My 16-hour day last Saturday continued after we switched lakes: the Catalina Channel swimmers wanted to get in another long open water training swim.
Foremost, for the paddlers, the conditions were so much better this time. Perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. No wind. May we have similar glass-like water conditions on the ocean in August!
Unfortunately, Slippery Otter (when you paddle for hours on end you start to feel sort of Native-American-ish, so I decided we all needed Native American-ish names for the summer) and I wanted to smack the swimmers with our oars by loop two. Despite voicing our strong anti-separating stance after the last paddle, there was about a mile between two pairs of swimmers by the end of the second loop.
Did I mention that there is an island in the middle of the lake? Yep, that’s right. Thanks to Bird Island (and I don’t fault the birds. They need a place to nest), you can’t do an entire lake-scan from any point on the water. And then there’s the Bermuda Triangle Corner. Due to a rocky, deeply curving shoreline, the swimmers simply vanish in that cove.
After the first paddle, Slippery Otter and I felt horrible for days after because we couldn’t stay with everyone four the entire six hours. By the end of the second loop during our second time out though, we realized that the swimmers were bringing it on themselves. If they didn’t stay reasonably close together, we couldn’t promise that we could feed them on scheudule, let alone site them.
As a result, the paddle-minions are threatening to unionize unless we have a second kayak for the third training swim coming up in July. A 12-box of Pop-Tarts per paddle session may also be part of our negotiating terms. Definitely the strawberry ones with frosting and sprinkles.
Thanks to the addition of Grumbling Bear (Jagged Mountain’s son), we had a third paddler this past Saturday. Not only was it great to have more help (and fresh arms/shoulders) but once Grumbling Bear took over for me, I was able to get in and swim at the end. For me, it’s definitely hard to be out on the water all day and not swim!
Although I worked the entire time at the 6K earlier that morning and then paddled for several hours, I was still “fresher” than the swimmers who were on hour six by then. I kind of felt like a friendly dolphin, encouraging on tired saliors as I swam ahead, behind, in between and to one side and the other of one pair of Catalina swimmers. Even though the water temperature was 73-degrees, I needed to keep moving to stay warm!
Certainly, the long day was good “handle anything that comes my way” training for Catalina in August…
Until next time,
Rebecca, swim evangelist & paddle-minion
A special shout-out to Slippery Otter who paddled the entire time — way to train, paddle-minion!!!