Swimming day 534 - Monday 6th August 2012

2 days to go …….

I awoke this morning to the sun and the rain and at 6.30am on the way to the beach I was met with this wonderful rainbow; yet another sign of the amazing world  we live in.

 

An email from Fiona today…

Hi All,
The CSA have ask me to be the official observer.....  Yippee!! No Cheating on my watch! 
Our Pilot thinks its a 95% chance we'll be going at 4am Wednesday. I have confirmed the logistics of this with another pilot whom I trust explicitly he informs me that he will also be taking a solo at that time,  Their feeling is, its better a flat sea on a spring tide than a choppy sea on a neap tide! - it makes sense!!
I will know for certain at 8pm tomorrow evening. 
Fiona xx

So it is all set for Wdnesday at 4am; leaving Brighton at Midnight Tuesday and then driving to Dover and getting it done!

What is a Neap Tide or a Spring tide; perhaps I should have looked these up and studied them before I even committed to the swim.  In hindsight, if I wasn’t so impulsive, I would have looked into channel swimming before I decided to learn to swim and take it on.  It’s such a massive task and there is so much to learn; least of all about swimming and about tides.  Anything I take on in future I shall slow down a bit and learn about it!  Saying that, this channel swimming journey over the last 2½ years has changed my life beyond recognition in so many ways and perhaps if I had understood the task ahead I may never have started on that road; so possibly ignorance was bliss after all!

Neap Tide & Spring Tide

The following is an explanation of spring and neap tides in relation to lunar and solar cycles - 



Since antiquity, people have noticed that oceans exhibit a much greater tidal range around the time of the full Moon and new Moon. This is when the Moon and Sun are either together in the sky or are on opposite sides of the heavens. Higher tides occur during these Moon phases because the Sun also exerts a gravitational pull on our oceans, although it is only 46 percent as strong as the Moon's.
When the gravitational effects of the Sun and the Moon combine, we get spring tides, which have nothing to do with the season of spring. The term refers to the action of the seas springing out and then springing back. These are times of high high tides and low low tides.
A week later, during either of the two quarter Moon phases, when the Sun and Moon are at right angles to each other and their tidal influences partially cancel each other out, neap tides occur, and the tidal range is minimal. In fact, because the oceans take a bit of time to catch up to the geometry of the Moon, spring and neap tides usually occur about a day after the respective lunar cycles.
Now morn has come,
And with the morn the punctual tide again.
–Susan Coolidge, American writer (1835-1905)

So that clears that up then!!!!!

Due to the volume of water being lower in a Neap tide it seems it’s a better option for a channel swimmer, however we are on a Spring tide and that is that; we have no choice as our window is our window.  The dice will be rolled and the result will be the result.  We will be successful I know that for sure, however what we judge success is a personal thing and it isn’t always about crossing the finishing line; it is so very much about the journey.

As Fiona wrote on the wall at the Kings Head Pub in Dover after her successful swim in 2009

“It’s not the sea we conquer but ourselves”