What is a "Swim-In"
Answer: a Non-Event
Swim In are just two words to give the notion of swimmers coming loosely together and if desired, swimming, and socializing where natural as well as trading ideas about better swimming. Like a sit-in...brief gatherings of people with similar passions.
There is no race or offical ceremony or party being put on by us. If swimmers want to spontaneously recreate, we will heartily join in.
Kauai County Lifeguard service is staffed with well- trained life guards with towers and rescue craft on the Hanalei Bay shores.
Swimmer safety is the responsibility of the swimmers and the Lifeguards. Not the author of this invitation via web site for socializing and self-responsible swimming.
Why Hanalei Bay
As surfers know, summer time is the time of the South swell coming up from the winter in the southern hemisphere. At Waikiki, Maui and Poipu the popular swim beaches are exposed to the south and occassionally experience big swells and usually some swell.
Hanalei is ideally located in the middle of the North shore of Kauai completely away from the South swell. Also, the partially closed circle shape of the bay adds additional swell blocking.
Hanalei Bay in the summer is nearly always pool table flat and sometimes even glassy flat, a rarity in these mid-ocean mid-trade-winds islands. For more on this see: /oceansafety.aspx
With smooth water one can train more efficiently on stroke, breathing and strength.
Bio Concluded, finally.
Being a cured-back sufferer and hopelessly beach-nutty and nostalgic due to his "wasted youth" riding the waves and lying in the sun on the sand, he becomes a swim evangelist. Paul Bragg, an actual health evangelist, being on the beach at Fort DeRussey every morning with his Health Words of Wisdon, adds momentum to the idea that I should spread the
Word which is of course SWIM. I then start the Waikiki Roughwater Swim as a reflection of the LaJolla Swim of my pre-war childhood. The first year has 33 swimmers, 2nd year maybe 100 or so, climbing eventually to 1300. I send out letters to the 100 saying how about a Club for this kind of swimming. And a lot of folks say yes...and the Waikiki Swim Club is born.This leads to a whole string of events from Magic Island to Rabbit Island, Masters pool swimming, etc...now all run by talented people who do a much harder and better job due to the needs of modern society...such as web sites!
Meanwhile, back on T-Pier, at the old Ala Wai Harbor, now long-gone and replaced by a zillion plastic boats, SwimJim falls in with other long-haul sailors and late-nite drinkers such as next-berth John Ford on his 125' Araner named after his beloved Ireland and his buddy John Wayne. Why mention? Because this leads to founding the legendary Gin and Tonic Society of Outer T-Pier which then spawns the cruise of the Lime Squadron to our beloved Hanalei in 1964 and the meeting of the unforgettable Louise of Tahiti Nui fame. And to another lost treasure, the Black Pot...a place tucked in the pines on the beach by the Pier where the haoles kept the Primo available for any one and ditto the Hawaiians with fish. Now just a memory replaced by a few dozen SUV's. And where is the solid fresh water over-the-head spigot at the foot of the Pier that salt-encrusted sailors so looked forward to when out on the briney?
Favorite memory: walking the length of Hanalei's main road on Labor Day and back to Tahiti Nui balancing on the white line without seeing a car.
Ah, sweet memories...but new and perhaps better ones are in the making right NOW at HANALEI BAY!