(Map of the swim)This swim was in preparation for the 4 mile Beginish swim to be run for the first time on 25th July. The Beginish event is susceptible to risk of cancellation due to bad weather from the North or West accompanied by an big Atlantic swell because there is a 1 mile section facing the Atlantic and the Portmagee to Knightstown route can now be confirmed as the option B. 8 swimmers travelled to Portmagee to enter the water at about 11:15, the temperature was warmer than Sandycove at about 14 – 15 C but the South Easterly breeze was whipping up a fair choppy sea into the face for the first 3 miles and behind us for the last 2. We had boat cover and someone on the shore for the duration of the swim. The group comprised Lisa and myself as the Cork contingent and 6 swim campers Carl, Carl, Thomas, Nick, Fredrik, Daniel formed the international challenge. The swim brought us across the channel to the Valentia Island side before going under the Portmagee bridge (no big crowd this time Ned but we did attract a few photo’s from startled tourists at the start). Nick swam ahead as only he can leaving the rest of us to battle along by the Valentia Island shore with hats and goggles being knocked of a few of us such was the choppy nature of the sea. Surprisingly we had a tide with us for the first mile and a half but this was not to last as about halfway it turned against us for the last 3 miles. The tactic for this swim is the one that was used for Neds Valentia Island swim and that was to keep up against the shore and in amongst the long strand sea weed known affectionately as ‘dead womans hair’ to beat the slightly adverse tide. As expected Nick Caine was having lunch by the time the rest of us finished having completed in 2:07 with the rest of us all completed within 2:35. This swim is now option B for Beginish and is a safer option should the weather conditions take a turn for the worst as the swimmer can walk ashore virtually at any time during the swim. Incidentally the conditions were probably good enough to have gone around Beginish on the day!"
Saturday June 27th was the last official swim of the training camp. We had a great swim in water around 15 degree's Celsius. We did not have boat coverage for the swim because we changed venues at last moment since most of the swimmers were getting tired of Sandycove since we swam so many miles in the last two weeks their. In order to have a safe swim we stayed in a close group and made sure no one got separated. We ended up swimming through thousands of Jelly fish (and this is not an exaggeration) we swam through walls of jellyfish for about 3 miles. Luckily they were mostly the non stinging one's so you could touch them and they just bounce off, their were some that like to sting but they can usually be avoided. I unfortunately missed getting out of the way and got stung by one across my stomach and forearm, I'm now left with a nice big red mark where I was stung but it doesn't hurt to bad, cold salt water is a great treatment for stings. The swim was a great way to finish a hard and long training camp.
