Across Torbay, Pete Wilby adventure swim

My alarm went at 6:30 after 5 hours sleep, so I could get down to Meadfoot to meet the boat to Churston Cove for the start of a 6.5km adventure swim (see photo showing Churston from Meadfoot, way across the bay beyond the cruise liners). Thankfully, despite a couple of snoozes, I arrived in good time to make somehow pay for the toilets three times, systematically work through all my swim kit to check I had everything I needed, and change. I needn’t have worried as the boats were running late… an hour late as it turned out, an inauspicious start, given that we assumed the timings had been carefully chosen so we could swim on the slack tide. Then the motor of the first boat cut out three times inbetween its approach to the slipway and actually reaching it, also concerning. The boat journey across the bay was an event in itself – this was a small rib (see photo), with a skipper and 5 people crammed into it, in a feisty sea and force 4 wind, heading directly into all the face of the choppy waves which came thick and fast. There was a lot of spray, and I was repeatedly soaked. I didn’t really expect this, and in my shortie wetsuit I got quite cold. The pre-event briefing we had been sent said not to bring any clothes into the boat, just swim kit, so I had followed this although everybody else had brought warmer layers on with them. About half way over I idly asked the skipper how rough a sea he could take the boat out in. He replied with “shouldn’t even be out in this”, to which I clung onto the ropes a bit tighter and my hands got frozen into claws.

Standing on the beach at Churston cove I was shivering, everyone else had full length suits and I was the only one in a shortie. We had to wait a bit longer as the other boat had broken down again and my boat had to go out and pick up the other swimmers. Before we began the swim, Pete briefed us on the safety – there would be one rib leading the way with a flag; two prone rescue boards flanking the swimmers; one boarder bringing up the rear; one spare boarder for general support; and the other rib moving between everyone overseeing it all and bringing our nutrition. This was different to the impression that I got from the original brief, which was that there would be a craft with each swim pod of similar speed swimmers, rather than the crew surrounding the whole group which could possibly get very spread out if the swimmers were of different speeds. I like to know and fully understand what I am getting into, especially with new and intense situations, and what with the safety system and the clothing on the boats already being different to expected my levels of distress were rising. To some of us that is how our brains work, we think a lot and gather information so it’s hard to then change tack, and that’s a perfectly valid way to be, but often not understood by others. The distress coupled with already being cold meant I wasn’t in the mood to even start. I wasn't worried about the distance - I hadn't trained much as I'd been out of the water between March and July but I've put plenty of time into swim and stamina training over the years - this was all about the mental side which for me is the biggie. And my brain was struggling. But I had paid and I had got that far, so I begun.

Most swimmers surged off straight away, I needed to acclimatise and a friend hung back for me as we’d agreed to swim together. I was concerned that I wouldn’t make the whole swim and she’d end up on her own far from anyone else, which was a good incentive to get going. As we started to swim I was actually moving a little faster and having to switch to breaststroke to stay with her, which meant I wasn’t warming up, so we agreed to separate. I could just see a bunch of towfloats in the distance, thankfully in a group making them easier to spot (and alarmingly off route a bit to the left) so I struck out for them. At this point I was totally on my own, and crossing a bit of sea that while on the boat had had a string of jetskis passing at high speed in quick succession. Thankfully they didn’t come back past then, I don’t think they would have seen me in time. There were a couple of yachts though, keeling over impressively. I passed one of our support crew on a board, he was going the other way but paused for me to say that my friend was also swimming alone and he checked that he could see her which made me feel less guilty about splitting up. After a while I realised I wasn’t going to catch the group up, they were swimming at the same speed. I kept thinking I was, but it’s just that I had crested a wave so they looked closer. I didn’t feel too bad about swimming alone behind the pod. I normally freak out when I swim in the sea as the ocean is always changing – dark one minute, light the next, here a sudden patch of weed, there a jellyfish that appeared out of nowhere, but today it was reassuringly consistent. With the sea being so choppy the sediment was disturbed so I could only see down a little way, and it was a bright day despite being overcast so the water was yellow all round, hiding the fact that it is up to 17m deep across the bay at high tide. But my calm didn’t last as my neoprene sleeve popped out of the shoulder of my wetsuit (the sleeves are separate items that you tuck in), and I started to think I wouldn’t be able to attract the attention of any staff, and what if something more serious went wrong? I waved a few times with a quiet call but nobody saw. Thankfully when I shouted louder somebody heard and came back to help – unfortunately I couldn’t do it myself as I was wearing neoprene gloves, rendering me helpless.

A little while later the group ahead paused to re-group and I caught them up. I said “thank god I caught you, I thought there would be a boat”, meaning a craft of some sort near me while I was my own pod. The other crew said “so did we”. “Wait”, I said, “is there no boat at all?” “There’s meant to be, but we don’t know where it is”. This was alarming, the main safety boat has gone AWOL and the other crew aren’t in communication with it? I was surprised they didn’t have radios, I had done a relay race in Budleigh the Sunday before and there were three kayaks out all with their own radios, and that was just a 400m course. My distress levels were topped back up, but I carried on as the swimming itself was going just fine, and sometimes you just need waves smashing in your face to being you back to life, and other general life worries began to dissolve away. Whilst in the pod my friend re-materialised having got into her pace, caught me up and continued on ahead faster than I could keep up with along with the others, I was pleased she wasn’t alone, even though she is an extremely competent swimmer and has done may of these events before.

After an hour I started to feel the first hint that I was cooling down. For the second time today I thought I wouldn’t finish the swim, since it was due to be 3 to 3 ½ hours in total. Thankfully, very soon after that, the rib appeared – hoorah! And a little while later came back bringing our nutrition supplies for a mid-way feed. Eating mid-swim was a strange feeling but I think it helped give my body an energy boost. For liquid I was using a bottle attached to my tow float, and I was convinced that the level in it was actually going up, but it still tasted of lush squash, so if any salt water had seeped in it was still less salty than the sea, which was shockingly salty when I put my face back in.

I just continued pressing on, in a flow now. A toot from Marella Discovery, one of the cruise ships in the bay (see photo), seeped into my consciousness as the main pod of swimmers went past it. ‘Ooh that’s a nice gesture’ I thought, shortly followed by ‘unless it’s warning us of a shark’. It occurred to me that while I was cold and shivering (and it was my core rather than my legs), I wasn’t getting any worse and I wasn’t in any trouble, unlike my experiences over the recent winter. I had been wet and cold up on mountains but wasn’t worried then, so this was no different, and I started chanting to myself “just got to get off this mountain”. The waves had picked up a bit. Occasionally one broke over me and when I swung my arm forward it never breached the surface, but I actually really enjoy swimming in a proper sea. There is a limit of course, when you can’t rise and fall with the swell and are unable to breathe, but with a lower level of swell or chop it actually feels like the sea is doing what it’s meant to be doing, and it’s nice to be at one with that rhythm. I was looking straight down and not seeing anything, which pleased me. There was the odd scrap of weed that whizzed past on one stroke and was entirely gone the next, and the same with some compass jellyfish – one near Churston and a few more nearer Meadfoot, but there were so few that they didn’t faze me, even though I had to dodge a particularly large one. Although there was nothing notable beneath me, at the same time there was everything – a swirling, shifting mass of one-dimensional colour. It occurred to me that it was like blinking inside a whirlwind, everything churning around and different on each stroke.

Slowly Meadfoot crept closer. The sun came out a little too, which lightened the lively waters beneath me and warmed my arms and shoulders, and I knew I would finish then. At this point I had dropped so far behind the main pod that I had my own prone board as support, she was getting blown by the wind so we were never side by side but I was pleased to have a companion. I had to make a couple of stops to adjust my kit. My sleeves popped out a couple of times, and also my suit sometimes started flushing water which cooled me down too much. I was wearing a buff to prevent chafing, and somehow, despite the gloves, I managed to push it down the back of the suit just pulling a little bit back up to minimise the chafe, which worked well to stop the water invading, and I managed to maintain my remaining warmth. Inbetween those pauses I had a really good stroke going. I was breathing every fourth stroke which was really unlike me, I’m usually every two when there are waves, and bilateral otherwise, but that was too much oxygen today so I dropped the frequency. It was easy to relax here as I no longer needed constant mental awareness, sighting was easy as the cliff was closer and much more prominent up ahead, and oceanic wildlife was reassuringly absent. I did a mental assessment at this point: sea conditions – perfect; fear - none; energy levels – fine, both shoulders starting to ache but otherwise good; distress and unhappiness – high. But the reasons for the distress were behind me and suddenly I realised the rest was great and I was enjoying myself for the first time

My support pointed out the main pod way ahead, barely visible from my low position in the water, and said to aim for them, this was a little off my original track so I picked a suitable tree on the cliff above them and struck for that. But some time later she said that they weren’t in the right place after all so gave me a new heading to Meadfoot slipway, which was actually where I had been heading in the first place. Now though we had moved in line with it and I had to swim across the current to get to it, and it was hard work. In fact, after a bit of strong pulling I was suddenly alarmed that I might have been swimming in the same spot for quite some time so I looked around me for some features to take reference off. I wondered if I would have to be picked up tantalisingly close to the finish line. I spotted a buoy nearby, and although I was, thankfully, progressing past it toward the shore, I was also getting swept north east. My crew and I hatched a plan where she would go and hang on to the buoy, then the next one, and I would aim west and gradually creep closer to her, and that worked. With this greater effort I was definitely warmer, and it didn’t matter that the sun had gone again and it had started to rain. I heard a strange unidentified tinkling noise in the water that I have heard before, and thought my tinnitus was playing up, but a moment later a boat appeared from my rear flank and cut across me so close I was instantly bouncing in its wake. My support had tried to attract their attention to tell them to be careful to no avail. Thankfully though I was one buoy away from the shore now, and this one was the 5 knot buoy (see photo) beyond which no boats can go faster than this. My slow creep forward against the current eventually paid off and I was at the slipway, crawling up on all fours as I couldn’t seem to find my feet and operate my land legs. I was given a chocolate muffin which I practically inhaled, then went to the car to get dry and warm, before returning to the slip to soak up the atmosphere of the finish. A little stock check revealed some chafed patches on my neck despite k-tape, luub AND the buff; my tongue was sore and I looked really strange (see photo); I couldn't lift my arms very high; and the contents of my dry bag that had my nutrition in had been stood on and the satsuma obliterated leaving a juicy orange coating over all the other items, but apart from that all was good and I had made it! It had been just the right level of challenge to feel like I was doing something quite special. I’d swum the distance – 7370m in the end with the course adjustments - total time in water 3:19 (see strava track), I actually wasn’t shivering, and it was time to celebrate in the café with a hot chocolate. And a halloumi salad. And a chocolate bar. And a cider. Well, that’s what we do all this for, isn’t it? 😊