Fine in the evening, traffic wise. 20 mins tops to usual swim spot. In a wetsuit everything’s fine. Tow float fro visibility. The idiots tend to be drunk kids jumping into river Leven, or off a pier at Balloch
I’d booked today off for a long bike ride in the 
& 
, but my back is playing up 
.
So decided to cool off in the water. Not a fast pace, but enjoyed myself. Quiet for my first lap, thereafter SUPer numbers were building, but still fairly serene 
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Phwoar. Proper swim that!
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1600M in 8 mins?
Was the Shark chasing him?!
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Id be swimming 30s 100s if I saw that. In fact I think Id sprout winga and fly out of the water
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Either that or it had already bitten his arm off and swallowed his Garmin.
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Prompted by the boot repair question in the other thread, does anyone have a recommendation for a company that replaces wetsuit zips? One of the teeth broke on mine last year which resulted in me getting stuck in my suit 
With the broken tooth removed the zips seems to work OK and I continued to use it but I’m nervous about racing in it so would like to get it replaced. I remember thinking I’ll get it done over winter then forgot about it 
Perfect, thanks.
Just as feedback for anyone else searching for wetsuit repairs, I used Techneopro (Wetsuit Repair Centre) in the end. A couple of people here recommended them and they were cheaper than Bodyline.
They were fantastic to deal with from start to finish. Repair completed in under a week including posting back to Scotland and apart from the zip is now repaired I honestly can’t tell that they have done any work on the suit at all. Very happy.
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Out of interest, what was the issue and how much was the repair in the end?
I’m pretty tempted to get my old Huub patched up, as i have no intention if buying a new one this year.
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have used Techneopro in the past - great service from them
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Mine was just a busted zip - a zip tooth had broken off. They replaced the broken zip (just the broken side) and it was £44 including VAT and return postage. Very reasonable I thought especially with the quality of the job they’ve done. If you drop them a message they’ll give you approximate prices and then if you want to go ahead just send them the suit and they’ll assess it and provide an actual quote before proceeding with the work.
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Probs going to work out much cheaper than a new suit, plus i don’t like the idea of throwing it away as it’s only a hole (albeit quite a big one).
Though they may see that it’s one of the early gen archimedes and send it straight back to me!! 
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2 nd hand suits are really really cheap at the min
Less so in the summer.
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Swam in the sea today. Garmin recording was all over the place but I reckon around about 1000m / 20 minutes.
Sea temp 19C, air temp 23C but there was quite a strong wind so it felt quite cool. After 20 mins in jammers I was ready to get out.
edit to add:
This is Katara beach, really nice spot. Costs 10 QAR or about £2.50 for a day pass, and another 5 QAR if you want a sun canopy tent thing. Which you do 
.
nice mix of people: Westerners lapping up the sun in shorts and t shirts, Arabs in long white thobes and black abayas with their kids paddling, Indian guys wrapped up against the cold in jumpers trousers and puffa jackets 
. But all just chilling on the beach together.
sorry another edit:
I hadn’t realised that here, Friday is the religious/rest day similar to Sunday in UK. All the shops and cafes are shut until after lunch, then they stay open late into the evening and everyone seems to party a bit (Iron February rules apply). The working week starts again on Sunday morning, and then next weekend begins on Thursday evening. Probably this is common knowledge & just shows how narrow my world view has been until this point
and one more thing about the sea: slightly disappointing fish count. A few grey small things but nothing colorful or big. At least no sign of any marine predators though, that’s good.
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Has anyone been to Andark nr Southampton? I only heard about it today
Rescue swimmer certainly earning his pay 
.
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Possibly including safe river access points…
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