And so it was that Mel and I donned our yellow caps on Saturday afternoon to swim 1 mile along the shore line with 1100 of our closest Cayman friends. We had to fight for our caps, however, as we almost missed the registration cutoff thanks to a car breakdown. We weren't overly concerned as nothing on this Island has ever started on time in our experience so far, and we assumed the swim would be no different. Alas, it seems that the Flowers Sea Swim is the one activity on Island that is run with a strictness that would make an army drill sergeant's eyes water. But thanks to some sweet talking, begging, sob stories or more likely simply exhausting the volunteer who had better things to do, we were given our caps and numbers.
At this point, we gratefully splashed into the water to escape the oppressive heat on the sand and I came face to face with one of my new supervising partners. If anyone is looking to break the ice with a work superior, run into them in a bikini at the end of week 2 in the office - that'll do it, trust me. (In all honesty though, he is lovely and was there doing the swim with his 9 year old son, who Mel threatened to drown if it looked like he was going to overtake us).
After the race, some people said they saw a turtle or stingrays underneath when they were swimming. I must have missed these while I was trying not to drown. I had done 1 practice run of the distance (OK, fine not the full distance as I had got bored walking down the beach) and knew I could finish if I paced myself. But it turns out 1 mile is a REALLY long way! I have done 1km ocean swims before and thought "easy peasy, mile/kilometre, same same." No. They're really not. 1 Mile is closer to TWO kilometres than one. AND we had to swim AGAINST the current (my practice run was in the opposite direction with the current because I don't hate myself). The result of this confluence of factors is that I resisted looking up to see where I was for what felt like forever, because I didn't want to look up until I was close to the finish and when I did finally glance up after what felt like an hour of swimming, the finish line was obviously nowhere in sight. When it did eventually appear, I somehow didn't manage to get any closer to it for a weirdly long time. I am sure they kept moving it along the beach.
However, spoiler alert, I didn't drown and did make it through the darn finish line in 43 minutes and placed 521 of 1100 #crushedit. I scored a water bottle, T-shirt, towel and random other goodies for my trouble. After laying down on the floor of my air conditioned apartment for a while to confirm I wasn't going to die (it sure felt like it - I probably shouldn't have done hot yoga and paddle boarding that morning), it was pina colada and prizes time!
The other reason the Flowers Sea Swim is so awesome is that they have the best prizes of any competition like this, ever (I have no authority for this statement but it simply must be true). There are about 150 prizes on offer for swimmers, meaning there is a 1 in 7 chance of winning, and the prizes include amazing things like flights to New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Havana, money, phones, dinner vouchers, holiday vouchers, petrol vouchers and other random gifts. Devastatingly, neither I nor any of my friends there that day won any prizes. There were also more than 7 of us so statistically, I am a little suspicious.....
Nevertheless, it was a fantastic day and an excellent item to check off my island to-do list in only week two!
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