READING THE CONDITIONS / PLANNING A SWIM

There is an art to reading the conditions and planning a swim. It really isn’t a difficult art to pick up though. The longer you look at the conditions and get used to planning, the better you tend to get at predicting the conditions.

Below, we’ll look at a specific swim and then how you’d go about checking the conditions and planning a route or possibly finding an alternative swim.

So we’re looking at Penzance sea front / Penzance Promenade. As you can see, by my dodgy scribbles - with a south, southwest or southeast wind, the wind (and chop) will be blowing straight in there. A wind strength of 0-10 kmph won’t produce a great deal of chop. 10-20 kmph will produce a little. 20km+ will start producing enough ‘chop’ to make the swim far more challenging and far less pleasurable. You also need to consider the state of the tide. At high tide the water level is half way up the sea wall. If chop and swell hits the wall it’ll bounce off and send that chop back out to sea. So…if you were swimming at high tide you’d be hit by chop from a few different directions.

START PLANNING when looking at where to swim you should always start the plan at home on the internet. There are a number of different resources that you can use. We like ‘Tides4fishing’, there is also Windfinder, Magic Seaweed (soon to have a name change), Windy App, Nautide, local to Cornwall is the free My Coast App (I think they’re starting to roll this out nationwide). When looking at these resources you should be checking the wind direction and strength, tide times, swell, you can also look at the weather forecast (avoiding any storms/predicted lightning/drastic wind changes…). Below, we’ll use the Tides4Fishing website.

In our example at Penzance sea front, we’re looking at a 10am swim. The wind will be Northerly, at 31 kmph. So, whilst that is a little strong, it’s off-shore for a south facing swim. That means that the wind has no opportunity to influence the conditions, in terms of chop, as the wind only hits the water on the shoreline. You may think that this wind would push you out to sea…if you swim front crawl, there’s a tiny surface area exposed to the wind. This will have minimal impact on the swimmer. If you swam head-up breaststroke and you weren’t such a strong swimmer, you have more surface area exposed to the wind. This may make it trickier to swim back to shore. In this instance, you could plan a high tide swim…so that the harbour wall offers protection from the wind and the off-shore wind blows straight over your head. Next we’ll look at swell. Swell isn’t so much a factor in Penzance (sometimes local knowledge is crucial).

Again, in our example the swell for 10am is around 1.8m. You don’t really get breaking waves in our Penzance example. So whilst this is a decent size swell, breaking waves aren’t a factor. If we go back to the wind direction, we know that it’s 31 kmph from the north. So that wind will be pushing against any swell and flattening it right out. If it were 31 kmph from the south, with a 1.8m swell it’d be a very different story. Anyway, with a strong offshore wind and 1.8m swell there isn’t going to be too much to worry about. The only slight issue you might have is getting in off the slipway at hight tide. There may be a little bit of water sloshing around. *At this stage I will point out that the swell section of the website is my least favourite and least accurate. I’ll always double check the swell with Surfline.com. I’ll pick a nearby beach, that faces the same direction…like Praa Sands or Perranuthnoe and check the surf prediction. This will give you a good indication of the swell size.

Lastly, we’re looking at the tide. At 10am, it’s around a 1.9m tide. Bear in mind that tidal ranges can have massive differences from area-to-area, around the country. You need to specifically look at the area where you’re planning to swim, for accurate tide times and an idea of the tidal range. The ‘tidal coefficient’ is a great feature and gives you a visual representation of exactly how much water is moving around. In our example, it’s 75/120. So it’s not a huge tide but it’s not a small one either. A 120/120 is the biggest possible tide you could experience and a 0/120 would be the smallest. Above, it also gives you a text description of the tidal movement…’a high value and therefore the range of tides and currents will also be high’.

Back to the example swim, a 1.8m tide would make it tricky to get in along Penzance promenade, as it’s quite rocky. You’d have to head for the beach towards Newlyn or swim off the Battery Rocks area, at the back of the Jubilee Pool. If you were the head-up breaststroker we spoke about earlier and were worried about the wind you might wait for the afternoon high tide and get protection from the sea wall along the promenade.

OTHER FACTORS :

• land mass. You often get large tidal movements through narrow land masses. You can get this with long narrow beaches or area like Dover. You have water funnelling through narrow gaps or land masses and can get strong currents on an outgoing tide or almost constant lateral currents, as the tide goes in and out.

• tides. You have the most water movement in the middle two hours between a high and low tide. These are hours you can avoid. Particularly if you’re experiencing spring tides. If unsure of an area normally best to ‘test’ on an incoming tide, avoiding those middle two hours.

• headland. You can experience currents moving around headland and islands, particularly when there’s deep water in these areas. Remember that most people would struggle to make any forward movement against a current as small as 2 knots!

BE FLEXIBLE WITH SWIM LOCATION

Our example location was Penzance sea front. If we look at Carbis Bay (10-15 minute drive away) on the same day. The wind would blow straight in here. It’d really be whipping up some chop and wouldn’t be the most pleasant location to swim in. The swell is coming from the south so you wouldn’t have surf but you would have constant lumpy chop and plenty of it.

ADDITIONAL CHECKS

You can always make additional checks if your swim location has a webcam. Just remember that most webcams are wide angle and aren’t always that close to the water. So any chop or swell may look a little smaller than it actually is.

FINALLY

You can do all the checks in the world at home…but it’s really important to re-check the conditions when you arrive. Ensure that the conditions are behaving in the way you’d expect. Be prepared not to enter the water and possibly have a plan B…just in case.

COURSES

Sea Swim Cornwall have set up an affordable course to teach the fundamentals of planning your swim and understanding the conditions and rip currents. Our ‘First aid for swimmers’ course is available in a number of locations throughout the summer. CLICK HERE for more info.

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If you liked this article it might be worth reading our Safe Swimming Guides to various areas… CLICK HERE

Swim Safety & Planning

We teach a water safety and rip current awareness courses in the early and late summer season and one of the principles we teach is the following - rips and currents don’t typically drown swimmers…it’s the panic that causes the problem. It’s the individual losing their composure and doing something irrational, like ditching the surf board they’ve been safely lying on and trying to swim in against a rip current…or simply swimming against the same rip for so long that they become exhausted and start to really struggle.

So……planning a swim. You don’t necessarily need to plan your swim, especially if it’s your regular swim and you have a good idea of the conditions. If however, you decide to swim somewhere new, come up with a plan.

Your considerations need to include :

• the state of the tide. Coming in, going out, springs, neaps…typically best swimming on an incoming tide, with minimal tidal movement (neap tide). Particularly if it’s your first swim at that location.

• Lateral movement. Most of the advice we’ll give is based around the sort of conditions that we experience here in Cornwall. In other areas of the country/world you can get strong lateral movement (ie the current runs parallel to the shore), so factor this in and do your research.

• PLAN your route, with an exit strategy. Then come up with a plan B. As mentioned previously, panic can be a big problem. If you can’t get to exit A, you’ll then simply resort to plan B with minimal fuss. That might be an exit further up a beach, around to the next cove…or return to where you entered the water…

• I’ll briefly mention the basics - swimming buddy/spotter, high visibility (tow float etc), you can take a mobile phone with you in a case (test and ensure it’ll get reception). You could also look at something like an EPIRB or personal locator beacon. At the time of writing, they’ll set you back around £200-300 but they use satellite, rather than reception and pin point your exact location. So are awesome, particularly if you want to swim somewhere remote. Might be well worth the purchase if you swim with a big group and are all happy to chip in.

• If you do experience a strong current I’d suggest the following. Stay calm. Think your way out of the problem. If you can’t move forward because of a current, can you go back the way you came or swim to the side and avoid the current? When talking about rip currents, they’re never typically that wide and only generally go out to the back of the breaking waves. So moving to the side of a rip and swimming in without huge resistance is fairly straight forward.

• We have a fantastic coastal rescue service. If you’ve exhausted all other options start waving and shouting for help. It may be embarrassing but the RNLI will have no issues picking up a swimmer in distress. Nearly everyone has a mobile phone these days and someone will more than likely spot you and call for help…this then brings me onto one of my final points.

• If you are attempt a new route or swimming at a new place avoid an early morning or evening swim. If you did get in trouble it’d be far better that people were present and could call for help. Also, if you’re losing light and it starts to get dark, you could be in real trouble!

• Lifeguards are a great resource. If unsure ask. You can also make lifeguards aware of your plans.

• Research, if you do any research make sure you use a reliable source. If you ask a question on say….a social media group, you don’t know who’s responding and their level of experience. I’ve lifeguarded and provided water safety for nearly two decades and quite honestly, am so fed up with people arguing with my advice (clearly from a position of complete ignorance), that I simply don’t bother engaging anymore. Which I think is a real shame. Be careful when taking advice.

• Whilst swimming with a ‘buddy’ is a great idea, ensure you swim with a good buddy! I have some friends that are quite competitive. I’ll often swim with them and they have absolutely no awareness in the water of where I am and what I’m up to. If you’re swimming with someone, actually keep an eye on each other.

• Finally, I swam along the promenade in Penzance last summer by myself and a thought occurred to me. I was swimming at high tide in full view of the promenade for safety reasons. The thought was pretty straight forward and it was the following…if I had a random seizure, passed out or had cardiac event (which is about the only issue I would possibly have that I couldn’t deal with), firstly - would anyone on the promenade even notice? Second, how long would it take them to realise something was wrong with me? Finally, if they jumped in or called the emergency services, how long would that take and do they actually have the ability to either drag me out or administer first aid? I’d probably be face down in the water and I’d be brain damaged or worse within 2-3 minutes. Which begs the question…why am I swimming along the promenade? The point I’m making is that swimming with someone that can take the appropriate course of action should something go wrong, is pretty important. If you swim with someone very regularly, or simply swim regularly it’d be well worth doing some sort of first aid course.

• Following on from the above point is the part about rescue. We were taught this back in my lifeguarding days. If someone is in trouble and you don’t realistically think you can get them out or handle the conditions then you really have to think about whether or not you go in to try and assist. It’s far easier and safer for the appropriate rescue services to rescue and assist one person, than it is for two!

Below you’ll find a great video on rip currents and how they work.