Forresters Beach Island Swim, Saturday, October 13, 2007
Anarchy in ocean swimming
... tossed about and dragged every which way

Into the ocean swimming season 2007-08, with gusto (above), and (below) some ocean swimmers did the Forries swim in fancy dress.

Ocean swimmers can be a cantankerous lot: whingeing about all sorts of things, we suspect on principle: they're older, one foot in the grave, whingeing and whining is their right. They don't owe no-one nuttin' any more. Forresters could have been designed for them. Indeed, if you're into anarchy, then the Forresters Beach Island Swim is designed for you.
Long a beach that captured our imagination (since the days of our youth), we'd never swum there. There is no surf club there. It doesn't appear to be patrolled. Indeed, this swim was run by the local Forries boardies with the support of Wamberal SLSC, some kms to the south.

The boardies run it in memory of one of their cobbers, Dave Wards, who died of leukaemia a few years back. Over the last 18 years, the boardies have raised around $100,000 for leukaemia charities in memory of Dave. A noble cause indeed. Without a major club structure behind them, though - Wamberal SLSC is there to help with water safety - they run it on an oily rag. They handed out "free caps" only because one of the organisers had a brainwave in the days leading up to the swim and got onto a swimwear company, who shot them up a couple of packets of caps to help out.

The booeys were strictly surf club issue, but some of their smaller ones, which means that, in the conditions on the day, the only booey that everyone saw was the first and last one, 20 metres off the beach. Most punters seemed to swim around that turbulent bay just following swimmers nearby. Some swear they never saw booeys that we saw them pass within a metre.

Hardly surprising on the day. The surf was up, 1.5-2 metres, sometimes a bit more. But there also was a stiff breeze blowing - not a breeze, a wind - corrupting the surface and, with the swell and the wind, there was a ferocious current running south to north, so strong that one swimmer was washed in at the northern end of the course, absolutely unable to get back against it.

"There, you go around that booey down there ... Do you see it?" "No."

Once you were out there in the sea, you couldn't see anything except water breaking over you.

The swim was to have gone around the "island", which is a rock shelf offshore about mid-beach, much like Wedding Cake Island although not as far out. The bottom drops away dramatically out behind the island, we were told, which is only maybe 200 metres offshore, and there are grey nurse breeding grounds out there, in caves in the wall of the shelf. But with the seas up, they kept the course inside the island. It ran from mid-beach, south, along behind the break, to a gentle little corner in the lee of the southern shelf, then out towards the island itself, then farther north to a point just past the island, then back to the southern corner, thence back to the start/finish mid-beach. It was supposed to be only about 1.2km, although it proved to be more like 1.6km. There's nothing wrong with that, of course.

We headed straight for the far out turning booey, however, figuring this is where we might get the nicest pics as the peloton plunged past. That was only 75-100 metres out, but the leaders beat us to it. The rest of the mob straggled past, strung out like lengthways and crossways around the course, like an ambling herd of cattle after they've been milked: ie, with no particular purpose or direction in mind. Some passed the mid-booey by centimetres, although they didn't see it. Others we spotted farther out, far out to sea, it seemed, swimming through the white water of the island. The swells rolled through, washing over the peloton, shampooing them with their white foam, cleaning out a good few gullets, too, if the gastric disturbances on the beach afterwards were any guide.

Huddle.

The far out ones proved to be the more accurate, however. They were, at least, on a line for where the northern booey actually was. Most couldn't see it. Many never found it. Many, indeed, found it only after having swum past it by 50-100 metres. Then trying to get back to it against the current that was running right into their faces was another big ask again.
They were little booeys, as we said. It was a case of "now you see it, now you don't", and next time you do, the location might be - or might seem to be - entirely different.

So we had swimmers all over the place, all heading in slightly different directions - some in dramatically different directions - few with any idea where they were headed at all.

All made it back to the beach, although some, didn't, technically, complete the course. But, hey! That doesn't matter. Regina Haertsch still was awarded 3rd in her division after she'd been washed in at the northern end and walked back to the finish. She offered her prize up to someone who did actually finish. But second had worn fins, anyway.
The Forries guys didn't worry about fins. You could wear and use whatever you liked. It was one in, all in. Some wore wetties, some wore fins. We saw no water wings, but that could simply have been because we were all going up and down so much that we couldn't see much of anything anyway.

Clunk!

It was a relaxed, fun day out. The Forries boardies offered no pretensions to bunging on a trouble-free event, or one offering the tightest of regulations. They just seemed delighted to have us there. Quite a few swimmers drove up from Sydney, some came down from Newcastle, and one, John Bamberry, even drove down from Singleton, half way up the Hunter Valley. A couple of the laydies made cakes and cup cakes, the boardies ran a barbie, and they handed out some of the nicest trophies we've seen at a swim: wood carved waves on plinthes, made by one of the Boardies, who must have toiled indeed, for he had 1-2-3 for all categories in the swim, then again for the board paddle race around the island that followed shortly after. It was a very nice touch.

And there was another nice touch: here was a very pleasant cross-over of two ocean sports: board riding and ocean swimming. We recall, as kids, how some of the boofheads in surf clubs used to enjoy baiting the boardies. It was, for some eejits, very much a them-and-us kind of atmosphere. Indeed, we were one of the only mugs on our beach who actually were members of both groups. There was constant rivalry and sometimes tension. But here we were, at Forries, none of us knowing each other, but all having a very nice time together on a very spectacular beach.

And another thing: the water was bumpy, to be sure, but it was beautifully clear, and it even seemed warmer by a few degrees than it had been in the weeks leading up to the swim. Maybe that was just the feeling that one gets when one heads to the Central Coast. It's like being on hols.

This is the last anyone saw of any booey at Forresters Beach.

Results still to come.