Despite good intentions, I did not have a swim yesterday as the New Year’s Eve celebrations took their toll. This morning, the tide was in on the Waitemata at 8.43am, so I figured Pt Chevalier would be supremely swimmable at 9am as it takes about 15 minutes for the tidal peak to reach there from the Auckland tide datum at Westhaven.

Sure enough, at 9am the water was seemingly flooding the beach due to a high high today (3.5m), which did not leave much accessible sand on the shore.

The sun making inroads by 9am at Pt Chevalier. Sand is immersed along much of the shore due to 3.5m high tide

The water was relatively hard to get into but the swim made worthwhile. I’m getting better at my various ‘strokes’ (back and breast lol) plus I’ve been doing a bit of freestyle. Until recently, this has been tricky due to running out of breath (and not breathing properly) but these problems are ironing themselves out.

And I saved a bee. I had waded out up to waist depth, to find a bee wriggling around on a (partially) floating pohutukawa leaf. These leaves are not big, and it looked like a sad little struggle that was about to end in a drowning. But I picked up the leaf and its resident bumble bee then waded back to shore and deposited them among the grass on dry land.