I’d been dancing to the weather gods for days. It wasn’t a difficult or unreasonable request I thought. Just fulfil the “sunshine coast” billboard promise. Oh yes, and if possible, please let us get the tide right.
And boy, did they deliver, SA’s barefoot capital, Kenton-on-Sea had perfect open-water swimming weather for the two main days of the inaugural Aweh let’s-swim Kenton festival. A near perfect wind-still Saturday morning greeted the nearly sixty swimmers with a sunrise over Bushmans River that took your breath away. What a way to start.
M&M’s coffee trailer made sure all spectators had a good caffeine shot to jump start swimming engines and settle the nerves while everyone gathered on the slipway beach.
The buzz level of excitement and anxiety at the race brief was pulpable. Our youngest competitor, Stiaan (Steyn), aged 12, led the questions: Where do I turn? How far is it from that marker? Where do we end? Which bridge do we stop at? He obviously listened, and got it right, exiting the 1-miler at the N2 bridge in first place in just over 26 minutes.
Our other young competitor: JD (Odendaal), all the way from just outside Bloem, and young enough that he thought he could survive calling me “Tannie”, also listened intently and led the ten 14-km competitors from the start until the Ghio bridge, finishing in 3 hours 50 minutes. And how awesome is that? TEN people dug deep, got the initial tidal push, pushed through the last few kilometers into a headwind, and then literally wound their way to the bridge. With mud socks as their mark of endurance and smiles the size of the bridge as their finish line.
A big, bold, shoutout to Michelle Barnett, who pushed through the wall to get to the 14-km end, what a force of will, what a star!
Saturday’s 5-km was led by Zac (Fletcher) who finished in just over an hour (1:05:02) and saw another 27 swimmers follow his suit, with everyone home before the stopwatch hit two hours. To those 5k’ers, yep there’s more river beyond the finish jetty, next year né?
And a huge high-five to Kamva (Matibe) who finished the 400m in 08:39, well done, next year that 1-mile bridge isn’t too far!
Sunday was kinda meant as a warm-down day. But you know, best laid plans and all that, the Cry-Mile, while only a mile, wasn’t a pushover. More like a push-pull against the changing tide. Even with the sprint finish between Travers (Hendrick) and Richard (Smith), who clocked 30:51 and 31:02 respectively, they were 4 minutes slower than young Stiaan the previous day. Stiaan coming in a decent fifth behind them. And congrats to Lana (Moore) who crossed the 400m line in 08:27, good swim young lady.
I’d love to have the space to mention each of the swimmers by name, because my goodness my levels of chuffed-ness knew no bounds at the sight of the colours of the buoys and swim caps as you took stroke after stroke, up Kenton’s two beaut rivers. I simply couldn’t have wished for a better bunch of inaugural swimmers. But check our Facebook page, I’m pretty sure we got a picture of everyone.
And a huge thanks to Kenton Tourism and the Ndlambe municipality (especially their River Patrol); to the Sandbar for hosting us; to Louis who allowed us access to the private jetty and threw in a bacon-broodjie for each 5-km finisher (now everyone wants one); to my safety boat skipper Charlie and co-pilot Budge; and to the safety paddlers and my time-keepers, and magic Mike for the epic footage, big, moerse thanks. Aweh, julle is ma se mooiste kinders.
And just like that, it was over, all the months of prep, all the dancing to the weather gods, checking the tide table until it was in tatters, hoping the fish wouldn’t bite. What a festival of open-water swimming. You and the bare-foot capital were simply awesome.
So… 1-miler’s, so 5k’ers… how about we push you a little more next Freedom Day weekend? The Ghio bridge beckons…
