If the water at Inisheer had been fresh it would have been covered with a layer of ice. Therefor, once out, ``i spontaneously burst into song: ‘Skating away (on the thin ice of the new day, Jethro Tull on ‘War Child’).
But also, on the main land I had my van as HQ. Changing was dry and out of the wind and back from my swim there was hot water waiting in my therm flask for coffee. But what got me my temp back best was my sound system. Because movement warms you from the inside I combined my dress-up with dancing to hard-boiled rock and roll, Tull, Zappa, Led Zeppelin. Now, at Inisheer, I have to do with music from my mobile and in the full wind and sometimes in the rain. Some word of advice, pick up two bath towels, together around your shoulders: double dry, warm and as out of the wind as possible.
No coffee, but for that I discovered something: cold water. The truth serves us and what we believe is true. And after the following reasoning: I distinguish observations by the difference. Out of the water there is a difference between my outside and my inside temp. By drinking cold water I cool my inside temp, so the difference between in- and outside becomes smaller and I feel less cold. The life of a dolphin swimmer does have its bright spots.
Maiden swim (click for the video)
Moreover, you do it to yourself, so that falls generally under the complain ban. And the cool-down is only a temporary measure. Once at the transcendent hotel, Ostan Inis Oirr, you can extra enhance tings with a free pint glas of water with plenty of ice cubes. But also more conventional ways are available, like coffee, tea, hot chocolate (with a top layer of marshmallows!), chips and more expensive. And if that does not suffice, in the toilet is a nice, old fashioned hand blow dryer, of which you can turn the streaming cap upside down, pull your shirt out of your pants and hold it over the cap and you are caressed by a warm shirt balloon.
Now there are people in Holland who proudly wear a butcher bonnet, because at New Year they run fast into the water and then even faster out again. That’s not how we do it here. My first swim took about an hour and a half, OK, in a 5 mil wetsuit, but that goes off again at the very coldest moment, just back from the water in a cutting wind. But the worst was, that while I was sweat- and grunting to stuff my swollen feet, 5 years kidney patient, into the foot pockets of my monofin, a sneaky wave washed away my waterwing. As soon as I missed it, it had totally disappeared. I would have swum in all directions at the same time, did this in succession, but nowhere my floating waterwing. Beach, buoy, pier, awkward swimming and also too heavy, because I lost 9 kilos, therefor displace less water so I have less buoyancy. At one moment there was as much salty fluid inside my mask glass as there was on the outside.
With more lead in my legs than on my weight belt I stumbled out of the water. Jane and Ute were talking and I announced my ordeal from afar. Jane rose, strolled to the water’s edge and without wetting a toe, fished my waterwing out of the brine. There is a very thin line between flabbergasted and gratitude.
Later, just before the ferry left, I filmed a ‘last minute cuddle’ of Jane and Dusty. And then she very much got her feet wet.
Two days later it was jackpot again, this time I was fully equipped. You can really tell Dusty has had a lonely winter. She was with us all the time and very affectionate.There was a moment I thought she was away, turned my head sideways, and found her right behind me, her snout practically in my ear.
The viz wasn’t great, at most a meter and a half. When, after about an hour and a half, we left the water, Dusty suddenly began to explode, jumped out of the water several times and savagely trashed her fluke around.
Now it has occurred before that Dusty showed her anger when we went out too early to her taste, but there can have been another reason: when we arrived in Doolin, there swam at least 5 other dolphins, of which three very close together and in synch. They came to the boat just outside Crab Island and swam until less than 10 meter from the new pier.
I sing it every year: ‘Happy days are here again.