If you are interested in open water swimming and live in or near Southend-on-Sea then please come and join the Southend-on-Sea Open Water Swimming Facebook group.
The group is there to provide a public forum where people can discuss swimming in and around Southend and meet other people with whom to swim.
The Chalkwell Redcaps is an open water swimming club based in Southend. You can find more information about the club on their web site.
Southend-on-Sea is on the north side of the Thames estuary. When the tide goes out it exposes about a mile of mud flats. The water temperature can be greatly affected by the weather, on a sunny day the Sun will heat the mud warming the water on the subsequent high tide.
The are monitoring buoys positioned around the UK. Readings from some of these buoys are publicly available over on the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science web site.
Digi Duck, the seafaring bath thermometer, is used to measure the temperature of the water. According to his packaging, he has a measurement range of 0.0°C to 60.0°C with accuracy of ±0.5°C (at 25°C), enough for most open water swimming conditions.
And here he is, in action, on a calm sea in March:
If I remember to take him, Digi Duck will accompany me when I go sea swimming so the number of temperature readings will grow over time.
The source data is over on Google Docs as a spreadsheet.
The source data is over on Google Docs as a spreadsheet.
Went swimming but did not write down them there temperatures.
The source data is over on Google Docs as a spreadsheet.
The source data is over on Google Docs as a spreadsheet.
Note: if you are using Internet Explorer then the graph may not appear. Try the PNG version instead.
Download the graph, PNG version.
Download the graph, PNG version
Download the graph, PNG version
The data as an OpenDocument spreadsheet or a tab separated file, the weeks averages. The data and spreadsheet are public domain, use them as you see fit.
