Monday, May 24, 2010

Nuttiness at Noosa...

Obviously everyone will be waiting to read what new levels of nuttiness were reached at the Noosa Blue Water swim on Saturday.


This year's nuttiness was the cap on the number of swimmers. It meant a number of people missed out on swimming altogether or were forced to switch from the 2km main swim to the 800m event.

This is the first time in the seven-year history of the swim that the 700-swimmer limit has been reached. And that was despite a huge downpour the night before. People who were planning to come to Noosa swim did not come. They don’t want to do the mini-swim.

Furthermore, numbers won’t sit on the ‘rev limiter’ for long. If numbers can’t go up, they’ll go down. This isn’t nuttiness on the part of organisers USM who handle major events such as the Noosa and Mooloolaba Triathlons so a few hundred in an ocean swim is a doddle. Even the bike rides the day after the swim expected an overall peleton of 2500.

No this is general Noosa nuttiness, in this case the Noosa Parks folks. In the past, this has required swimmers wait up in the bush before moving down onto Ti-tree Beach for the race start. I can’t even take a guess at that one.

For a couple of years, swimmers had to walk from the bus drop-off point at the National Park carpark to Ti-tree by the fire trails rather than the regular footpaths, obviously so that ocean swimming hooligans did not crowd out the regular National Park-goers. At 7am.

Even this year, we were instructed to straggle along the National Park footpath in small groups.

This precious ‘Noosa’ attitude condemns this event to small-time status, never able to grow to a Byronesque 2000. What would Noosa do if 300-odd people turned up the day before the event for a walk-the-course social swim like they do in Byron?

Part of the attraction of ocean swimming is the social aspect, swapping tall tales of well-remembered disaster swims with people you may not have seen in the previous 12 months. This multi-day festival of ocean swimming could happen at Noosa because it as all the natural attractions of plenty of coffee shops and a stunning A-to-B style course which can range from flat track mill-pond conditions and bright sunshine like last weekend to three or four years ago when a howling westerly blew up a huge chop that must have been half a metre, no at least a metre, or more. Ask anyone.

I haven’t spoken to anyone at USM but it must be frustrating to have their swim capped at 700 when they see the explosion in ocean swimming in Queensland (and Byron) in the past couple of seasons with the three new Weekend Warrior events, Burleigh hitting 500 in their first year and Byron breaking 2000.

They (USM) ran their usual tight ship fronted by the cheerful and knowledgeable Benny Pike on the microphone.

The things they can control, USM do well. World champion Melissa Gorman is now a Noosa regular. Three weeks ago, she trailed men’s winner Ky Hurst home by just seven seconds at Byron. At the weekend, she blew the women away in the first few hundred metres for a comfortable win.
In the men’s race, Brendan Capell had to wait until the final few metres to score from Dev Lahey, the Grimsey brothers and Commonwealth Games butterfly hope Nick D’Arcy.

After a hectic couple of months, in fact the only two months that get hectic in Queensland, our season comes to an end with the new 3.8km Weekend Warriors event at Caloundra. As with the two previous ‘Dubya Dubya’ events, there are a couple of contentious points. First, there are only three age groups: under 17, 17 to 36 and over 36. Also suits are in. So if you are philosophically opposed to suits, do you stick to your conviction and battle the double handicap of swimmers almost 20 years younger with suits on, or get rubbered up in the best suit you can beg, borrow or buy. The temptation to join the dark side is strong since I do have a black beauty hanging in the wardrobe. No no no no – how could I wear a suit after all the ridicule I have handed out in the past. But it’s just a suit. It’s not as though it’s a burqua or something.

I’ll let you know.

Also, at the moment, we are going against the prevailing conditions. That is, check-in and briefing are at Kings Beach before the field is bussed to the start at Moffat’s to swim roughly south (i.e. against the sweep) back to Kings.


- Roger Muspratt



There were the usual nutty suspects of the café in Hastings Street with the chairs facing the footpath and more roundabouts per kilometre than in any OECD country.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

South Head Roughwater...

Lovely day at Watsons Bay today, watching the peloton dribble in from South Head.

Check out our video reports... www.qik.com/oceanswims

Leave us your thoughts...

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

End of season mooching...

1. Can the sport of oceanswims settle on the one colour cap for age groups as I do not want to go home and throw out 20 to 30 caps a year. For us tragics I would rather buy my own to fit my big melon?


2. Can there be a Family entry fee and a pensioners or over 65 year entry fee?

2. Can the oceanswims lose their purple cone buoys? Swimming around looking for purple buoys is a time waster?

Peter McCrae

PS Congratulations to Don Boland for a mighty effort this year.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Byron (Lord), and swimming in memory of...


 We couldn't be at Byron Bay this year, and we are very sorry we missed the 200th anniversary of Byron (Lord) swimming the Hellespont, which fell today (Monday, May 2). We would loved to have celebrated it with a Mondee morning swim from The Pass back to main beach. To our mind, the Fridee, Sat'dee and Mondee swims of Byron weekend are the highlights of the weekend, followed by a cuppa and brekker, as Le Roi Roy calls it, at the pub. Sundee's swim is the just the catalyst. We're in Fiji right now, in the very remote Yasawas, at Otto and Fanny's, one of our favourite places in the world, helping with arrangements for our visit back here with a peloton of ocean swimmers in September. We're also doing an awful lot of sitting on the beach reading, and gazing into the distance, through the breeze, over the Blue Lagoon, over the sou'-eastern horizon...

But tell us about your Byron experience...