A week or so before Christmas we had a warm current wash into False Bay, bringing blue bottles and bouy barnacles and other creatures not usually present here. They disappeared in a few days but the water hasfremained unusually warm ever since then. Swimming has been amazingly good on our little beach with sea temperatures reaching 22degrees at one point. We having been making the most of it, swimming almost every day for the past month. No guarantee of it being quite like this next season of course! But whatever the weather this is one wonderful place to be.

Yesterday, perhaps inspired by the whales, Peter and I took our first pool swim of the season – brisk but wonderful – realised how much I miss our daily swim in the winter. Soon it will be time for the first sea swim. Of course there are those amazing souls around here who swim all year but we are not in that brave bunch.

In case any of you are worrying about sharks in view of the recent tragic event in Fish Hoek, our beach is not frequented by Great Whites. They prefer open expanses of water and beaches where they can cruise up and down unimpeded. There are too many rocky channels and kelp beds in our area. Even the seals seem to feel safe in our part of the coast.

Diane

The last few days the whales have been pulling out all the stops right here in front of Sea Foever. When I told our son in London about the half hour of tail splashing, spy hopping,fin waving and rollovers I had been watching he said”Oh yes, that’s the routine  Cape Tourism have asked them to put on for the visitors – they have to practice the whole thing from time to time.” And they did indeed seem to be going through all the manouvers shown in the display boards available for visitors at the “whale viewing sites”. Our is not an offical site but I have never had a better sighting of whales anywhere.

Yesterday they woke me at 5am with their heavy breathing – or maybe that is their normal breathing? but they were so close in and the air was so still that this awesome sound was reverberating through the whole neigbourhood.

At first I thought perhaps it was a whale giving birth – something I was privelegedc to watch from our deck a few years ago but then realised there was not the same bellowing I had heard that time or quite the same thrashing about in the water. They seeemed very tranquil. Today they were again up and about very early but more active with lots of rolling and splashing -mating perhaps? The world of the whale remains largely mysterious to a land locked being like myself.

Diane