Holiday swims

We had crummy weather for the start of the holidays; to the extent that it snowed on the mountain on Christmas Day - this is a snap from the Pinnacle web cam.

Now things have settled down and we have these pleasant sunny days; very high UV risk but only about 20° max. I have swum three times in the last four days. I've got a problem with my shoulder at the moment and I've been nervous waiting to see how it would affect swimming. I can scull backwards and breaststroke but I can't freestyle (overarm).

This is Long Beach at Sandy Bay in Hobart. It's only 5km from the city centre, so it's generally Tasmania's most crowded. This is about 6.30 at night in January, still around 16° and there's only a handful of people around. I swam out to the pontoon and lazed in the sun a bit.

Tonight I went back and did the same. My favourite is Hinsby Beach which is further down river: 20 mins drive compared to ten for Long Beach. But if Long Beach is this empty in the early evening, I'm happy to swim here. I only go to the beach to swim, then get dry and head off. I swam 3 hours ago and still have the happy clean and tired feeling.

I manage to not drown

Elf and I took the wave ski to Sandy Bay for a paddle on the Derwent the other morning. Well, I was going to paddle and she was going to read on a park bench. I left the life vest in the car – I paddled out then remembered it so I came back in, and Elf had it. I put it on and went back out.

This was the day the first yachts were finishing the Sydney Hobart race, so there was a fair amount of action out on the water, and a helicopter or two overhead. It was pretty choppy, and reasonably hard work going against the swell.

I decided to just paddle out to the last mooring buoys, about 500m, then take in the view of the yachts coming upriver. After a while I turned 180° to enjoy the view back to the shore – this is when you are likely to get flipped over but I did it quickly and successfully.

After a while I decided to turn 180° again and this time – flip. I was in the water. We have a tether on the paddle, so that was one bit of good preparation. And I had the vest (not on as tight as it should have been though – it went up around my head straight away). I got hold of the strap on the side of the wave ski and just hung on for a bit while I considered options. I quickly realised that climbing back on was not going to be easy.

The good thing about a wave ski is they are very simple things, you sit on top of them and they are very buoyant. They are sealed, and won't fill with water or capsize. I needed to get back onto it but I didn't need to get back into it.

I started sidestroking towards the shore just to make some progress. I was staying calm fortunately. A motor yacht went past in the distance with a few dozen people on it, some looking my way. I thought I could wave to them, but things seemed to be under control – so I would save myself the embarrassment and just keep slowly swimming and hanging on.

Once I got to the next set of mooring buoys I grabbed on to them and had a little rest. If the worst happened and the wave ski got away from me while I was trying to climb back on, at least I had the buoys. Then I started trying to get on.

I have done this once in shallower water, (where you can get some purchase on the seabed) and I remember ending up with my head at the bow end. You can sort of roll over sideways OK if you are face down, but if you are oriented the wrong way its hard to fix without falling off.

So I got my head to the correct end towards the stern, and pulled my top half aboard, and grabbed onto the elasticated luggage straps right at the back. Then getting my legs swung aboard took so long. I really thought I'd be coming off it again at least once, but eventually I was face down on the thing, out of the water.

Another little rest. Then I did the roll over thing and I was face up, but sitting much too far forward. I managed to scooch my butt back into the seat, pulled in the paddle and ta-da, I was on my way back to shore. They really are very stable and forgiving craft, and it just underlines how incompetent I was letting myself get dumped out.

All through this I imagined Elf had seen me and was having conniptions about my safety. As a full and frank record of the events I must reveal that she was actually entranced the whole time by a great dane puppy.

2 days late I am a bit muscle-sore from all the struggling, but none the worse for wear.

The commute to high school

This is a companion piece to the whinge below about my day of driving, for a bit of perspective. I never really mind driving down to Taroona. Outside of rush hour when traffic lights are actually helpful, you can avoid them altogether. And the view is pretty stunning. The schoolbus takes the same route. Here are a few highlights.

Urban paddling

I was moved to go for an early paddle on Sunday morning, so I lurched out of bed at about 7.30 and took the wave ski down to Marieville Esplanade. There is a small beach and a large yacht club. I tried the beach first and the water seemed a bit industrial. I hopped in the car to drive further down the river when I saw Ned and his mum Sharon walking the dog. Ned is in Marcus' grade at school. They just moved into an old house in the street on Saturday. Sharon told me a good place to launch, so I turned around and went back to the yacht club. There is a nice bit of shelving gravel where they launch their rowboats, so I put in there. The water was like glass. I spent about 40 minutes paddling out beyond the moored yachts, over towards Battery Point, then back towards Wrest Point. The surface had freshened up by then with occasional wakes from larger craft out in the river, but it was still very pleasant. Looking back to shore I could see that I was only about 200 meters from Coles Sandy Bay, our supermarket. One of the yachts had been recently and badly painted orange, and its name (apparently written with a fat felt pen) was Orange Drama.


View Larger Map

Once I was back on land I dried off a bit and popped in to see Sharon and Ned's new place. Ned's dad Barney is a professional demolition man. He has a decent sized business, taking down buildings and structures. And he loves it - he told Elf once that although his family hoped he would go into law, "I just love blowing things up". He was very matter-of-fact about pulling the back half of the house off and starting again. I'm impressed that they can see so clearly what they want to do. When I look at a property I can't even look beyond ugly curtains.