In the bay there is a buoy that South Enders affectionately refer to as the “too far out buoy.” During a club swim if you are near the too far out buoy usually one of the pilots will direct you closer in to the waterfront because..well…you are too far out. This Sunday I will be doing a training swim from what I am calling the “way, way, way too far out buoy”. This buoy is 12 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. To be completely honest, I am not even sure where it is. The captain of my crew has the longitude and latitude coordinates and we will be sailing out to it in dark of the morning on Sunday. I have been dreaming of this swim for weeks now.

A few weeks ago, I stopped at the vista point on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge to take a look at our beautiful bay. As I stood there, I thought to myself…I have swum from there to there…there to there…there to there…looking at all of the starting and finishing points of many swims that I have done in the past year.  I realized that the bay now felt like my personal swimming pool.  It felt very small to me. Then I turned west and looked out past Point Bonita and thought, that is where I want to be.  In the wide open space of the Pacific Ocean.  I am itching for an experience of not being able to see land from the water. A feeling of complete openness and vastness. I am desiring the feeling of being eerily alone in a large body of water. I think this swim will satiate this desire.

I will be meeting my crew in Sausalito early Sunday morning (3 a.m.).  Clad in glow sticks and blinking lights, it will be a dark start,  I will be swimming in on a 4.1k flood to Aquatic Park (ultimately the sauna). It is a much bigger tide than I prefer to be swimming in.  A flood that big will create some rough conditions because that will be a large amount of water being moved around. I will just be a tiny speck in the middle of it all and that is what I want most. So, check back after Sunday to see how it went.

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