Ever since I was born, I’ve been in the sea. My parents both love the ocean, and my mum swam while pregnant with me, so I had a certain genetic predisposition to love it too.
Growing up, my siblings and I spent hours at the beach. During the summer, we went straight to the beach after school, and spent pretty much the entirety of our weekends there. From a very young age, I remember my dad taking me out ‘over my head’ deep, and teaching me to bodysurf. I was all over it. As a kid, I never had that much fear in the water.
Despite being a water baby, I never had swimming lessons outside of school. At age 15 I taught myself to swim properly, because I wanted to do a couple of triathlons. This involved going out to the tiny wee 20 meter pool at Cherry Farm (an old psychiatric institution near Karitane - now redeveloped into a village but it still has the original pool from back in the day), trying to copy the technique I saw on YouTube, and filming my own technique to see how it compared. This strategy worked surprisingly well, causing me to come out of the water at the front of the pack, before getting whizzed past as soon as everyone got onto their bikes! Luck was on my side when I won a Ruby Fresh wetsuit at the Challenge Wanaka triathlon as a spot prize.
At age 16, I was at Warrington beach with my family, when I got recruited to join Warrington Surf Lifesaving Club. A year later, I decided to do the White Island race, which involved going around White Island on a board, ski, canoe, or swimming! I chose the swimming option, making this my first proper open water swim, as well as a good chance to test out my new wetsuit.
Before the race, I was unsure that I would make it around the island. This would be the furthest I had ever swum in one go. Armed with a ‘can do’ attitude, and cheered on by my fellow club members, I climbed down the steps and into the water. My initial nerves melted away as soon as I started swimming, and despite the challenging conditions, I ended up really enjoying myself, and finishing strong!
After totally surprising myself at White Island, I wanted a bigger challenge, so I signed up to the Ruby Island 10km swim in 2025. This swim also went a lot better than expected, so for the next challenge I decided to ditch the wetsuit, and do the Whakatipu Triple Challenge in togs.
After completing that, I was sold on skins swimming, and opted to go wetsuitless from then on out.
Always looking for the next challenge, I started researching any longer swims that I could do in New Zealand. This is when the idea of the Cook Strait came up, but I quickly dismissed it as it seemed a bit too far fetched! About a year later, the idea popped back up, but as a very real possibility this time.
Fast forward to today. I have decided to give the Cook Strait a go this coming summer, which means a lot of swimming now in the lead up. I set myself the goal of swimming around all of the islands close to Dunedin, to stay motivated and experience some similar conditions to the Cook Strait.
Sharing my island swims on Instagram has raised a lot of questions from followers. “How do you stay warm?” “Are you scared of sharks?” “What do you think about?” and “Why are you doing this?” are just a few. While I love swimming in the cold water, there are definitely challenges to overcome, but I have strategies to make it work! A big challenge is definitely the cold. Pre-warming myself, swimming fast enough to generate heat, eating enough food, getting warm afterwards (but NOT in the shower), and most importantly, being sensible about it are just some of the ways I make sure I don’t get too cold.
Getting in is the hardest part, so I like to imagine myself already swimming and having a great time to motivate me to actually start! Due to the nature of swimming, you are alone with your thoughts for a long time. For me, this is usually welcome, as it gives me time to plan things. In fact, I thought up this paragraph you are reading right now while doing a 5km pool swim! I often daydream and am completely off with the fairies while swimming. But, when sore, cold or tired, that is when I need to hype myself up to keep going! To do this, I’ll think about my goal, and remind myself that every little bit counts toward my Cook Strait training. Discomfort is just a part of the sport, so I embrace it and see it as practice.
I think about my progress, and remind myself that just a few months ago, whatever short swim I am doing at the time would have felt like a huge deal. I also like to think about just how lucky I am to be in a position where I can do this, with enough physical ability, time, and support from people to make my crazy goal a real possibility.
The community is one of the main reasons that I am so motivated to swim, both from having other swimmers to push me, and having so many people on board with my goals, getting excited about what I’m doing. I love the challenge of open water swimming. There is no real limit to it, and people have achieved some insane things in the open water, which inspires me to push my own limits.
Thanks for reading The Ruby Fresh OWS! This post with Jemimah is public so feel free to share it.
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