.

As for the South Easterly wind predictions, clearly it was North Easterly as we each became intimately acquainted with ~20 decent sticky blue bottles out there.  Even the paddlers and Olly and Aelwyn had their fair share encounters as they assisted with the removal of some of our more persistant friends.

BUT, you know what….  WE DID IT and IT WAS TRULY AMAZING !

The cliff line was stunning, the scenery was breathtaking, the water was a delightful blue, the array of non stinging jellys floating around was amazing.  Then as we left Dead Mans and headed towards the Bower we swum upon the magnificant rock shelf absolutely inundated with tropical fish, it really was absolutely stunning.  Upon approach of the Bower and feeling a slightly early sense of accomplishment we were greeted by cheers and waves from up on the headlandand, it was John Bond, Tim Ettle and Linda Goodwin, that was a welcomed cheer.

Above all the company was first class and we did it, 3 hours and 16 minutes 🙂

We had a welcome committee on the beach too which was lovely but very unexpected as we took and extra ~45 minutes or so due to the very regular blue bottle removal pit stops.

Great work every one a fantastic morning, thank you !

New challenge: ‘Across the Heads’  , Saturday 12th February…

We were joined quite by accident but certainly with pleasure at our celebratory breakfast by Murray Cox, the guy who is swimming from Palm Beach to Botany Bay over 7 months by swimming all the ocean swims then filling in all the gaps himself.  Well… in two weeks, on Saturday 12th Febraury at ~7.30am Murray plans to swim from Quarentine to Camp Cove – yep, you got it, that’s across the heads !  Murray would welcome the company of any B&B swimmers, paddlers and boats….  Michael and I are in, anyone else ???  Please let me know if you are in and in what capacity as we will need to plan ahead and organise logistics, such as the call pooling of people and equipment for the journey home 🙂

Great photos including one of yesterday courtesy of Tim Ettle, thank you.

Water Temperature 24.2 degrees.
Sunrise 6.13am.
Sunset 8.03pm.
Low Tide: 12.16am.
High Tide: 6.06pm.