Day 294 - Friday 15th July 2011

Last night was a revelation; no children joining us in bed at all – it almost felt lonely just the two of us! More of that please!!

I was at the Arch at 6.40am, no-one else there except some clothes (probably Shoichi & Paul & Damien), so a quick change and in I went. It was a low tide, which meant a short walk across the sand and out to the closest buoy. The sea was very calm indeed, hardly any movement at all, however it was cloudy again, so no star fish watching today. Without ay real intention of what to do I headed West instead of East and swam to the West pier; took about 20 minutes to get there against the tide (it was quite a strong tide underneath). The swim back to the Brighton Pier took around 16 minutes. I then headed out again went around the Brighton Pier and then back to land. Total swim 1 hr 8 seconds and temperature exactly 16 degrees. It was a weird one today with temperature when I was swimming to and from the West Pier; there seemed to be pockets of extreme warmth (probably as high as 18 degrees) and then pockets of extreme cold (probably as low as 13 degrees); this happened at least 8 -10 times.

A really nice swim though, really enjoyed it.

The Relay team is now starting to come together; so far Lindy, Shoichi, Paul and Alex have said that they would like to join me on this adventures; all decent swimmers and cool people to hang out with. There is concern about the sea sickness on the boat and that is probably the greatest concern at this point, so I will see how we can address that. We may all need to go out on a fishing boat and test our metal in that way. Also not everyone has regularly done 2 hours swimming in these temperatures, so that is also something I need to deal with by setting up a training schedule for everyone. As we don't need to tell the CSA who our team is until next year it gives everyone time to decide if they will stick with this or if it's not for them; everyone needs to be really up for this to make it work for everyone, so it would be daft to rush and finalise the team before the year end.

At this point Fiona has been really taken up with Angus’s swim, must have really taken its toll on her as she was the driving force on his team, however now that is over I remain hopeful she will join me on getting my team together and organised. She’s a great lady in so many ways and as such everyone seems to want a piece of her; I’ll do my best not to be a drain on her, but at this time her knowledge and drive could be so very helpful. All in all a great team is shaping up.