Navigational skills are a key component to open water swimming. Here’s some great tips from Trent Grimsey on navigation. If you want to get some great open water swimming training, Trent is one of the go to guys – check out how you can train with Trent.

Navigating in Open Water

I think one of the hardest things to do in Open Water swimming is to navigate. There is nothing worse than swimming in big swell and not knowing if you’re swimming in the right direction. It happens to the best of us from time to time. That is why I’ve created this list to try and make it easier for you:

What is the lowest allowed water temperature at a FINA event?

Steve Munatones tries to give the answer in the following article: How Low Can It Go?

He's quoting from the FINA Open Water Swimming Rules and then especially rule OWS 5 The Venue where the water temp. is explained.

..........Jennifer Figge of Colorado certainly takes her swims to the extreme limit as she attempted once again to conduct a continuous stage swim across the Atlantic Ocean with a small crew and one escort boat. It was certainly an adventure as the preliminary reports of her daily swims shows below.

In summary, Figge swam a total distance of 257.5 nautical miles (477 km) over the course of 32 days (her unofficial record that is undergoing confirmation is below for reference).

The Colorado resident departed from Cape Verde off the coast of west Africa on April 8th and landed on the shores of Antigua in the Caribbean sea on May 9th escorted the entire distance by her escort boat Pearl under the leadership of Captain Tamas Hamor and First Mate Sara Hajdu......

CultureSport 365 in cooperation with the local tourist boards has developed a new event  'Swim the Costa Brava'  on 21 and 22 September. The race has three distances to choose from: 6.0, 3.5 and 1.5 km

To draw attention they raffle one free registration to Swim The Costa Brava Event. In order to participate you just have to fill in the application form on the right side of their website.

After the cancelation in 2012 of the First Intercontinental Swimming Relay from Eurasia to America across the Bering Strait "Meeting the Sun" they will try it again in July - August 2013   source: http://icebering.com translated in English original in Russian: http://icebering.com

The Canadian Paul Duffield is one off the invited swimmers source: http://www.kelownacapnews.com/news/206460781.html

Arena, therefore, advised FINA of its decision to withdraw the approval codes of concerned POWERSKIN Carbon-Pro models:

AR220993 – woman full body open back
AR220994 – woman full body closed back
AR141364 – man jammer

Bring your kids along to Cadaqués on the Costa Brava.

On 29 June 2013 there's the 6 km Sant Feliu de Guíxols (link) for the adults.

The same day we will organize for the first time a KIDS race (link)

Beach lifeguard surveillance research
REQUEST FOR VOLUNTEERS!

What is this all about?
We need your help with a research project which we hope will help train lifeguards of the future.  The project aims to understand how lifeguards survey a beach and spot potential problems.  The hope is that the project will help make their surveillance even more effective.

What do we need?
We need to recreate a busy beach scene so that lifeguard surveillance can be documented.  So we are looking for people to spend a few hours on the sand or in the water alongside Bournemouth Pier on Saturday 18th May 2013

source: http://www.ecmasters2013.com

The Open Water Swimming Event will be held in the canal in the east of Eindhoven on Saturday September 7th. You will swim in a straight line 3 km from the start to the finish arriving in the center of Eindhoven. Transportation for the competitors between start and finish will be arranged. Swim in this unique location through Eindhoven too and sign up for the Open Water Swimming Event through the registration. More information can be found here.