It’s been about a month… since our False Bay Crossing. This is the photo, that says “We did it…” and I love it.

We are in the last days of our Given Gain Campaign, and we are just short of our goal… Please can help us, click on the link and for the price of a fine coffee, we can send a Cape Town kid on a life changing ocean adventure.

Se7en Tips For Crossing the Bay, as a Relay
- Have a Good Reason to Swim
- Gather your Support Crew And Trust Your Training:
- Expect the Unexpected and Practice What You Can
- Choose your Skipper Wisely
- Get All the Encouragement We created a wattsapp group for friends and family, they were able to track us and we were able to send photographs from time to time… Just knowing that folk were following us and sending us encouragement throughout the day made a huge difference. When the going gets tough, it is wonderful to have messages of encouragement.
- Talk to All the People and Find out What to Pack A lot of much more experienced people than us, who have relayed before us, were very happy to share their expertise with us. Loads of meetings, loads of coffee dates were part of the process. It was so useful to hear what they packed, and what they could have left behind, what helped them to prepare and what really didn’t. The most important conversation that we had with everyone was about what to pack… and surprisingly how different teams had completely different packing plans. The one factor that everyone agreed on and that we hadn’t even considered was sea sickness… the other was pack loads of warm clothes and even sleeping bags, because you will get cold.
- Nutrition is Key: Before, during and after your swimming nutrition is key. Nutrition leading up to the big day is just as important as nutrition on the day and in the days that follow. The month before our swim we all tried to eat extra healthily. And on the day we had practiced and practiced. We each had our very own specific meal plans, but it is good to know what folk do munch on, because it will give you ideas on what to try.
For long swims I typically use Maurten.za gels, but this was for a whole day out on the water… so I added Futurelife breakfast packs to the mix, energy bars to the mix. Also, because it is a long day out, I treated myself to a blueberry muffin between each swim, and I packed some chicken strips into my snack box, which were a welcome treat when it got to lunch time. I also grabbed some pancakes on my out the store the night before and they were an absolute win. For drinks I bought a flask of hot chocolate, a bottle of energy drink between each swim, and Revive for electrolytes.
- Electronics:
- Battery Pack and watch and phone Cables: You will want to charge and track things!
- Swim lights and a torch
- Clothing:
- Hats: Beanie and Sun Hat
- Change Towel (I had my Button Wear Robe)
- Towel
- A dry costume for each swim, I get all my costumes from Oggi Activewear.
- Cap and goggles (X2)
- Warm clothes in a dry bag: tracksuit pants and puffer jacket
- Protective clothes in a dry bag: long sleeved t-shirt, anything to protect from the sun.
- Meds:
- Sun cream
- Anti-chaffe: I am swimmer and would never make the rookie mistake of swimming in the sea without it.
- Sea sickness meds – this is the one thing that EVERYONE said was essential… I was very reluctant, since I don’t typically suffer from seasickness… but I have to say… this isn’t a sweet coastal swim, this is in the middle of the bay, it the swell is huge and you are on a rubber duck… if you have the slightest tendency to sea sickness then you need to address this. I spoke to my doctor and got meds that I knew wouldn’t make me drowsy and I practised with them beforehand, to make sure that I didn’t have a strange reaction to them on the day.
- Nutrition:
- Hot Chocolate
- Energy Drink: Energade
- Electrolytes: Revive
- Energy/Protein Nutrition: Future Life
- Gels: Maurtenza, I love the caffeine gels just before a swim.
- Muffins, I love cranberry muffins after a swim, I took one for between each swim.
- Chicken Strips: I knew I would want some proper food, and couldn’t face a salad or roll and then still swim.
- Jelly Sweets: To munch on between swims…
- Bar Ones are my go to treat, so I packed a couple.
- Lollipops: are apparently great for sea-sickness, so took them in case and the folk on the boat with me appeared to be very grateful.
- Recovery is a BIG Deal: After months of hard swimming daily, and creating a daily habit of “I must get into the water,” followed by a long day out on the water… recovery was key. I think if I had immediately got straight back at it, I would have been too tired to get any gains from training. The first week, while I was immediately back in the water for a dip each day, that’s all I did. The second week was very easy swimming and by the third week I was ready and eager for more… more challenges, more improvements and more work. Recovery is part of the process and give yourself the time for it. I was definitely tired for a couple of weeks after the swim and needed more sleep and for the first while at least I needed more energy rich food, post event fatigue was real… listen to your body and take those naps.
Our collective reason was to follow a dream and to support the I AM Water Program, so that future generations can follow their dreams and learn about the ocean. You do need a good reason, because you are going to be training for months… and a lot of that training will be in the cold wintry months, or the wild and windy summer months… it is inevitable, that while conditions are hopefully perfect on the day there will be a lot of imperfect training days. There is a lot to be said for training for the worst and getting the best. Not to mention, on the day, when the going gets tough (and it will), having a really good reason for your swim will help.

We all new we needed extra training and guidance to get us through the training, we needed to up our game. Cape Town Swim was there to help us with our Open Water Swimming. Loads of supported ocean swimming, whatever the weather. We also knew that the stronger we were and the fitter we were the better it would be for us, so squad training became a normal part of our weekly swim training. We trained with Ocean Fit, and the best part was that we got to swim in an outdoor pool, this makes a huge difference to swimmers trying to train for an open water swim… not to mention a very understanding coach, who spent hours and hours walking up and down the side of the pool helping with stroke correction.
A relay is a very specific swim. Your normal BIG swims, which tend to go further and further distances for longer and longer intervals… will not quite prepare you for a relay. In a relay you swim for a hard hour and then you get a break while your team mates swim. In the last month of training we didn’t swim longer than an hour, but the hours we swam were all hard: squad swimming, ocean swimming, and an hour a day… helped get our minds ready for the intense of hour swimming that we had to do on the day.

We plotted and planned for every eventuality, we packed extra kit and gear, loads of spare bits and pieces… What would happen if we lost our goggles, what would happen if we weren’t feeling well, we thought of every scenario. But none of us expected to start our swim in the deep dark night, we hadn’t prepared for it at all and it turns out that was the very best part of our swim… the hours flew by while we swam through the bioluminescence, we didn’t have time to overthink it… we got in and swam and loved it.
This kind of relay a big deal, you obviously cannot practice a 34 km swim, neither can you be 100% sure of the conditions you will get on the day. We tried to enact every bit of the relay beforehand. We met up on the beach and swam hard for an hour, and relied on just what we had with us in our swim bags: changed into dry costumes and tested out our drinks and snacks and then back in the water, and on repeat until we had got it right.

We have swum with our skipper several times before, previous events, previous swims and we knew what to expect. We also knew that when the going gets tough, there would be no opportunity to give up and if the going got too tough we would be taken out safely. There is a lot more to a skipper than taking you on a boat across the bay, they will spot the best weather day for you, they will know conditions, they will know what route to follow, they have taken several swimmers before you… so ask all questions, because they really do have the answers. We ended up waiting quite a while for our swim day, it was a real test of trust and patience, other swimmers got to swim, and we waited… and really grateful that we did. It was worth the wait to have outstanding conditions.




Our Video on Youtube
Finally a massive thank you to our friends and family for all the support, to Cape Town Swim and Ocean Fit for all their support and encouragement, to Big Bay Events for answering alll our questions and keeping us safe on the day, and CLDSA for their support and supplying swimmers who had pioneered adventure before us.