Here’s a kiss from Gary the Groper for Valentine’s Day folks! If you want it for real, head out to the rocks at The Bower surf break, you might be lucky! Well it was rather dull and dreary today especially when we heard that there were lots of bluebottles about but around 250 turned up...

Pauline, entering her guard of honour. Congrats on 1000km with B & B.   Congrats also for Ingrid on her 1000km, Ingrid swam early and we missed her, but this is a lovely photo of her and Miss Polly Dog.   Lots of Yogi’s today.   Can’t believe it was 24.0 degrees today.   Beautiful...

Checkout the important notices at the bottom of the blog about: 1. Tomorrow’s B&B dinner. 2. Random logon prizes. 3. Charity film screenings at Manly Art Gallery. 4. Volunteers wanted for Royal Far West. 5. Next 10k swim 24 Feb.   The 5:45 crew.     6:30 crew.   Classic bags on the wall.  ...

  This morning, a little overcast to start with but a beautiful morning for a swim and over 500 others thought so as well. It’s a dry blog for me today as I am out of the water for 3 weeks. Luckily Nurse Daph is always on hand for a little TLC. Anyway, enough about...

Well a huge congratulations to the 6km and 10km badge swimmers today.  While I was supporting my daughter in her rowing efforts (see photo at bottom) two of my people were slogging it out for 4 hours in the water earning their 10km summer badge.   This was following up from their 6km effort just...

No I am not talking about Scrappy Scotty around the rocks… or a sabotaging Richie (who tried to slice me with a cuttlefish today)… I am talking about the dreaded bluebottle! Even the sky looked ominous this morning…   A good line up of A-teamers this morning. It was James’ 40th birthday last weekend, which...

This morning as we headed down to Manly beach the sunrise was spectacular and we were full of hope that the bluey attack of yesterday would be behind us and it would be perfect conditions for our swim. But alas there were still reports of blueys. Murray and his team from Babewatch have been in...

It was with some trepidation that 340-odd swimmers (including 10 brave newbies) entered the water this morning.  The water temperature was a pleasant 23 degrees but news of blue bottles at the Point soon filtered through the milling throng.   Above: The view looking north. Most decided to swim north, although this too resulted in...

With a low tide and a touch of last weeks East swell, the new Southerly ground swell made for some nice small waves further up the beach but even the low tide couldn’t convince them to break at the point. None of that mattered this morning as the bathtub 23 degree conditions made for ideal...

Water, the ocean, appears in many ancient stories, be it Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and almost all of the religious texts. Usually as a metaphor for chaos and foreboding, the dark deep unknown. But it isn’t just a chaotic, fearful place to be avoided. There’s a recurring theme of it as the necessary chaos from which order is...