A cobalt sky, bush-covered headlands and swivelling stingray eyes: in the stillness of dawn, it’s just me and the ocean
The sea curls around my ankles as I take a bearing on one of the yellow buoys that define the “no-boat zone” at Balmoral beach. I wade in, lean forward and let the water catch my fall. I start freestyling towards the cone, the taste of salt puckering my tongue. It’s 6.45am and the sun has been up a while.
Balmoral shimmers under a cobalt sky. The sea is glassy, the temperature in the low 20s. En route to the cone, I pass over clumps of seaweed deposited by a recent storm and a small stingray etched on the bottom; the ray doesn’t move, but I sense its eyes tracking me like swivels on an antenna base. Every few strokes I look sideways and ahead, as much to avoid contact with oncoming lap swimmers as to be aware of semi-submerged figures in straw hats and sunglasses, and bent-arm backstrokers ploughing through the water like combine harvesters.
