swim motivation

After perusing Rob's most excellent blog, I was inspired to get my ass in the water.  He has a real eye for photography and I'm also now hoping this little camera hastens it's eminent demise so I can get a waterproof one, but for now I'm just going to use baggies.  So, with budding excitement of swimming a new area, I convinced Pike to accompany me to Jantan as Google maps showed I could get an easy 1300m just width-wise of the bay.  What I didn't figure into the equation was the need for depth.  It never occurred to me that the majority of what I could see of the south of the bay was pure reef and very, very, very shallow.  After about 300m with no hope for an end in sight I abandoned as I could not even make a stroke without scraping my fingers over coral and I didn't want to wait to see if sea urchins would be added to the mix.  I also had a little boy over (sibling of Ellen's friend) on the beach and getting quite bored.  So I'm now thinking I'll do some widths of our bay instead of out and back to the reef, but even if that doesn't work I'm more appreciable of our deeper waters.  I'm also thinking I need to get more to the middle of Jantan as I know it is deep enough at the middle.   Course there again I'm left with an out-and-back to the far reef swim.  Life is tough. 

The first picture is where I THOUGHT I could start from, what we call "Kilo beach" but that was way too shallow.  The 2nd picture is our 2nd attempt, which I think was also too shallow.  The far green is where I eventually went in, but it ended up still being Way Too Shallow to actually swim.
 
The last picture is where I finally got out and you can see the point in all the pictures - that was my end goal.   I think I need to borrow a kayak (or maybe even spring for one) to be able to investigate before I commit body to water OR grow the balls needed to get further out along the far reef where it has to be deeper (as evidenced by blue water) but I think that might go against the agreement I have with the sharks - they stay on their side of the reef and I stay on mine.  I need to ramp up the swimming this week so I'll probably stick to our bay.  I'm pretty pleased I managed to get 3 swims (albeit 1 aborted) this last week after suffering such apathy previously.  Course now that it is down to less than 2 months from the HIM I have that motivation to get back on track also.  The tourists continue to fill the pool at all hours of the day and night so the sea is really the only place I have to train.  Cudda or not, I need to get out there or I'm going to be suffering in September.  Thanks to Robs blog I am also considering a jaunt to Bacalar next weekend to swim Cenote Azul again and dip my toes into the laguna itself.  That would be spectacular, but again, need a kayak to accompany me.  Hope our neighbor likes to share.