It's summer right?

I missed having a swim at Bondi yesterday, but made it today. When I got there, I found that half the beach was closed off for a rough water swim. Normally, when they have some kind of carnival like this, it is impossible to park within cooee of the beach and the boardwalk in front of the North Bondi surf club is crowded with people. You can't get into a cafe for love or money.

I didn't notice any overcrowding in the cafes when I walked by from my usual parking spot in a back street close to the beach. The boardwalk was quite clear of bodies. There were not many people standing around on the sand (almost none in fact) and no one in the water having a warm up swim.

I soon found out why. As I strolled down to the water, a life saver asked me if I was going to be long as they were going to close off that park of the beach in 20 minutes to prepare for the race. Since I can't swim out of sight in a week at the moment, and the waves were breaking too close in for comfort, I doubted I would be 20 minutes.

When I hit the water, I found out why there were so few people around. Normally, the water temp is around 20 degrees. When I swam on the 1st or 2nd of July, it was still 19 or 20 degrees. Cold and miserable out of the water, but not bad in the water.

Today it was 16.

Almost froze my nads off. My forearms hurt when I put them in the water. I had trouble with my breathing when I stuck my head under. Through my goggles, it looked like my fingertips were going blue (they weren't). I gave up on the idea of a swim and caught a few tragic waves - essentially they dumped me in about 1 foot of water.

I struggled out of the water less than 5 minutes after I went in. I passed the life saver and she laughed a bit. She was how I found out what the water temp was.

As I was walking up to a cafe for breakfast, I heard an announcer on the tannoy giving instructions to the entrants. He said something about the cold and mentioned that if anyone got into trouble, they should just stick their hand up and wait for a rubber ducky or board to pick them up.

I think they would have been busy.