Greetings from your caped crusader in South Africa. I went to the end of the Earth to escape Robin, and it’s easier to escape Robben Island than it used to be, although the 8km Freedom Swim to Blouberg Strand in Cape Town - you can either swim rand the island or pound through the waves to the mainland - is still a challenge, with the temperature a nippy 14C and the marine wildlife liable to be a bit nippy too.
We met at the clock tower in Cape Town at 7am then took the ferry across. I greased up in thick six hour baby factor sunblock. My excellent boat crew were George Taljaard and Fabio Grandi who work with the local Big Bay Surf Lifesavers at Blouberg Strand.
Robben Island was the notorious prison for leaders of the African National Congress party. The first swimmers to start were skins soloists so I was leader of the Ron the Con-gress party for quite some time until those with a neoprene advantage caught up. Zoomers out of favour in these parts and luckily I didn’t see any other fins.
Starting out of the harbour I had a bit of kelp swimming through clunky seaweed to find my boatman George who gave me a replacement earplug.
It was a bit lumpy with waves reaching 2.5 metres in height; but they were long and rolling. I met a few stingers on the way but they’re not as numerous as in the English Channel. My neck and ears took a bashing from the jellies, but I medusa them to up my pace. 30 minutes from the finish we had to tear across a rip tide. After that, we had to swim through the breakers with the surfers. The best technique was backstroke so you could keep an eye on the waves and impatient surfers who were really board by the almost 200 swimmers, and I made it in an impressive 2 hours 50 minutes.
At the end we were rewarded with a buffet: on a table mountains of food awaited the hungry swimmers. A well organised swim with really friendly and hospitable people.
Results (22nd out of 40 in men's race, and 28th overall of the 57 men's and women's combined results.
John Tierney
