Marathon Swim

Thursday morning we had fourteen guests participate in the Island Swim. This is another of our long-standing Bondi traditions that began way back in the mists of time. As a youngster, I remember Hector and Henry Smart, who always stayed in Anchor cottage, teaching all the resort children how to swim. Armed with their wives' lipstick tubes, Hec and Henry would dish out a lipstick circle on the shoulder when you could swim to the raft and back, a big X when you could swim to the far boathouse and back, and -- most coveted of all -- a star when you could swim to the Point and Back. The Point is 500 metres away, a big flat rock where you can climb out and rest and recoup before swimming back. Every week we have swimmers tackle that swim.
The Island is another bag of cats. It's a mile away. 1.6 km. That's a long way in open water. Swimmers are transported out to the Island, and swim home to Bondi. For fourteen swimmers, we had seven safety boats -- outboards, canoes, kayaks, rowboats. Nobody gets left alone out there! Zev was the youngest this week, at 12. Arlene would have been the least youngest, with her grandchildren watching closely from her escort canoe.
Shelley is from Mass. and swims regularly for exercise. To keep the pool from becoming boring, she swims "virtual rivers", plotting her course on maps, and researching the area she is 'swimming through'. She's 'swum' the Mississippi -- there was a big party with Cajun food when her distance swum brought her down to New Orleans. She's 'swum' The Rhine, sampling wines all the way along. She started the Amazon, but since nothing much changes along the Amazon for forever, she changed her virtual river, and is currently working her way down the Nile. Always swim with the current, is her motto, and one mile in the pool equals ten miles on the map.
When she arrived, she was eight miles outside of Cairo.
Today, on the swim, she was in urban Cairo, and as she pointed out, MUCH happier to be doing the swim in the clear, cool, sweet waters of Lake of Bays!
We think this is a great way to stay motivated on an exercise program and learn about foreign places all at the same time. And we absolutely agree that there is nowhere better to log swimming miles than here at Bondi.