 The Ice Princess, who is a ballerina, tells us it looks as though this lass is about to launch into a balancé. According to a ballet website (click here for proof), this is a term that means a "rocking step ... very much like a pas de valse and is an alternation of balance, shifting the weight from one foot to the other. Balancé may be done crossing the foot either front or back. Fifth position R foot front. Demi-plié, dégagé the R foot to the second position and jump on it lightly in demi-plié, crossing the L foot behind the R ankle and inclining the head and body to the right. Step on the L demi-pointe behind the R foot, slightly lifting the R foot off the ground; then fall on the R foot again in demi-plié with the L foot raised sur le cou-de-pied derrière. The next balancé will be to the left side. Balancé may also be done en avant or en arrière facing croisé or effacé and en tournant". Got that? Now, let's all try it ... Either way, it looks as though this lass is having fun, although we wonder what that naughty lad behind her is up to. But she expressed what we all felt at Avalon: that we were very glad to be there.
There are so many things that are nice about the Avalon Beach Surf Swim that it’s hard to know where to start and where to finish (the stories, that is). It’s easy to know where to start the swim, though, and it has to be the best start in ocean swimming.
We are herded down to the northern end of Avalon beach, into the lee of Indian Head – and you will see later why it is so named – and sent off into a runout. Most beaches have runouts, and they all have names. At Bronte, it’s the Bronte Express. At Bondi, it’s the Backpacker Express, etc, etc. Most of them are called something-or-other Express. All will rush you out to sea. But at Avalon, it’s a beautiful, wide, almost benign runout, right under the headland, and running broadly over round, smooth rocks covered in that iridescent green weed that wafts gracefully in the surging swell and, if the water is shallow enough, tickles your belly as you rush over it in the suck out between waves. Normally, Avalon surf club station stalwart Tim Hixson stands on a rock in the runout to warn swimmers how shallow the water is on its edge, so that you don’t come too close, too shallow. Tim wasn’t there this year. A professional photographer who specialises in Avalon beach between the high watermark and the grassy sandhills, Tim had an exhibition over the road in the Avalon library and he was attending that. And anyway, the hugely high tide not far from swim time meant the run out wasn’t as strong, and the water over the rocks was deeper, so the potential problem was less. You almost can’t come too close to those rocks, though. The closer in you get, the faster is the runout, and waftier the weed, the ticklier it becomes, particularly for those of us whose keels are deeper than others. We are one such swimmer. If you get close in, it will run you out quicker, so maybe you will never get to the stage where you ground yourself, like a beached turtle flailing.
Lake Bondi, or Bondi Resort.
It’s especially good in the runout at Avalon in a nor’-east swell, as it was on swim day this year, because what break there is on the inside of the headland is heading across the runout towards the southern end of the beach, not straight into your face, so you rise and fall over the swells, gurgling through bits of white water. But it’s not bashing you, it’s not pushing you farther in towards the shallower water and the more exposed rocks. Most swimmers stay off the rocks a bit, but we reckon that, by staying so clear, they miss the most wonderful experience of the Avalon runout in the shallower water. We love it every year. The weed wafts beneath us. It’s gentle weed, the brightest lime green, waving to us happily as we head to sea. We rise and fall in the swell. Up and down, sucked out as the waves approach, held up as we rise over it, then sucked out again, accelerating over the weed and the rocks until we’re held up again on the summit of the next swell. It makes us feel so good to be on our annual visit to Avalon.
The smartest swimmers, however, will choose a middle course, by which they get the benefit of the runout, but they also head straighter towards the first turning booey 540 metres to sea, thus optimising the distance in their swim. We’re not so smart. We hang wide all the way through the swim, as we do at most swims. Not deliberately. It’s just us. But check the course as described by the oceanswims.com-gps-in-a-prophylactic, this time worn by oceanswims.com IT guru, Bluto Hoban. Bluto measured it as 1.79 km, but that was just him, blundering peripatetically along a route just roughly following the course as laid out by the Avalon lifesaving laddies. Google Earth tells us the real course was pretty well spot on 1.5km, as promised by the club, with Bluto wandering up to 70m farther out to sea than he really was required to go.
This chap has one leg. He proves that ocean swimming is a sport for any and for all. Not many sports can claim that.
But right out there, right out to sea, along that back reach from under Indian Head towards Avalon’s southern rock shelf, was the most glorious experience of this swim. For the back reach didn’t head from north to south; it headed from nor’-east to sou’-west. This meant that it pretty well exactly followed the run of the swell. And any good ocean swimmer knows what that means. It means we get the runs.
The glory of ocean swimming is melding our swimming with the ocean. We can battle the ocean sometimes, or we can meld with it. Running with the swell means we are working together. And there are few sensations more pleasurable, way out to sea, anyway, than the feeling of a following swell lifting you in the feet and thrusting you forwards, surging through the sea, accelerating and rushing, as the swell runs along the length of your body, then dumping you in the trough where it leaves you to your own devices, waiting, sloshing, plodding, until you feel the next following swell gently lifting your feet … and on you rush … the swell lifts your feet, it points your head downwards into the sea, but not to bury you, for you still are flat on the surface of the water, but the surface of the water is angled, steeper, and you’re rushing down it … the swell runs along your body … it lifts your feet, then your legs, and your knees, and your thighs, and your hips … it lifts your torso, it lifts your neck, and it runs through your head. And you surge with the swell … you lengthen your stroke, you leave your leading arm out there just that little bit longer, you streamline your body into the most perfect torpedo you can muster, the swell picks you up and you run down its face, faster, faster, surging and rushing, forwards, faster … then you flop, in a heap, as it outruns you, it leaves you behind it, suddenly faced with pushing forward by swimming against and through the water, not running with it, despite your best torpedo … But you push ahead, then you feel it again … the following swell, lifting your feet, like a teasing tickle, pointing your down the face of the wave, and you lengthen your stroke, you delay your grab and you pull, you accelerate down the face, and you rush past swimmers nearby, and that’s how you can tell how suddenly much faster you are going …
This is such an exhilarating sensation, a privileged opportunity to be at one with the sea, that it’s hard to describe it adequately in words. It’s something you have to feel, to experience. It’s as if we swim in the ocean seeking this sensation, this very personal feeling, that it’s the pinnacle of our experience in the sea. It’s our climax. It’s our orgasm. Gasp. Puff. Puff. Aaahhhh…..
It’s very special. We ran like that all the way from the turner off Indian Head to the booee off the southern rock shelf. Surge … run … rush … settle … surge … run … rush …. Settle … surge … Just one jarring surge, when as we reached our fastest speed on the way down a wave, we abruptly head butted with our View Fully Sick goggles the toes of the bloke in front of us ... That’s how you know that you’re going faster in your surfing. It’s a matter of your feel for the water. You must relax in the water to feel what it’s doing, to meld your body and your movement to the sea, to adjust your pitch, your orientation, your reach, your grab, your pull, your withdrawal and your recovery to the sea, to work with it so that you get the most out of the sea, and the most from your stroke.
Avalon was a wonderful day.
The start at Hawks Nest ...
... off, along Jimmys Beach ... Shoal Bay in the distance ...
... and back along Hawks Nest beach.
It’s also a day for wandering around the very special and precious shopping centre at Avalon, which has been the scene of many a memorable purchase, for some whom we know, following the swim, although this time it wasn’t so much a purchase that was memorable, as it was the opportunity to hear about the experience of our friend, Fifi la Dobber, an artist who shares a studio in Brookvale with another artist. My studiomate, she calls her.
Fifi’s studiomate is creating an installation that includes a video and some material, coloured indigo. The artist is creating the indigo herself, dyeing the material in a way that only artists could dream up. It seems that true dyeing involves a process that also involves human urine, for this makes the indigo and the dyeing that much better. Human urine comes at a cost, however, which includes the sensibilities of those around it. There’s been no problem sourcing the urine, we understand. The market is awash, apparently. This time, it’s been sourced from the artist’s mother. But it has to be aged, then strained into the dyeing process. We can only imagine it’s like managing prawn shells after Xmas lunch. If you care about your relationships with your neighbours, you store the shells in the freezer until the morning of rubbish collection day. Now, with aged urine …
Yes, Avalon always is a memorable day. We love it. And next season, season 2009/10, the excellent news is that January again has five Sundays, and Avalon should get its own swim date separately from North Bondi, with Gerringong running, we hope, the weekend before, which should mean we can do all three swims. But then there’s Hawks Nest, too … such a gluttony of swims!
From North Bondi, we received an sms after their swim from organiser Foxy. It read: “ … we had perfect weather at lake bondi or should I say bondi resort and only 1050 people turned up! …” Everyone is happy. |
Armada.
In the Express.
Oh, let her win, you bully!
At North Bondi, they had all kinds of funny hats for the codger divisions to wear. Here, John Kelso, 79, and one of the fastest ocean siwmmers in Stray'a, prepares to show the Trembles Bros, Shivers (at rear) and Shakers, the way.
This is our favourite ocean siwmmer. Look how high her bum sits in the water ...
The lane rope. We were taking this pic when an Avalon rubber ducky approached us, thinking we were in trouble. We yelled out, "We're just taking a picture of the lane rope!", and the laydee in the front of the duck laughed it off. But the driver, a bloke sitting behind her, said, "Oh, that's not a lane rope! It's the shark net." And we said, "Oh! Is it?"
Describing the course.
Huey watches over us.
The oceanswims.com GPS-in-a-prophylactic makes its way around the course, assisting as it goes the streamline of Bluto Hoban. Bluto swears it ain't him, on the grounds that there's no way his leading arm would be out there like that.
Reg and Mr Cheeky, leading lights of the Judean People's Front, swam, as usual, around the course together, Reg usually just in front, in his rightful place. Sorry about the blob on the lens.
This is why this headland, at the northern end of Avalon Beach, is known as Indian Head. We prefer to think of it as Hueys Head. For this is Huey, the surf god, watching over us.
Reg and Mr Cheeky, who didn't get those new cossies he so desperately needed for Xmas.
Reg never could get the hang of ocean swimming.
One of the first things we are taught as surf life savers, John Greaves, is Don't turn your back on the surf ... Always know what the surf is doing! Perhaps we distracted John, for this one got him good and proper.
The queue for the barbie at Avalon is well-deserved. There are a few really standout barbies n the circuit, and so many of them are on the northern beaches. Bilgola and Avalon are head and shoulders, up there, although ...
... the average age of the barbiers at Avalon dropped this year, with a couple of the codgers who normally run the barbie absent, sadly, from the event, notably Doug Crane. They're an age, these codgers. And they take such pride in their work! But those who are left go on, and the quality still is tops, once again earning the Chef Shelle Belle award for Best Barbie, 2009.
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