When you’re submerged, there’s nothing but blue and bubbles
ILIKE being alone. I like running alone, hiking alone, reading alone and driving alone. Recently, I have come to enjoy swimming and I spend hours alone at Sea Point pool, churning up and down through the water. Unlike running or hiking which carry the risk of an uninvited person striking up a conversation or falling into step, swimming guarantees solitude. When you’re submerged and deafened, there’s nothing but blue and bubbles, the pale reaching of fingers and a strange dreaminess.
But beautiful as Sea Point pool is (I am in love with it – in a disturbing way), I began finding the lengths monotonous. After swimming, I would sit on a bench in the sun and stare at the sea. I imagined all the life beneath the surface. I pictured myself swimming through its coldness, enveloped by deep blue. Then, because I am a wally, I imagined myself swimming next to Lewis Pugh, pushing through ice floes and saving penguins, my body sleek as a seal. I was ready to swim in the sea.
South Africans call it open water swimming; Britons call it wild swimming. It involves plunging into a natural body of water and swimming as far as you want. And while lochs, lakes and dams are pretty safe, the ocean can be unpredictable. There are also sharks and boats and things that sting, which is why sea swimming should never be done alone.
I signed up for an ocean race. There would be lifeguards and boats and dozens of other people. After so much solitary swimming, it felt weird. Someone kicked me in the face, I bumped into a man in a wetsuit, my goggles misted up and I couldn’t see where I was going. Swimming back towards shore, I panicked in the breakers and wanly called out to a nearby surfer who, thankfully, didn’t hear me. Because when I was safely on land, I saw the breakers were in fact tiny waves – laughable little crests. I came second to last. I was cold.
The next race was in a lagoon. This would surely be a doddle. The water would be flat and warm and there would be no currents or waves. I would be a champion. But the day blew in windy and cold. The surface of the water chopped at my face and there were patches of cold that would have made a polar bear happy. My goggles misted up, I swam skew and a sneaky current made getting back to shore feel impossible. At the prize-giving, I sat alone among groups of people who all seemed to know each other and I wondered if I should take up sky-diving.
However, last week changed everything. I was staying with my parents at their new home in Knysna. The lagoon was calm and still, dotted with yachts and rowing boats. I desperately wanted to be in it, but didn’t know how or where. I found a local swimming group called Knysna Seahorses on Facebook and sent a message, asking for recommended routes. I received a friendly reply saying the group swam four times a week and would I be keen to join them? So much for solitary swimming.
At 6.30am, I arrived at the yacht club, afraid to take off my clothes. But the welcome I received made me forget myself, and in the golden dawning of the day, we swam silently together, stopping to catch our breath and chat at a buoy, then a boat, then another buoy. On Sunday, I joined them again. The water was so clear I could see starfish on the lagoon floor. We swam past boats and submerged ropes, past buildings and buoys and birds. Rounding an island, we came across a catamaran moored at a quay. “Let’s swim under it?” one of the group said. “Yeah!” someone else said, “We can be like James Bond.” As we floated beneath the boat, the reflection of the water made acid squiggles on the hull. I grinned and duckdived down to the bottom. When I surfaced the others were waiting for me, and we struck out for shore – a flotilla of pink caps moving as one through the water.