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Jordan and Sabine Stockdale want their boy, Jonas, to be an ocean swimmer. They're preparing him early.

There was little disagreement at Tamarama on Sunday with the decision of swim organisers, on the "advice" of Waverley Council lifeguards, that their inaugural swim was to be called off. There was a solid 2-3 metre swell pumping through in sets on a dropping tide, on perhaps the most dangerous and unpredictable beach in Sydney. Some could handle it; many would not. Lifeguards, particularly, did not fancy the prospect of pulling scores or even hundreds of zealous if trepidatious mugs out of the water when they really needn't allow them to get into the position of needing help in the first place.

Ever one for a marketing opportunity, Spot Anderson, in his guise as Spot Anderson, rather than as Mick Fanning, in whose name Spot has entered many events this year, until confessing it to oceanswims.com, who thereupon changed it at every opportunity back to Spot Anderson, grabbed the megaphone for an impromptu surf session.

We didn't record his words; they were fevered. His thrust, however, was on reading the surf and managing one's approach to it. Essentially, what Spot said was, "This is a good opportunity to learn some surf skills. We're going for a swim, and you can either come with us or watch us and perhaps along the way you'll pick up better skills. Learn to read the surf and use it to your advantage when going out through the break and coming back in. My number is XXXXXXXXX and I am available on a commercial basis with my surf squads to teach you how to do it, but this is a one-off opportunity to come for a free introductory lesson".

Or words to that effect.

It's a noble sentiment. History shows that while many ocean swimmers are reasonably adept at handling surf, many more are not. This is not to be critical; it is to be straightforward. We recall well the day at North Steyne, about six years earlier and in roughly similar conditions, when about two-thirds of the peloton either couldn't get out through a two-metre break or didn't try, mooching about in the broken water on the sandbank chatting instead, which, after all, really is why we were there.
That incident brought home to us how many ocean swimmers really have difficulty in surf. Conversely, how few are experienced and confident in handling surf. Real surf.

And conditions at Tamarama on Sunday taught us another lesson, too: even if you are experienced, there are some conditions that still make it dangerous.

Why? Because swimmers, particularly older swimmers, we suspect, need to warm up before they tackle difficult conditions. If you don't warm up, you're placing yourself in mortal danger entering a surf such as that at Tama on Sunday. No amount of life's experience in handling all kinds of seas will prevent that.

Let me at 'em, pop!

Like many mugs on Sunday, oceanswims.com felt the beat in his breast of a heart itching to show to the chattering throng on the rock ledge outside Tama surf club that he could handle surf. We prefer to see it as being drawn by the prospect of a nice wave held up and evened by a light offshore breeze, breaking into water on a bank, thus an opportunity for a wave and a bit of fun. The water has been so good around Sydney these past few weeks that one doesn't like to pass up the opportunity for a swim. And it seemed like a shame to have arisen from bed so early, to have driven so far to the beach, then not to go in. It is so rare, too, that we get the opportunity to revel in a decent wave, and it truly was a decent wave at Tama on Sunday.

Plenty went before us, as you'll see from the pitchers from Glistening Dave embedded in this report, and from the art photographs from Swedish Bombshell Catrin Jonsson, who also sent us some instructive video. Watch it carefully. What do you see? Waves crashing down? Sure. Heads bobbing about amongst the whitewater. But what else? Notice how the waves at the back appear to be rolling one way, but the whitewater in the foreground is going another. This illustrates Spot's message: that the water in a surf break does different things in different spots, as it were. You can't assume, heading in, that the entire break will offer constant conditions; that the current will always push you north or south or in or drag you out. Indeed, as we waded out towards the break, we were passed by Mr Grizzles, swimming in and flying past us in a rushing current inwards, where just adjacent it was pulling punters out. You need to read the surf to see what it's doing, and to tailor your approach accordingly.

At Tama, the swell was from the nor-east, crashing on a shallowing bank, as the tide fell, towards the southern bluff separating Tama from Bronte -- Broant, as a Yank on R & R was overheard saying to his military cobber in Sydney once during the Viet Nam war years (paranthetically, notice, too, the separation of Viet Nam into two words, whereas western practice almost invariably is to run it as one: Vietnam. "Vietnamese" is a monosyllabic language, however, so the correct approach is the two worded one. oceanswims.com feels that, given we and other Western powers spent so long doing our best to stuff the country, the least we can do now is to spell their name correctly.) -- but as the water surged shorewards, the current changed direction towards the north, influenced no doubt because the waves were bouncing off the southern bluff. But Tama is a beach where the water surging in has nowhere to go. There's no Bronte Express; no natural runout to drain it. So you get water colliding and surging and milling and turbulising. You had different currents in different spots. Different directions pulling you every which way. You can see that in the video. Thank you, Catrin.

But there's more: we entered the water at the northern end of Tama beach, over a grassy rock shelf almost but not quite covered by sand. This got us past the first trough and onto the first bank quickly, without having to wade or dolphin through that trough. Perhaps we would have been better off had we dolphined through the trough, we were to discover, since that would have helped to get our systems operating, to get our blood flowing, to get our breathing up to pace before we hit the break proper.

For what we experienced going through the break was sobering. On the bank but in water over our heads, we were hit by two sets in quick succession, each of four or five waves which looked, from our position as sandworms on the bank, to be 2-2.5 metres high. A breeze, we thought, as we dived under the first couple of whitewalls, grabbed the sand, as our Uncle Bonehead taught us at Caves Beach many, many years ago, to push up from the bottom through the turbulent aftermath to the surface. But such was the turbulence, and our buoyancy, being vastly overweight, and our lack of suppleness, at our age, that we couldn't quite get all the way down below the whitewall to the bottom, we couldn't quite grab the sand, and we couldn't get purchase to push ourselves back up. We drifted up, breaking through the surface just with the next whitewall on us, just enough time to grab for breath and duckdive again. Less breath this time, harder to hold it, more in debt, ready to gasp, missing the bottom again, drifting up, bursting through, ready for another one, just enough time to gasp, half fill the lungs, think about how we don't have our breath yet, and down we go again ...

After a couple of these waves, it occurred to us that we were out of breath. Why? Because we hadn't warmed up. We needed to have warmed up in order to get those systems flowing, to develop a rhythm in our breathing to deal with this break. Perhaps we should have "jogged" a few lengths of Tama beach before going in? Perhaps we should have done something to get the blood flowing ... something to get past that initial oxygen debt of early exercise, at least to neutralise it in a more controlled environment, controlled by us, that is, not by the surf. For right then and there, it was the surf in control, not us.

Now, have we mentioned before that we're seasoned hands at this type of thing? Growing up on the beach and well able to handle most surf? So we like to think. We didn't panic, but we did begin to become anxious as the third, fourth and fifth waves barrelled over us, and our oxygen debt increased, and more time on the surface was spent gasping to recover debt from the previous wave rather than banking it for the next. The longer it went on, the more difficult it got.

But -- and this is where experience does come into play -- if you're experienced at this type of thing, you know basically what you need to do: you keep your head, and you keep clearly in mind what you know about heavy surf, about what it is going to do. You know that the sets are not continuous, that sooner or later -- the more waves roll over you, the sooner it will come -- the set will ease and the break will come. That's what allows you to keep your head and to moderate your breathing. Of course, the more relaxed you remain, the less air you'll need and the easier it will be to deal with this situation.

But imagine, too, the scene if that swim had been run at Tama with c. 600 starters, the vast majority of whom had not been in the water to warm up, many of whom had not had the advantage of growing up on the beach and swimming in the surf all year `round in most grades of conditions ... Imagine the carnage. The Waverley lifeguards apparently did. It could have been horrific. Not as horrific as if everyone had warmed up, but then most mugs don't warm up, and conditions on Sunday actually discouraged warming up.

It was a good call. All you mugs, get yourselves off to Spot, or someone like him, and put yourselves through a course. Not only will you be safer as a result, but you'll enjoy your ocean swimming more, what's more. Spot isn't everyone's cup of chow, of course. But he means well and he knows his stuff.

On the north side, so does Craig Riddington at SEA Australia. Riddo's skills, particularly, will astound you.

Tama organiser Chris Glover himself runs the TOSSers -- Tamarama Ocean Swim Squad -- which develops surf skills in its members, meeting on Sat'dee ams. And a very good squad it is, too, as we've been told, and not even by Chris himself.

We thought there was a terrific spirit about this non-swim. It seemed pretty well the entire membership of Tama SLSC had turned out to help run this swim. Mr Glover reckoned 95 per cent of them were there.

There was tremendous enthusiasm about it at Tama and what seemed like quite good organisation. With the swim called off, the Tama people still distributed goodies bags, they still handed out the fruit, and they still ran the barbie. Converstion afterwards amongst the Tama people was whether to find a rain date, whether to postpone to, say, May, or maybe November, and how to return optimum value to those mugs who'd entered before the day, even to free entry to next year's swim. We're not sure, mind you, about the value of the giveaway Havaianas thongs included in every goodie bag, given that all were pink Size 12. Evidently, they were the only Havaianas that the Havaianas people hadn't been able to get rid of anywhere else.

But if we had a system of awards, then even given the swim didn't actually happen, we might just award rookie swim of the year to Tamarama.

Footnote: At Tamarama, Mrs Sparkle was confronted by Ian Davis, President of NSW AUSSI Masters Swimming, who said to her: "(Mrs Sparkle), I'm presenting myself to you so that you know that I am here and I am ready to swim. And it's beyond my control that the organisers have chosen to cancel this event in these very heavy seas." So there, we all know now that Ian was there and very ready to swim.