Goggles at Dawn

Over late June and early July we've had some big southerlies in Wellington: icy winds blowing (or so it feels) straight from Antarctica, days of rain, very little sun, low snowfall in the ranges to the north and east of the city, and so forth. I don't object to this weather at all. It provides variety and interest in life, after all. A couple of weeks ago there was endless rain for days. Oddly this didn't seem to affect the harbour much: there were no 'wastewater' overflows at Chaffers/Clyde Quay, and the sea seemed remarkably pellucid. What did happen, though, is that vast amounts of cold, fresh water came down the Hutt River, and gradually spread (in a fascinating pattern) across the harbour. I've borrowed this photo from ocean swimmer Eduardo, who captured the phenomenon from Roseneath. The river water is approaching from the right.  On Saturday 4 July this process was at its peak, we decided on a good 8am group swim as Bre was still in town, and Alice was up...

After a dead body was fished out of the sea near Hataitai, it became a less appealing place to swim. I've always found it somewhat silty and smelly there, and the thought that a body had been floating around near where we'd swum the previous day made the beach less endearing still.  After a couple more Freyberg Beach swims alone in variable conditions, doing either raft-fountain-raft-raft loops, or raft-raft-fountain-raft-raft loops, a change of scene seemed highly desirable. Thus on the first Saturday of Level 3, I suggested Worser Bay. Eliza and I met there at a decent social distance, and while Eliza's partner went for a run, we inched our way into the sea and plotted a course. Now, while Worser Bay is sheltered in a strongish northerly, this was a northerly coming from an odd direction. We decided to to do laps between a big rock located at the northern end of the beach by the clubhouse to a big pink buoy which turned out to be about 250 metres away. The journey to the ...

View of Plimmerton and environs from the plane Two weeks ago exactly (give or take 12 hours) I walked through a chilly southerly to morning squad at WRAC, and on my way home stopped off at Countdown to pick up the remaining supplies for my Chopper Swim trip: apples, dried apples, peanut butter, penne pasta, Snackballs, dinosaurs, two tiny tins of tuna, and a packet of cherry tomatoes. After lugging this repast home, and pottering around for a while, preparing for work the next day, I took a bus into Lambton Quay for my pre-event massage. The numbers of cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand were increasing; a few days earlier all international travellers coming into the country were officially required to go into self-isolation for two weeks, and cruise liners had been banned, as had large gatherings of people. The most recent message from the Chopper Swim organisers was that we would go ahead: our group size was relatively small, and the risks were also small. The only fly in the oi...