2016 Rottnest Channel Training – Part 4

Swimfari Duo

It’s 2016! Happy new year!

Swimfari Duo training schedule
Our combined training times since late November.

With still 7 weeks until our momentus Rottnest Channel Swim it’s hard to get too excited, especially as training over Christmas and the new year period has eased up a little.

Squad training wound up a few days before Christmas and, for the Nunawading Orcas at least, won’t start up again until the end of January. There are always a faithful few who don’t want to lose too much conditioning, so just before Christmas and soon after new year’s you’ll find them back at the pool clocking up the kilometres without the coach (although he joins us for laps regularly). So the week before Christmas we were all still swimming laps and finishing with a double swim on 23 December, early morning in the bay and then a last hurrah with the squad at night. Only Pablo swam a short distance on Christmas day with Boxing Day a day of rest for all.

+1 with a Porpoise

Pat is now a +1 to our Swimfari Duo and with him as an extra training partner it’s meant that swimming opportunities remain high. Pat joined us again on the 27 December when we decided to swim the Bloody Big Swim course, this time in reverse. Starting from Mills Beach in Mornington and joined by Emma in the kayak we swam up along the coast and made it as far as Moondah Beach. Conditions again were near perfect at Mills Beach with only a slight breeze beyond the breakwater of Mornington Harbour.

Even before heading out Friedo confidently remarked, ‘We’ll be joined by dolphins today’. Then about half way to Moondah Beach, with Pat steaming ahead of us, we stopped briefly to check our direction and to see where Pat had got to. As we put our heads in the water to swim on we both saw a dark shape with light markings flash past us. We looked up at each other at the same time with puzzled looks on our faces. Pablo asked, ‘Was that a dolphin?!’.

As we put our heads in the water to swim on we both saw a dark shape with light markings flash past us.

We didn’t have to wait long for an answer as we soon saw a number of dolphins popping up for a breath. They were quite inquisitive and swam around us a few times. One even got so close to Friedo that he tried to touch it, but couldn’t quite reach.

Mornington-7km-swimEven though we had an action camera with us (thanks Santa), its first time use meant there were a few ‘operator errors’ which resulted in still images being taken of water rather than a video of our close encounter.

In all we covered around 7.7km which certainly helped in working off some of our Christmas lunch.

Indecent Exposure

Trio take on channel, Leader Newspaper
Leader Newspaper, 28 December 2015

The following day all three of us were featured on the front page of our local newspapers. Being a quite time of year there weren’t many articles to compete with so our picture was placed on the front page with a full article on ‘Page Three‘.

Although Swimfari.com got a bit of a guernsey the article failed to mention that we were also trying to raise funds for autism and juvenile diabetes.

New Year’s Eve Dip

Friedo and Pablo saw out the old year with a swim at Brighton Beach on the morning of New Year’s Eve. This was a great chance to test out the action camera again. It was another glorious still morning with a magnificent sunrise. We swam a little later than usual but allowed for some great sunrise footage.

There were still some teething problems while getting used to the camera, so a lot of the footage was unusable. But with what could be salvaged from another dismal attempt was put together in this little compilation.

What about you?

Have you been lucky enough to unexpectedly swim with dolphins? Tells us about your experiences, leave a comment in the comments section below.

Here’s how you can help…

Would you like to support our Rottnest Channel Training efforts?

We’re raising money for Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect). Aspect provides people with autism the opportunity to realise their unique potential, as well as providing much needed support to their families, carers, friends and colleagues.

Click on the image below to donate to our fundraising campaign or share this post on social media.

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