Five, four, three, two, one … By the time our relay team even­tu­ally started the 7,5 km race from Robben Island to Blou­bergstrand on Sun­day, the sus­pense had become unbear­able. Already the race had been post­poned by a day because of rainy weather. Now, our 10.30 start had been delayed by more than three hours because of seri­ous fog. We were not amused. Being full of adren­a­lin with nowhere to go is no fun.

We had dropped our first swim­mer to catch the ferry to Robben Island and then launched our boat at the Water­front. We set out — the remain­ing three swim­mers, our skip­per and a sec­ond — to the island. Things were not look­ing good. The fog was so bad that we could barely see in front of us. Our GPS helped. Then came the inter­minable wait.

“Free­dom Swim delayed due to fog. Wait for next SMS.” Then: “Fog is lift­ing. Expect an 11 am start. Wait for next SMS.” Then fur­ther delays until we ran out of jokes, rusks and conversation.

Ten­sion set in.

At 1.36 pm our first swim­mer — 16-year-old West­ern Cape water polo player Nicholas Melck — ran into the water from the beach at Robben Island as we watched anx­iously from our boat.

The big trick at the start of such a race is to find your swim­mers and fol­low them closely. If they get cold, they need to climb on to that boat and warm up with space blan­kets and hot cof­fee — and they need to do it quickly.

Our strat­egy worked. By send­ing out our fastest swim­mer, we had a head start in front of most of the other boats. With 260 swim­mers — a record field for the Cadiz Vista Nova Free­dom Swim — we had to take swim­ming traf­fic and boat traf­fic into account.

We were well ahead when we pulled Nick out and sent in our sec­ond swim­mer, Clare Hugo. A year out of school and a com­plete nat­ural in the water, she is one of those infu­ri­at­ing peo­ple who can swim for hours in cold water, jump out, and carry on with life with­out a shiver.

Our third swim­mer, Michael Melck, put in a valiant swim for 25 min­utes. He got out and started that famil­iar shiv­er­ing and shak­ing that, after months of train­ing, we have come to expect as part of the sport.

For months now, every Sat­ur­day before sun­rise, our lit­tle group of swim­mers has been traips­ing on to Clifton Four beach, car­ry­ing take-away cof­fee in one hand and gog­gles in the other.

Under the watch­ful eye of coach Anton Louw, with his orange Crocs, we have swum up and down the coast in a bid to get used to tem­per­a­tures of 13°C — and some­times even 10°C. The cold-water train­ing has to be done on top of the end­less kilo­me­tres we put in at the gym, because if you can’t get used to icy tem­per­a­tures, you can’t even think of Robben Island.

The idea to swim the 7,5km from Robben Island back to Cape Town first entered my head when I inter­viewed Louw for a story. A respected coach who trains some of the country’s top swim­mers, he had decided to take on a group of drug addicts and show them they could turn their lives around by learn­ing to swim — and work towards a Robben Island crossing.

His phi­los­o­phy: “If they can do Robben Island, they will know they can do anything.”

Hav­ing swum reli­giously three times a week since I was at school, I imme­di­ately signed up with Louw to join his cold-water swim­ming group and to attempt an island crossing.

Then, as fourth swim­mer, it was my turn. There is noth­ing more ago­nis­ing than plung­ing into water that is so cold your head aches and your whole body stings.

It’s not uncom­mon to feel an almost unbe­liev­able sense of panic. If you don’t har­ness your mind, you can soon con­vince your­self you are sur­rounded by sharks and you are going to die of hypother­mia within minutes.

We each swam twice, and for the last 500 metres we all jumped in again to swim the final stretch together.

Our team made it in two hours and 15 min­utes. We were all draped with medals and beau­ti­ful Robben Island tow­els, custom-made for all finishers.

We ran straight into the heated tent where we shiv­ered and shook for what seemed ages, then chat­ted to the heroes of the swim. They were tiny school­girl Gigi Hock, who did her first solo swim at the age of 16, and the leg­ends: Theodore Yach who has done 54 cross­ings, one for each year of his life; Andrew Chin, who swam with­out a cap; and the inim­itable Natalie du Toit, who won the race over­all as well as the women’s race and looked as if she had just done a few laps in the local pool.

© Sue Segar

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