Around Spike Island Swim

The first of the season's long training sea swims took place today. Danny's father has a boat and has kindly offered its services on a number of long swims for us. First on the list - a circumnavigation of Spike Island, the former naval fortress guarding Cork Harbour, and sometime prison. Danny's father lived on Spike for 23 years, so he had plenty of local knowledge of where he was going.


The day was a beautifully sunny spring day, but with a lazy north wind. The thermometer on the boat gave a constant water temperature reading of 9C for the duration of the swim. Jennifer swam in togs (respect!) but Danny and I were happy to don wetsuits. I think it's fair to say that between the three of us we don't have an awful lot of body fat to spare, so we were happy to see so much of the sun on our way around. The swim was about 5,300m long, swimming in an anti-clockwise direction.


Here's Jen, Danny and me, all looking very contemplative on the way to the start.. Plenty of cold wind here.


Jen at the start. More smiles at this stage, as the north wind is blocked by Great Island behind us. A jump from the boat here, and we're off..


Swimming past the gun position on Spike. We were well matched in pace and stayed together for the whole swim. The public can get tours of the island during the summer and see the extremely large gun which points out to the mouth of the harbour. In the old days they used to tow an old boat or some such target into the harbour and have the navy fire live rounds from the guns to try and sink it - an interesting day for the locals living in the harbour area..


Heading back to Cobh at the end of the swim. We were benefiting from an incoming tide at this stage, and calmer waters were much warmer than cold waves at the back of Spike. We even got a small crowd of people at the finish point. All in all a great swim and another rung in the confidence ladder.