Why I swim
I met a man called Marcello. Two fishing boats had been wrecked on rocks in Cumberland Bay East, South Georgia and Marcello had been sent down as part of the salvage team from Chile to clean up. He was a bear of a man. I spent a lot of time with him during the months that he was down, eating homemade empinadas on Sundays, borrowing Scuba kit with his weight belt to visit a wreck (spending the next hour trying to get back to the surface), improving my Spanish and sharing stories. I was really sad when he and his team had to return home.
Before he left he said,
“Friendship is like a flower - if you don’t water it, then it will die.”
He was right. My time was filled with where I was and what I was doing. I didn’t water the seedling and so our frienship eventually died. It is something I have always regretted.
So part of why I swim is this. I don't want my relationship with the water to wither away. The feelings in me when I catch a wave or duck my head under when swimming, the cold water clearing my vision.
Sixty miles off shore and the storm hits. It’s night time of course. It’s also after 5 days of sailing with a combined total of 9 hours sleep. None of these make it an ideal time to deal with big seas and galeforce winds that hit us hard, filling the Wayfarer with water. It is June but the water is cold and the waves and spray are relentless. I've known Will for a very long time but gone is the easy, jokey conversation. Each of us compliments and encourages the other as we take turns at the helm. Each of us silently hopes to see our families again. The whale breaching clear from the water is not a welcome hallucination - just a reminder that we are in the world of whales. I am truly humbled and in awe of the sea right now. These are not the seas that bring joy and euphoria but instead terror and perspective.
Dave Key has an issue when people talk about being disconnected to nature. He asks them to sit down and take a deep breath. Then he says, “now hold it for thirty minutes,”. We are all connected to nature and cannot be apart from it. How we feel about it is not the same thing. Like every relationship, it can be made stronger or it can be neglected.
I visited my uncle in the Philippines, twenty or so years ago. The islands are surrounded by the most beautiful seas, rich with colourful fish and corals. I visited the university there and met a German researcher who I ended up helping out for a couple of weeks. Towards the end he dropped me off on a tiny island with a bit of food and some scuba kit. The air tank hadn't been used for a couple of years and there were no guages (my good friend Al later tells me this is known as a suicide kit). For three days I would wake up, have breakfast and then get in the water. It took about an hour to dive right around the island. One side was shallow, whilst the other had a drop off into deep water. During these days I got to know where the cowrie shells were and where I would bump into my moray eel friends. The more I dived beneath the surface, the stronger the connection I felt towards it.
I am fortunate to have seen seas boiling with fish, feeding grounds for birds, seals and whales. I have seen pristine reefs and been embraced by cold, clean water. I know what it could be like. I have also heard dynamite fishing and seen the results, watched a lorry load of rubbish tipped straight into a river and I swim regularly in waters where formaldehyde is poured into fish farms.
I feel really overwhelmed by this.
It feels good to attend a “Demo dook” in Loch Linnhe. To give something back. To be in a two way relationship because if we don't water the seedling - it will die.
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