This made the rounds on Facebook last week, but I realize not everybody is a Facebooker… or a USMS member for that matter, so I figured I should toss this out on the blog just in case :) A big thank you to Laura Jones for such a nice write up, and USMS for deeming me interesting enough to eat up a page of the NOV/DEC issue! If you click the picture of the article above it will take you to a larger version that you should be able to actually read.

I’ve been keeping busy this past week with the switch to heavier pool swimming now that daylight savings time is here and there’s no more sunshine when I leave the office at 5pm. I made the move back to Kennedy’s 50m pool in SLO and laid down some decent late night long course workouts on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. On Thursday I spent my lunch at the beach soaking in some 56 degree water while searching for waves in an unexpectedly docile pre-storm sea. With my LCM adventures I could definitely feel myself getting stronger as the week went on, but Friday dealt me a major setback. I swiped my card like I usually do and was off to the locker room when they stopped me to let me know that my membership was expired. Shit. I asked for how long since I’d been there all week… the dude said January? Uhhh…. probably not… it was late on Friday night and nobody wanted to figure it out so they just let me go workout anyways. Something similar happened to me earlier this year, maybe it’s the same mistake all over again. I’m going to have to figure out what’s up this coming week, I need the flexibility and late hours of that pool to get myself ready for various longer swims I want to do in the coming months.

Today’s swim in Avila Beach was our first foray into sub 55 degree waters in a long time. Luckily the rest of the conditions and the weather were really fantastic. Niel emailed me Saturday night to make sure I’d be showing up since he figured attendance would be light due to the time of year and rain on Friday. I let him know I’d be there, and this morning I got a bonus text from him telling me to bring my rescue buoy because we might make a run on Avila Rock. I was stoked on the idea since I haven’t been out there in a long time and it’s a cool swim that takes you about 3/4′s of a mile off shore.

While we were on the beach scoping the route and looking for any signs of trouble between here and there we had one more person show up which was a bit of a surprise. Amy has been swimming with us for a little while now but she’s still learning a lot about open water. She was open to the idea of trying it out, but Niel and I decided to scrap our original plans since the rock is a fairly advanced route with no real exit points. That matched with the distance and the cold made it seem like a bad idea. Instead we opted for a Poly Pier swim which would still be a good distance and build up some new experiences for Amy that will help a lot for someday that we take her out to the rock.

We went down to the right side of the Avila Pier and made plans to swim out to the buoy line to regroup. It took me a little while to get all the way in. I was definitely feeling that 54 degree water. It’s not something that I can’t do, it just takes me a little while to get my internal heater pumping and the desire to fully submerse myself. Amy took off swimming first, followed my Niel shortly thereafter… I complained my way through a few more waves and then took off swimming. By the buoy I had burned about halfway through my acclimatization but needed a few more minutes to get all the way comfortable. On the way to the buoy I had a seal stalker. As a matter of fact through the whole swim we had 3 very curious seals trailing us. 2 big black ones and a smaller guy that was grey and spotted. Every time we stopped they’d pop up in various places around us to observe what we were up to.

After our quick regrouping session we swam to the end of the buoy line and then angled for the cross braces on the Poly Pier. We let Amy get out in front of us a bit since she’s slower than Niel and I. She started out on an ok line but then started to peel left towards the tip of the Poly Pier. I chased her down and tried to herd her back online a bit. We were going the right way again and I shifted back into my own gear and made my own way to the pier with the occasional turn onto my back to make sure she was roughly on course. Somewhere towards the end she started drifting outward again. Niel and I had already made it to the pier so we decided to swim her down and cut off her route instead of waiting for her to notice she was off course. Sighting off a couple of extra pipes on the pier can be a pretty hard thing to do especially with the glare of the sun and never having been there.

Once we had everyone regrouped we negotiated the next leg of the swim, it would either be back to the buoy line on the end of the Avila Pier. Since we were directly in line with the tip of the pier we opted for that. We let Amy get a little ahead again and Niel took extra care on this leg to make sure we kept her on line. It’s probably a 600m shot and we made a couple regrouping stops in the middle to keep the group together.

At the tip of the pier we took a few moments to rest and regroup while the people on the pier observed some of San Luis Bay’s more peculiar marine mammals in their natural habitat. Since there was a dude fishing off the corner of the pier we made plans to arc out a ways and then turn in for the beach. The tide was really high so we had a lot more swimming than usual to do to get all the way back. En route I crossed paths with a sea otter. He looked a little displeased with me interrupting his Sunday stroll. About a meter from my face he dove, disappeared into the murky water and popped back up behind me undoubtedly muttering sea-otter-anese expletives about swimmers harshing his mellow.

All told we did about 1.25 miles and I felt really good afterwards. My only real concern was the water quality, it seemed a little questionable on the east side of the pier… fingers crossed on not getting sick, don’t need that! Looking forward into next week I need to figure out where and where I’m swimming so I can keep up my current workout escalation.

With the Channel season over I figured this would be a good time to collect my thoughts a bit on what I learned and what I could share to help others either looking to do a boat supported swim, or help those who will be the support on those boats. I’ve been aboard 6 Catalina attempts, 1 Anacapa, and been part of a Monterey Bay relay attempt. By no means am I an expert at this point, I’m really just a swim crewing grommet, but I’ve seen a lot of things and I’m sure that experience is valuable to some of you out there planning your own trips in the near future. Here’s a random grouping of thoughts for you to chew on a bit before you depart on an oceanic adventure.

Designate a Crew Chief for Your Boat

I feel really strongly about this tip, I think a strong leader on the boat can make or break a swim. Oftentimes if there’s a leadership vacuum on the boat an observer will inject themselves into that role, but it’s not their job. You need to ensure that someone on the boat will be in charge of making sure you get fed, mixing and warming feeds if necessary, making sure kayakers and support swimmers get in and out on schedule, and other things that may be important to you like updating family members or posting updates to Facebook gets done. As much as the swimmer has to be awake and engaged from point to point, this person should be as well. This Crew Chief should be someone that knows you well enough to know when you’re doing good or when things are going badly. They should have enough of a grip on your personality to know how to motivate you when things get hard. I’d go as far as to say don’t book your boat until you have your Crew Chief locked down because a strong leader on the boat will make your time in the water much more pleasant and your chances of success much greater.

“Oh it’s cool, I don’t get seasick.” – yes, yes you do

Chugging along at full speed and pitching and rolling at swimmer speed are vastly different experiences. You might be good at handling one but not the other. Take some medicine in advance (Dramamine, Bonine, etc.) or get your hands on a scopalamine patch if you can find one. Puking all night isn’t going to be a good time for you and it’s going to drastically cut your efficacy as a crew member. On Cliff’s swim I had a hard time hanging with him while pace swimming because I was totally gassed out from throwing up so much. I hadn’t successfully ingested any calories for a long time and after 45 minutes of a 1 hour shift I fell apart.

Pack Double for the Swimmer

Goggles, Caps, Feeds, Bottles, Mouthwash, whatever you’ve got make sure to bring extra and keep the overage on the boat. It’s very easy for a wave to dump a kayak and send all your stuff floating away in the current or sinking 2000+ feet to the bottom of the ocean. And while you’re at it, Tie Everything to Something! Especially when it’s dark out it’s very easy to lose unsecured items. You don’t want to get into a situation where a kayak gets flipped and you lose everything because it wasn’t secured.

Remember as a Crew Person It’s Not About You or What You Want, We’re All Here for the Swimmer

A lot of times a crew person comes along not only to help but to get some channel experience of their own. Taking a ride along before you attempt your own is hugely beneficial. However what you would like to get out of the trip may not happen, but you still have to keep up your end of the crew bargain. I never saw anyone fall into this, but I felt it was important to remind prospective crew people that it’s not about you.

Sleep – Get Some

In the case of a Catalina swim, once you get the boat loaded up you’re going to get 3 short talks. One from the Captain, the Observer, and the swimmer. After that you have a few hours of transit to get to the island. This is an excellent time to sleep in advance of being up on a boat all night. If you sleep before the swim you’ll be fresh for the start, and at least for me personally sleeping helps with my seasickness and seems to balance me out. It gets really lonely on deck around 2-3am because everyone gets sleepy all at once, if possible work out a sleep schedule for the crew to ensure you always have someone alert and awake ready to do whatever needs to be done.

Define Roles and Cross Train

Try to assign certain tasks (feeding, paddling, etc.) to your crew, but then make sure they have an idea of how to do each other’s jobs in case someone is incapacitated. I’ve seen people get horribly seasick on the boat and lose their ability to contribute completely. The rest of the crew needs to fill that gap so it’s ideal that they know how that person does their job on the boat.

Try to Recruit a Channel Veteran

This is hugely helpful. Someone who knows the ropes, is familiar with the boats, has experience with various marathon swims is incredibly valuable. I’ve been on boats with some really exceptional crew people like Niel and Gracie Van Der Byl who made the trip so smooth and awesome because they were such strong and experienced crew members. Luckily most of the official observers that you’re going to come across will have a lot of experience in the channel and will help fill this role as well.

Put Glowsticks Everywhere!

When you’re swimming in the dark at a minimum you need some lights on the swimmer, whether they be traditional glowsticks or something a little fancier. Beyond that you want some on the kayak or paddleboard to make that easier to see. You also want to hang some from the support boat. On the Monterey relay crossing we put one color on the bow and another on the stern so even if you couldn’t see the boat you could tell which way it was pointed. I thought that was pretty smart. I’d also recommend lighting up feed bottles. In the dark if one is dropped and falls out of range of the lights on the boat it’s gone… with a stick or blinky light attached you’re less likely to lose your bottles. One other glowstick trick I picked up this summer was to attach them to people on the boat so the swimmer can see them up there watching and working. The swimmer may not be able to hear you cheer or tell what you’re doing on deck, but at least they’ll see that you’re there with them which is a nice feeling while floating in 3000 feet of black water in the dark.

Take Pictures!

Unless you’re dealing with somebody like me, your swimmer probably doesn’t have a camera stashed in their speedo. Make sure everyone on the boat takes some pictures or videos during the course of the swim so that your swimmer has something to look back on later.

Bonus pro-tip: try not to lose a your camera full of pictures in the parking lot after a successful crossing like I did… not a good morning! Luckily I took a lot of shots with my phone too!

Make it to the Sunrise

The toughest part of a Catalina swim for both swimmer and crew is grinding out the miles in the dark. If you hit a point where you think you just can’t do it, make a goal to gut it out until day breaks. It’s a whole new world when the ocean lights up and there’s sun on your back.

Bring Fins

I don’t care how fast of slow the swimmer is I’m bringing some fins along to support swim just in case. I’ve loaned them out to other people on the boat and worn them myself. Sometimes because I had to in order to chase down faster swimmers like Chris D. or Evan M., other times to keep up with swimmers around my speed like Cliff C. when I was too sick to perform at my true abilities without assistance. Remember it’s the swimmer who has rules to follow you can cheat as much as you want :)

Decide on Hand Signals in Advance and Bring a White Board

I can’t hear anything with my head in the water. I get water stuck in my ear and I’m pretty much lost in the hearing department until I get out and shake out the water. Because of this I like to have a few hand signals for me and my kayaker so I can see what she wants to say to me without me having to stop and trying to listen. Another thing I’ve seen that I like is the use of a white board to pass along messages to the swimmer. Things like stroke rate, words of encouragement, inappropriate drawings are all good entertainment for someone spending 8-15 hours with their face in the ocean.

Good Kayakers are Gold

I think people underestimate the difficulty potentially involved in kayaking for a channel swim. Sometimes you luck out and get a flat sea with no wind, other times… well other times you don’t. There’s a big difference between renting a kayak in a marina as a tourist, and getting launched off of a rolling boat in the dark to paddle a straight line for hours while guiding and feeding a swimmer. On a channel swim the kayaker is a navigator, nutritional source, and sports psychologist. It’s a really important task, make sure you’re up to it before you agree to take on that role.

Kayaker Swaps Can be Substantially Harder Than You Think

A lot of people think swapping a paddler is just taking one out and tossing a new one in. It’s a little more involved than that. First they have to leave the swimmer. Next they have to pull up to a drifting boat in a rolling ocean to transfer onboard. After this someone needs to get back in that kayak without falling out. In flat seas not too hard, add a healthy swell to that with an ocean that drops a few feet out from the bottom of the boat occasionally and now you’ve got some trouble. I’d recommend making swaps sparingly and only when it looks like the ocean is flat enough to pull it off.

Be Prepared to Feed Off the Boat

Say something goes sideways with a kayaker swap and you can’t relaunch the kayak successfully, eventually the boat captain is going to make you just bring it aboard so he can get back to piloting. I’ve seen it happen twice now, in one instance I was the unlaunchable kayaker. If the kayaker was your feeder, well now we have a problem. That’s why even if you don’t anticipate feeding off the boat you should still be prepared. You’ll need rope, carabiners and something on your bottles that you can clip them to. Make sure that stuff is on deck and your crew knows where to find it if the situation devolves in that fashion.

Try to Learn Something Every Time You Go Out and Share it With Your Friends

Let other people learn from your mistakes and triumphs, it’s a lot better than making them figure it out the hard way! Like Captain Greg of the Bottom Scratcher says “it’s a dangerous thing, what we do,” so the more prepared the swimmer and crew are to perform, the safer and more enjoyable the trip is going to be.

I’m riding pretty high right now on a wave of total swim geek-ery. All day Saturday revolved around swimming, and not just regular swimming, but marathon channel swimming. You know, the good stuff :) It was a day where swimmers from all over the country (I saw friends from as far away as New York, and now that I think about it we also had a small international contingent from Mexico) came to celebrate each other and their accomplishments. It was fantastic. The events flowed well, the vibe was excellent, and the company was spectacular. The amount of experience and history that I got to mingle with in the course of the day was unbelievable. I feel rejuvenated and ready to attack my own goals and training with a renewed vigor and love for the sport!

The Catalina Channel Swim Federation’s banquet started at 10am so I had to get going pretty early in the morning to make it on time. I split Pismo around 6am while it was still dark outside. As I sailed down the freeway towards Santa Barbara I was met with a real treat on the other side of the Gaviota pass as day began to break. I had a full view of a pale blue Pacific beginning to wake up and start its day. The sea was covered with patches of sapphire chop and a bright orange layer of sky blazed at its surface. The sky mellowed into a lighter yellow, then blue, and eventually black as your gaze ascended upwards towards the still visible carpet of stars laid out above us. The whole scene was punctuated with silhouettes of the Channel Islands along the horizon. There was a light misty haze around the base of each island, but their mountainous peaks were sharp and crisp against the breaking dawn. Seeing sights like this it’s hard to forget why swimmers can be so intrigued and driven to explore and attempt to conquer the turbulent and cold waters between these wild places and the California mainland.

I arrived at my friend Evan’s house around 7:30 and we combined our efforts at this point. He piloted the rest of our journey to San Pedro. The drive down the Ventura Coast was beautiful and I got to watch some monster surf batter the beaches. It got us thinking about our prospects of a swim after the CCSF banquet, but unfortunately a mix of high surf and rain induced urban run-off from Friday squashed those plans despite it being beautiful outside all day.

We got to the San Pedro Double Tree a little early and sat outside of the meeting room in the crisp November air looking out over the harbor. Shortly thereafter friends started to trickle in. We caught up a bit with Mallory, and then a gaggle of San Diegans followed shortly after her. We decided at this point to go inside and start mingling. They had name tags laid out for us and then special ways to recognize who was who. Soloists got a lei of real flowers, relays one of shells, and support crew a single flower. They recommended placing it in my beard, and despite giving it a shot it wasn’t really going to work :) Around probably 10:30 we were herded towards the main room for our party and where we’d be eating breakfast. I sat at a table with both Cliff and Evan who I swam with in the Channel, Evan’s parents, and a couple who were involved with the first successful relay of the season.

The presentation portion of the banquet was a total swimmer love fest. They did a great job of recognizing volunteers, swimmers, boat captains, and everyone else that makes the whole thing possible. New this year was the recognition of all Catalina Circumnavigations. Up until this year it had only been soloed once about 30 years ago by Cindy Cleveland, Forrest Nelson became the second ever soloist this year. The federation also took the time to recognize those who had swam relays around the island.

One of my favorite parts of the banquet was listening to the swimmers give quick little speeches about their swims. Some were just short heartfelt thank yous to friends, family and crew… others were more in depth and emotionally charged. Some moments out of people like my friend Bob Needham and Pat Gallant-Charette (who broke the record for oldest woman to do a Catalina crossing) really touched me. It was also great to see Cliff and Evan up there speaking and knowing exactly what they were talking about because I was right there with them on the boat the whole way.

We wrapped things up with a talk from Lynne Cox. She’s great in front of a crowd, and she was fascinating to listen to. She’s somebody I really hope I get a chance to talk to in person with one on one some day. I’m particularly interested in some of her Scandinavian exploits and of course her thoughts on cold water tolerance.

One of the people I was most excited to see at the banquet was Cindy Cleveland. She’s a personal open water hero of mine and to a lot of other people as well. She has this legendary status but I’ve never seen her in the wild before, just a sighting was exciting but the prospect of getting to talk to her was even more exciting to me. Some of you may find it hard to believe, but I’m actually a little shy in real life and wasn’t sure how to go about the whole deal. Evan came up to me and asked if I had talked to Cindy yet, I said no and he looked at me pretty seriously and said “you better go talk to Cindy Cleveland right now Rob.” Yes sir! He was right, I had to find her and at least say hi. I found her over by the entrance to the meeting room with Anne Cleveland (no relation). When she finished catching up with Anne I introduced myself, babbled a little bit, and explained that one of my lifetime goal swims is the Monterey Bay. The Monterey mention triggered a big smile. I was pleased to see just the mention of the Bay creates the same response in her that it does in me :) It’s a really special patch of water and it’s hard not to love. I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to be in the middle of the Bay in the dark over thousands of feet of water while having brief encounters with its stinging gelatinous inhabitants, but Cindy has a much deeper connection to the water up there. For a little historical perspective, Cindy is the only human to ever cross the Bay solo under English Channel rules. That epic swim took place a year before I was born and has been attempted multiple times since but never repeated in over 30 years. It was really great for me to get to chat with Cindy for a few minutes and hopefully our paths cross again sometime in the near future.

Around 2 Evan and I split from the DoubleTree and ran over to our hotel to get checked in before proceeding to the location of the Santa Barbara Channel Swim Association’s banquet. We got there early since Evan had to take part in a board meeting that they let me sit in on and interject a few thoughts into. As we neared 5 everyone else started to show up. We probably had upwards of 50 people there including successful swimmers, the Tuna Thumper’s crew, the CCSF board, and a lot of other folks who had been present at the CCSF banquet earlier in the day.

By virtue of being a smaller organization the swimmers had more time to chat about their swims. They were encouraged to take their time and really expound upon their oceanic adventures amongst California’s Channel Islands. I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s recollections of their swims, and being able to relive Lynn’s Anacapa swim in her own words while sitting next to my fellow crew person on that swim, Roni.

The real highlight for me was to listen to Forrest Nelson speak about his Catalina Circumnavigation. Although he was recognized at the CCSF Banquet earlier in the day, his swim was actually an SBCSA endeavor because CCSF wasn’t sanctioning circumnavigations yet. Forrest is a fascinating guy but he is very under the radar despite being one of the best extreme marathon swimmers in the world. He would never say that himself, but it’s the truth. You don’t really get to hear much about his amazing feats of human endurance, but if you’re like me you want to… I wish that guy had a blog! Outside of being a personal friend of his, I think the only way you would have gotten the whole story of his amazing swim was to be at the banquet. We all sat with rapt attention as he detailed the swim all the way down to stroke rates. It was inspiring and I’m very, very glad I made sure to drive down south for the party!

Afterwards Evan and I stayed and networked with those that were still hanging out and I made some really valuable connections. I shared some ideas for a swim with the Captain of the Tuna Thumper and he said he’d be interested in coming up to the Central Coast to pilot it which was a huge breakthrough for an idea I have simmering. We ended up being the last people to leave the restaurant and then proceeded to our hotel and sat in the bar rehashing our day. I think it had a profound effect on the both of us. We spent hours talking about things we want to accomplish, the future of the sport, the impact certain individuals had on us that day, etc. We’re both going to be mentally processing this weekend for a while. In the meantime I need to train! Big things need to be done, adventures attempted, and limits pushed… let’s go!