Gerringong Surf Club's Captain Christie Ocean Classic Surf Swim plus Save the NSW south coast from rampant overdevelopment

Are we as mad as cut snakes or what? On Sunday morning The Hiss and I jumped in our very old car and followed Davo in his snazzy car from Mollymook to Gerringong for the Captain Christie Ocean Classic Surf Swim. We left at 7am to give ourselves enough time to beat the registration cut-off of 9am.

During the drive north the weather went from bad (drizzle) to worse (torrential rain). I spent most of the trip with white-knuckled fingers gripped around the steering wheel. Driving rain lashed the windscreen and created mini-lakes on the road that had the potential to send the car into an aquaplane.

Most of the way, I kept the peddle to the metal as Davo stuck steadfastly to the 100 kilometre per hour freeway speed limit. It was hairy and I was buggered by the time we turned off at Gerringong. Also, having barely any fuel left in the tank didn't help my stress levels.

Those levels quadrupled after we trudged onto the balcony of the Gerringong Surf Life Saving Club to view the four to five-foot waves plunging onto Werri Beach, opposite.

The 1.8 km swim traditionally starts at the Gerringong Harbour boat ramp, runs parallel to the coastal rock platform and finishes at Werri Beach.

But yesterday's surf was so powerful that surfers, rather than paddle out through the steaming foam, chose to walk out almost to the edge of the rock platform where they hurled themselves and their boards into the surf. It's a game of skill and chance to get the timing right.  

I was relieved when the organisers decided to move the swim about 2 km south to the calmer waters of Seven Mile Beach at Gerroa. They did this after several of their experienced ocean swimming members had struggled in the tough conditions at Werri Beach earlier that morning.

I was happy and didn't see anyone else complaining, though I'm sure some of the die-hards were disappointed.

At Seven Mile Beach, the course was an anti-clockwise rectangle marked by two cans - one orange and the other yellow.

As there were only around 200 swimmers, we all started together. We had to run quite a distance (dunno, maybe 100 metres) across a shallow sandbar before we could dive in and swim. I can't run (long boring story) so doddled in like an old woman as my peers sprinted ahead.

The rest of the swim was brilliant, though it seemed to take forever to reach that first can, which was supposed to be 600 metres out from the shore.

On the way in, Davo caught a wave just ahead of me. I was relieved I wasn't the last swimmer home!

The swim was well worth the effort it took to get there, though I think the course was shorter than the advertised 1.8 km. Possibly 1.5km? 

*On another topic: Gerringong/Gerroa is a beautiful part of the world that is threatened with overdevelopment as the old dairy farms are sold off and subdivided into (often) butt-ugly housing developments. It's a sad sight. The countryside is fast disappearing with towns like Gerringong becoming suburbs of the big towns of Kiama and Nowra.

Kiama Municipal Council wants to save some of the rural land in Gerringong that the State Government plans to develop into 528 building blocks. If you know and love this area and are keen to stop this (the cynic in me says it's already too late, but I don't think it hurts to try) contact Kiama Municipal Council and ask for a copy of the submission form, which must be completed and returned to the council before January 31, 2011.

Everyone in Australia wants to live on the coast and nobody seems to care that this is destroying its beauty. We all want a piece of it.

Photos: pic at top is the surf at Werri Beach in Gerringong; pic in middle is prior to swim at Seven Mile Beach; pic 3 is after the swim. It all looks so miserable!

Ocean swimming story in The Sydney Morning Herald and we're off to do Gerringong on Sunday

Today's edition of The Sydney Morning Herald has a story on 'the allure of ocean swimming' in its summer supplement. The story is first and foremost a plug for The Cole Classic on February 6, which is sponsored by Fairfax - which owns SMH.

However, it's not a bad read and does have some interesting observations from die-hard ocean swimmers. It also warns people about the sport's inherent risks, including my worst-case scenario - swimming into a pack of bluebottles.

And it points out that ocean swimming is becoming hugely popular and poses the question: will this affect the camaraderie in the sport? The journalist asks this at least twice, but never gets around to finding an answer. (This is just me niggling. But, if you set up a premise for a story, shouldn't you then follow it up?)

And here's me just niggling again. The man behind http://www.oceanswims.com/ Paul Ellercamp is interviewed for the story. Funny that, I thought he was deadset against the commercialisation of The Cole Classic, with its exhorbitant entry fee and raft of prohibitive OH&S rules that have led to the swim being re-routed to and from the calm waters of Shelly Beach, rather than finishing at the surf beach South Steyne, since Fairfax took control two seasons back. Ellercamp could've talked about camaraderie in relation to The Cole Classic!

I guess any publicity is good publicity... Here's the link, if you're interested: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/fitness/swell-of-surf-swimmers-20110106-19hmy.html

There's a swim at North Bondi this Sunday, but The Hiss and I are heading to the South Coast, where we plan to enter the Gerringong swim with Davo. It depends on the weather (raining today in Sydney) and, more importantly, ocean conditions. I hear this can be a challenging course. At the moment I'm up for it, but at the moment I'm dry and warm as toast and about to have a cuppa.

Have a good weekend.

Photo: The surf at South Steyne was deemed to be too rough for the organisers of last year's Cole Classic, who redirected the swim back to its starting point, Shelly Beach.

Newport Beach 2km Ocean Swim: Pool to Peak

It's disconcerting to reach the end of a 2km ocean swim, feeling pretty smug, to find out that the first-place getter in the 70+ age group has creamed you.

You think I'd be used to it by now, but I still can't believe how many friggin' brilliant swimmers there are in the older age categories who continually challenge the younger elite swimmers.

There are a couple of regulars who come to mind. One is Don Boland, who would be familiar to anyone who's done an ocean swim in Sydney. I'm too lazy to check his age, but I think he's 59. He did today's swim in... I'm thinking here, what was it?... around 27 minutes. That is dolphin-fast when you consider the course was probably a couple of hundred metres more than the advertised 2km. The results aren't online yet because they were done the old-fashioned way, with volunteers timing swimmers as they ran up to the line. But when they're up on http://www.oceanswims.com/ you can bet your bottom dollar DB will be up there with the fastest, who finished in around 25-27 minutes.

Not much more to say except it was a bloody beautiful day, the surf was refreshing and the waves were my favourite height at .7 metres, according to http://www.seabreeze.com.au/.

I should have swum faster. Maybe I could get DB to give me a lift next swim.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'm doing North Bondi or Gerringong on the south coast next Sunday. But if the conditions are as perfect as today, I'll be in like Flynn.

Happy New Year from Sydney, Australia

You don't have to go into the city or the Eastern Suburbs to get a fantastic view of the New Year's Eve fireworks in Sydney. We watched the 9pm action from Clarke's Point on the northern side of the bridge. Someone told me Sydney's Mayor Clover Moore allocated $5 million to the fireworks spectacular this year. I'm not sure if this covers the whole kit and kaboodle, which includes barges loaded with fireworks at various vantage points along the harbour. I was also told this money roughly equates to each Sydneysider spending $4 on the event. Determined to get our money's worth, we joined friends at 6pm and settled in a great spot just about where the Lane Cove River converges with the harbour. A barge sat on the harbour across from us, and we had a clear view the up harbour to the bridge. 

It was money well spent and though my pics aren't professional they should give you an idea of the synchronisation of the fireworks - on every barge the same fireworks were launched simultaneously. 

It was brilliant. The weather was perfect - the wind seemed to drop off in time for the show. 

Happy New Year! And may you have good health, happiness and prosperity in 2011 (a tall order, but you never know what life's gonna throw at you).