A modern way to swim

Friday 7th February 2025

This morning I am virtual sea swimming.

With wind-proof walls between me and the outside, I watch short videos (taken by my swimming pals) of this morning’s North Sea. I imagine swimming. I wince. The water is huge, grey and angry-looking.

According to tides4fishing, significant wave height is nearly two metres, maximum waves potentially twice that.

The waves have white tops like snow-capped mountains and have been whipped up by twenty six mph east-north-easterly winds with gusts twice as strong. On the far east coast of East Anglia, there’s not much shelter from the east-north-east. We’re on the edge. I think about wind chill on damp shoulders.

Beach temperature is around five degrees. It doesn’t sound so bad - a positive figure at least - until you add the biting sea-damp north easterly wind, strong enough to blow a bobble hat along the beach faster than you can catch it. I remember hat chasing.

Another imagined bonus; sea temperature is sporadically above six degrees. On paper this sounds like an improvement. In the water, no discernible difference. Impossible to forget the persistent, prickly cold.

The picture in your head of today’s sea comes from any one of the many black and white sea-disaster movies, the ones in which you hope that the plucky little ship may pull through until its keel snaps and a significant wave creeps up from behind.

Wednesday was a different matter altogether. In terms of looks, at least. The sun, head and shoulders over the horizon at eight am, threw out a reassuring golden arm that reached nearly to the water’s edge.

It was weirdly wonderful. The sea was gently rippling silver, easy to get in, easy to get out of. The sun, which was strong enough to feel on one’s face, had an oddly trompe l’oeil effect; ‘it’s sunny, it’s still, it must be comfortable spring already.’

Until you were recovering from it, it was hard to believe that the sea temperature was still only six degrees.

I’ve used Wednesday’s photo for this piece. Controversial truth-bending perhaps? Honestly, I thought it was cheerier. Like February had begun and wiped endless grey January away.

The sun continued to shine throughout Wednesday morning like a beacon leading us out of winter. Sadly, it wasn’t quite strong enough to stop me feeling cold three hours after getting out of a ridiculously chilly North Sea. I remember feeling cold until evening.

My other swim this week (it’s an absurd compulson, almost ashamed to admit it) was on Saturday, solo, pre sunrise. Fat, high, deep bluish clouds over a narrow raspberry jam horizon, sun yet to show its face.

Saturday’s blue made for a silver blue sea and, having her all to myself made me want to sing to her until she sang back. Straight in, swim and sing, turn, foot down and miss the bottom (she’s a joker), out and off. Fix fixed.

This morning, the Canadian, Cousin, the Boatbuilder and I watch the videos of the wild waves as our coffee goes down. We think about sea swimming the last time and the time before and the next time and the times still waiting.

In today’s videos, gulls look as if they’re using the winter waves as gust generators, flying fast back and forth enjoying a birds eye view of any tasty morsels that are thrown to the surface by the angry sea.

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