B&B sans wet suit!

After 4 weeks away from the joys of the B&B morning swim, I turned up this morning to find my name had been removed from the sign on sheet! Apparently that happens after 3 weeks out of the water. Harsh.

Once I had righted this wrong, Tim and I then had to wait about for a good 5 mins while Sunrise filmed us all getting into the water. Which meant we didn't start swimming until 7.10.

For some reason (no idea which though!), I decided to swim sans wet suit for the first time this morning figuring I should be ok after all the swimming I had done prior to Christmas...surely I wouldn't be the last one to Shelly!?

Making it out to the Point easily enough we hung around again for more Sunrise photos before being given the all clear to head to Shelly...

Once underway, and as expected, I quickly lost contact with most other swimmers and was soon swimming on my own. In fact I stopped swimming a couple of times to look behind me with no-one around at all. It was a choppy trip across as well.

As a result, the trip to Shelly took a long time - 12.47 to be precise, almost 3.30 slower than normal. Which means the wettie makes me over 30% quicker!

After a brief respite at Shelly while we waited for the one armed swimmers behind me to come in we were off again. I was so slow getting to Shelly that Tim even made his excuses for disappearing home at Manly without waiting for me before we left Shelly!

The trip back to Manly was better than the trip over, and would have been even better if I had swum in a straight line. My sighting really is dreadful at the moment, and resulted in me taking a really wide route into Manly.

Once around the corner I also had to fight the rip back into the beach, standing up in 18.00 - again, 3.30 slower than norm but only 25% slower than with wettie. It's strange that I was 3.30 slower on the way out and 3.30 slower on the way back even though the way back takes 5 minutes longer?! I guess that means I was a lot more efficient on the return journey!

Not sure I will repeat the without wet suit swim many times again...but I guess it must be kind of good for me...if not for the morale!

Point - Shelly: 12.37

Shelly - Manly: 18.00