On Saturday we hosted the second annual Long Bay to Arkles Bay swim. It was mostly comprised of the Bay2Bay swimmers I’ve been involved with for years, but also included some of my new swim buddies from Manly and Red Beach.

Things didn’t look great early on… a thick fog had settled in overnight. That’s a relatively rare thing around here… grrr!

But after a slightly delayed start, the sun started to peek through and we were off. There were about 30 of us, plus three support boats. Conditions got steadily brighter as we went. And with no wind to speak of, we couldn’t have asked for better.

Altogether it was 5km +, the longest swim I’ve done in a couple of years.

We had plenty of stops to regroup, so the effort was manageable. But as shown in the photo above, I seem to have been just lying around in the water toward the end!

Then everyone came to our house for brunch. Feeding a group that’s been swimming for 2 hours is relatively easy… put food in front of them! Bacon, sausages, eggs, fruit, breads, avocado salad, snacky stuff… it was all hungrily devoured. Lee did most of the prep (thank you honey!!) and some of the other non-swimming partners helped with cooking while we swam. Everyone brought a dish to share.

It was a great party and a great day. Many naps were taken later, and even the next day I was really really tired.

Looking forward to next year… the third time should officially elevate this event to ‘tradition’ status!