The September 2019 Otter Aquatics newsletter is now out. Click here to see articles on: 

        Return to Murrumba Downs on Sunday 1st September
        Video stroke analysis
        International and domestic swimming holidays
        A possible new European swimming tour: the Triple Swiss
        Swimmers’ pesky ears: more on Swimmers’ Ear
        Exercise boosts longevity in middle and old age
        Stroke tip of the month: more on freestyle breathing
        Quiz of the month
        Quote of the month
        Thought of the month
        Pic of the month

​No matter how hard I try to cajole or threaten swimmers to provide a few words about their swimming story, I still have received no more than a couple. Despite my threat to write their story myself, I doubt that it would be worth the consequent threats on my life. So what to do? Write about myself, I suppose. OK, here goes, but only to provide encouragement to others to write their swimming story for this blog.
 
As I am about to turn 70, I can reflect on the fact that I’ve been a swimmer of sorts for about 65 years. I learned to swim at the age of about five (in my final ‘test’, I panicked so much I had to be rescued!); I was a completely unremarkable member of  the swimming squad at school but, as a young adult, I was a keen body surfer on Sydney’s fabulous beaches. But I was never an especially good swimmer; in fact, I doubt if I ever did any good in any race as a youngster, let alone win one. I guess I didn’t have sufficient natural ability or the will to train harder, or both. Probably I didn’t see any point in mindlessly swimming up and down a pool. I continued to swim frequently as a young to middle aged adult but it was mostly as a training adjunct to running.
 
Then, 30 or so years ago, I was holidaying with my family at a small coastal town in northern New South Wales when I noticed a couple of people swimming out from one beach, around a headland, and in through the surf at the next beach along the coast, a relatively modest distance of not much more than one kilometre. I wanted to do just that. So I spent the rest of that holiday swimming out from the first beach in progressively longer distances battling with a variety of anxieties: deep water, sharks and other nasties underneath, and distance off shore, telling myself that the only thing I had to fear was fear itself (misquoting FDR’s famous words), or something like that. By the end of the holiday, I had done it! When I swam in through the surf at the second beach, I passed a surfer sitting on his board. ‘Where did you come from?’ he asked. ‘New Zealand’ was my jesting reply. But I was hooked. I was over the moon with this simple achievement and the sheer beauty of being ‘out there’ and I have never looked back. Stupidly, a couple of years later, I did this swim at night, using the navigation light at the end of the breakwater as my first sighting point, then a lighthouse as my second, then the lights of the surf club to guide me through the surf into the beach. It was also good but it was a foolish thing to do and I wouldn’t do it again nor would I recommend anyone else to do it.
 
About ten years ago, a faulty ticker forced me to retire from ‘proper’ work and I turned to doing what I love: swimming. For the next few years I earned a very modest income teaching and coaching swimming, training surf lifesavers and pool lifeguards and sometimes taking others on swimming tours to exotic parts of the world. I tell all my swimming friends and students that real swimming is when you break the confines of a pool (breaking the ‘tyranny of the wall’ I tell them), rid yourself of the stench of chlorine on your body and in your hair and get into the open water. These days I swim three or four times a week with a few mates at local beaches where the water temperature never drops below about 16 degrees C in the middle of winter (and that’s quite cold enough thanks). I still conduct learn-to-swim instruction, mainly for adults, as well as pool-based swimfit and technique training and open water training but at a less frenetic pace these days.
 
I have had some modest swimming success, not by the lapsed time measured on a stopwatch but in the simple achievement of getting to a destination, in a number of distance swims in exotic locations around the world. I have swum in many of the world’s seas and oceans – all very gently and always taking the scenic route – including the Swedish, Finnish and German Baltic Sea coasts, the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the English Channel (no, not across it), the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic and, closer to home, various seas of the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans. I have also swum in lakes in Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia and Germany when I lived in Europe for a while (one swim in Germany was too late in the swimming season which brought with it a dose of hypothermia!). In 2014 I did the Hellespont in Turkey (aka the Dardanelles) – alas along it, not across it due to atrocious weather conditions that year – which gave me the idea to take like-minded aquaphiles on swimming-based holidays to Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia. And may there be many more! Swimming above the Arctic Circle in Finland (in summer!) is one goal as is swimming across the Straits of Gibraltar in a relay team. And I wouldn’t mind actually getting across the Hellespont one day.
 
Why do I find open water swimming (OWS) so good? Without trying to be too lyrical, it is because in the open water I am at one with nature, embraced and supported by ‘mother’ water and with no need to follow a silly black line or having to turn every 25 or 50 metres. Once I am warmed up and ‘in the zone’, I feel that I can swim forever … almost. In fact, I joke with those new to OWS that I need to set the alarm on my watch to remind me to stop. Distance swimming in the open water is a real meditation; in fact, I often recite some mantras to myself, sometimes with my eyes closed (which my swimming friends call my ‘Zen Swimming’ in a derogatory manner. It’s quite interesting to see where you end up after a spell of having your eyes closed!). OWS is also a good exercise in brain training – you really can teach yourself to swim in a straight(er) line using quite real brain training techniques. Of course, if conditions are cold and rough, it’s not as good, but one needs the occasional bad day to appreciate the good ones … probably. And nothing tastes quite as good as a post-OWS coffee.
 
Just remember that you don’t stop swimming when you get old; you get old when you stop swimming.

Go to http://www.otteraquatics.com.au/newletters.html to read all of our monthly newsletters, especially the latest one for August 2019. The following are articles you will find:
​

•         Queensland teenager completes a double Channel swim
•         Stroke tip of the month: bilateral breathing
•         Return to Murrumba Downs on 1st September
•         Shark Attack on Shelley Beach
•         Quiz of the month
•         Quote of the month
•         Ditty of the month
•         Pic of the month

The May 2019 issue of the Otter Aquatics newsletter is now out. Here is the list of contents:

• Winter venue for our Adults Learn-to-Swim, Stroke Correction and Swimfit training
• The Cliff-to-Club swim on Saturday 6th April
• A possible future Sydney swimtour
• A new series on health and fitness: in this issue, three yoga poses just for swimmers
• Quiz of the month
• Quote of the month
• Ditty of the month
• Vale Ray Williamson
• Pic of the month

Click here to access it.

Dear swimmers and others
 
Click here to see the March 2019 edition of the Otter Aquatics newsletter, Look inside to find:
 

•         The inaugural Redcliffe Cliff to Club swim on 6th April 2019
•         Martin Strel, ‘Fish Man’ and ‘Big Rivers Man’
•         Queen Beach North: Dog off-leash area campaign renewed
•         New goggles have arrived
•         Once Were the Happy Isles: A book to buy
•         Quiz of the month
•         New competition
•         Quote of the month
•         Ditty of the month
•         Pic of the month

Dear swimmers and others
 
Welcome to 2019! May all your New Year’s resolutions come true. Don’t have any? Try these:
 
             I will swim better
             I will get fitter
             I will relax and enjoy my swimming more.
 
Check out Otter Aquatics' February 2019 newsletter here to find articles on the following topics:
 
             Exercise and self esteem
             The inaugural Redcliffe Cliff to Club swim on 6th April 2019
             The truth about chlorine in pools
             Swimmers with poor vision
             The future of our swimming tour program
             Goggles on order
             Thought for the month: slow swimming
             Quiz of the month
             Quote of the month
             Ditty of the month
             Pic of the month

Check out the bumper Christmas edition of the Otter Aquatics newsletter here.

Stories include:

• Date claimers over the Christmas/New Year period
• Notable recent endurance swimming feats
• How to see in the water: advice to swimmers with poor vision
• A book to buy if you're looking for a Christmas present - or just a good book to read
  
• Shark Attack – Why does it happen?
• Swimming technique myth #3: you need to look forward so you can see where you are going
  
• 2019 European swimming holidays
  
• And our quiz, quote and pic of the month.

​If you’re looking for a Christmas present – or just a good book to read – check out this one. It isn’t much to do with swimming, but it certainly is adventurous.

​Publication date was 30th November and it is available now in good bookshops and from book distributors worldwide.

Check out the November 2018 edition of the Otter Aquatics newsletter to find out about:      

• Sharks – should we be worried about them as we venture into ocean swimming?

​

• Marine stingers – the curse of the open water swimmer

 

• Swimming technique myth #2: you need to pull past your hip

 

• 2019 European swimming holidays

 

• Exercise: the key to good heart health