Are you a good swimmer?

Jason wasn't.

Yes. I've been swimming since I was 2 or 3. My grandfather would hold us in the water and tell us to kick, let go, and raise us back up. He'd show us how to go under and come back up and how to hold in our breath. We just mimicked him. Then I had years of swimming lessons. Knowing how "to swim" I usually take as not necessarily knowing all the strokes (though that's part of it), but more so knowing how not to drown - treading water, diving and resurfacing, We'd go swimming without floaties in the deep end of the pool and in lakes where we couldn't always touch the bottom by age 4 or 5 - always supervised of course.

In the water I’m a very skinny lady

I have a medal!

I never learned to swim properly. I sort of make it up as I go

My grandfather took us to the beach when I was a little kid.. I was playing in the ocean at 3 or 4. Soon swimming and then surfing.

But I never saw a naked ass under water as good as the one in OP's picture.

R5, can you float or doggy-paddle?

OP here, and a very good (formerly great) swimmer. Kinda need to be a very good swimmer for my active hobby (open water canoeing and kayaking).

Is that his wee-wee OP?

My parents couldn't swim and were afraid of water. I tried to explain you just kick and thrash til you stay afloat. But it was too abstract for them to grasp.

When they wanted to move the family out of town there were two choices: a man-made lake community with laid back kids who smoked pot and ran around half-naked all day. Or a backwoods redneck area with a gravel road and people right out of Children Of The Corn. My parents didn't want people to know they couldn't swim- so guess where we ended-up?

I was before I turned into a whale.

I'm a pretty good swimmer and have been comfortable in the water since early childhood. I grew up next to a creek and spent every summer of my childhood swimming there or in nearby rivers and lakes. However, I am also extremely cautious around natural bodies of water, especially rivers and the ocean—my dad instilled the fear of God in me about this and I was made to understand from a very young age how powerful and unpredictable water can be. I think this saved me from getting myself into any bad situations over the years. Even the greatest swimmer can be taken under if in the worst circumstances. Basically, I am confident, but I also take the water very seriously.

Much better than these guys

Excellent swimmer here. My parents made sure my brothers and I had swimming lessons when were were kids.

Swimming lessons should be mandatory in schools.

Good enough for a D1 scholarship.

Half the battle is being comfortable in the water in addition to knowing swimming techniques. I totally understand why it's hard to learn past a certain point or if you've ever had even a moderate bad experience in the water.

Just a couple weeks ago I went swimming in the ocean in Miami. First time in a long time I had been in the ocean and it was glorious. Particularly since Florida water is so warm (at least it was when I was there).

I'm with r13 BPC. Spent my summers next to a lake and also took lessons at the Y. Worked as a junior lifeguard. Love the wayer.

R8, yes.

[quote] Half the battle is being comfortable in the water in addition to knowing swimming techniques.

R15, this is absolutely true. One of my sisters had a near-drowning experience as a little girl. She's never recovered a healthy approach to water ever since.

I'm a great swimmer but not good enough to beat other boys, so.........Now, I'm a champion!

I think a huge factor in drownings or near-drownings is often panic. When you panic, your nervous system goes into overdrive, and you expel your oxygen rapidly, which is a recipe for disaster when you're in the water. I've always been told that if you get pulled under (i.e. in an undertow in a river) or get taken out by a current/riptide in the ocean, you are supposed to let the water do as it will and not fight it. Obviously this is easier said than done, but I think in certain situations it really increases your outcome of surviving. Thankfully, I've never been in a situation like this, so I can't say from experience.

Even a natural and experienced swimmer can have fears at times. Our family were all "water babies" our parents had us floating before we could walk.

But once in the ocean off Cape Cod, I think it was Marconi beach? Is that a place? my father and I got caught in an undertow. Scary as hell but we made it out on our own. Never swim alone in a natural setting. I couldn't go deeper than my waist in the ocean for years. Felt safer in the lake.

Another time I was water-skiing on another, much larger, nearby lake and a near collision with another boat sent me flying into a dock. Both legs broken, one in 4 places, steel bars still there. But the scary part was trying to keep afloat when I had no use of one leg. No water for two months.

Physio in a heated pool.

Is that Pete Buttigieg in Malta, OP?

R22, ;)

I swim year round for fitness and love lakes and the ocean. However I would never swim in the ocean without a lifeguard.

I’m a fish. Or a hippo. I feel as light as air and graceful as a feather on it.

Buck wasn't, to be honest.

R26, lol

R22, yes.

My mother never learned how to swim because she grew up in New Mexico and the only body of water there was the Rio Grand river which had annual drownings like what's going on in Texas right now. So as very young kids living in California she made all of us kids take multiple rounds of swimming lessons at the local high school. I would hang out at the beach almost every day I could during the summer, LOVED swimming in the ocean....until Jaws came out.

I can swim and swim a lot, can do up to over 5km in one go without a break. I'm not fast though, and my technique isnt great. Doesnt stop me though, I do 2km laps every day

Didnt really know how to swim until my early 40's, taught myself, started by taking a running jump into a pool I thought was 1.4 metres deep. Upon landing in the water I realised the sign actually said 4.4 metres. I swam, didnt have no choice. Now I really enjoy it. Have music to swim to, that helps keep me motivated

You ain’t bright, child.

Why no shrinkage on that glorious man in OP's photo? I have a decent dick, but the moment I hit water, it turns into a peanut.

Hopefully this isn't a Rose question, but you have music to swim to... are you alone at your own pool? or some kind of water-proof headphones? or?

I wish I were. I can barely stay afloat if the need arises, or make some feeble effort toward safety. Despite growing up near the ocean and around pools, I only learned a really rudimentary level of safety. It puts a damper on pool parties, and beach holidays and activities are not generally a priority (beach people it seems, find it incomprehensible that anyone might not be a beach person: "but you can lie on the beach, no?", "well, you can cover your body in a thick paste of sunscreen, no? you wouldn't like doing that for hours on end? Hmm, very strange," Or, finally, "well you could go in the very edge of the water and get your ankles wet, no?" (as if the water were acid.)

Anyway, I've not petrified of the water. If I had a pool and a trusted friend, I would, without undue trepidation, set about learning, but at my age it's anything but a priority.

I’m a former lifeguard I don’t get to swim very often anymore but when I do, I’m very good at it still.

One would hope so….

Not really.

I have always been an excellent swimmer, literally from the age of 2. Our neighbors and close family friends back in 1955 had a big pool in their back yard. My older brother and sister would often swim with their kids. My older sister had been tasked with taking care of me for a few minutes while our mother ran an errand. Little did my mother know. My sister and brother were invited over to swim by one of the neighbor kids and they knew the only way they could go was to take me with them. I took to the water like a fish and once all the older kids saw I was just a natural swimmer they let me do my thing at the shallow end. I eventually moved to the diving board, training pants & all. My sister had left a note for my mother telling her where we were. When she came home she walked over to the neighbors and came inside the gate only to see me standing on the end of the diving board ready to flail myself into the water. They said she screamed like a banshee as it jumped and stood there watching me swim over to the side of the pool where one of the big kids pulled me out. Needless to say my brother and sister had some telling to do, but apparently they finally got my mother to understand that I swam like a fish. At this point 70 years later, the only thing I remember about that day was when I was standing on the end of that diving board and seeing the look of terror on my mother's face as she came inside the gate. Even though I was a natural my siblings got into huge trouble with my parents and the neighbor kids all got it from their parents when they found out what the big kids had let me do. But later on in life my mother revealed how proud she was of me that I could do that at such a young age and it gave her a lot of comfort that I could take care of myself like that. Taking care of myself became the focus of my life, even now that I'm edging closer to the end of it.

I was also a natural at bike riding. I got my first bike at the age of 4. My father was preparing to install the training wheels when I just hopped on and took off riding it like I had been doing it for years. My father stood there with a training wheel in his hand looking stunned and when I rode back up to him he said "well, I guess we don't need these, do we?".

I can get myself out of the water if I fall in, unless there's a strong current or undertow. I can swim a clumsy combo crawl/doggie thing for about 50-100 feet and can tread water well enough. R20's advice about not panicking is so true. One time in college I was drunkenly thrown into a deep end of a pool in the dark, and I just came up and treaded water calmly until I could kind of see where the ladder was. A panic attack might have finished me off.

I never learned properly but I can float really well, have nearly fallen asleep in a warm pool while floating but I don’t like the water. I can dog paddle but probably not long enough to get out of trouble. I am very cautious though. My niece and nephew took swimming lessons when they were very young and you can see how confident they are in the water.

A friend emailed me a while back that she and another friend were traveling and stopped to eat at a new place that had a pool. My other friend decided to go for a swim and dove in, paddled around, and then discovered there was no ladder or steps to get out. I wouldn’t be able to hoist myself out of deep water and the thought of this gave me nightmares.

OPs picture makes me horny. Very much so.

Is that a rudder sticking down in the water in OP's pick?

R40 a corpse floats, too. Are you a corpse?

OP- Who wants to go swimming?!

You LOST AGAIN!

I will ALWAYS beat you!

I will never understand people who don't teach their children to swim. Classes are free or dirt cheap at Easter Seals or the Y.

Easter Seals? A crip pool?

Peter Marshall: Does Mark Spitz believe swimming in the nude helps you go faster?

Paul Lynde: Well, it's easier to steer.

R46 They offer swim lessons for everyone, with or without disabilities.

I'm worried about the dude in OP's photo. A snapping turtle could come along and bite his peen off!

Or Aquaman might come from his lair and blow him and then mount that nice ass.

My father showed me how to swim when I was young, maybe 5. I took lessons at the YMCA, and took swimming as my gym requirement in HS. I loved it. I was especially fond of it in HS, as my locker was located in between the lockers of two of the best-looking guys in my school. We could swim naked if we wanted, but those two loved putting on a fashion show every couple of days, so I joined them. No Speedos, just baggy, surfer-type suits from the original RonJon surf shop.

Redneck shit.

Hang Ten or OP was where it was at …

[quote] We could swim naked if we wanted,

Lucky. Effort and travel now has to be made for that.

I grew up at the beach in the summer and we had a boat. The town had an incredible aquatic complex, too, so we swam year round, not that common in 1950s New England.

We had to take the Red Cross lifesaving classes in order to sail in the club races. You had to wear a life jacket, too, in order to sail. They weren’t gonna lose someone’s kid overboard because they couldn’t swim.

Does anybody else enjoy open water swimming?

I've known how to swim since swim classes at age 6, and can still stay afloat, but no one would consider me a "good" swimmer.

Honest question R55 - what is open water swimming. Obviously in a body of open water, but do you have to be a minimum distance from shore. I'll swim off of a boat in the middle of lake I'm familiar with, not close to shore. The ocean, no. I'd usually have to be fairly close to shore, but not necessarily in an area shallow enough to stand with my head exposed. When in Miami a few weeks ago, I was surprised at how far out the buoys were to mark the end of the swimming area at the beach I was at. I wouldn't go all the way out there. But, I was a first-timer at that beach.

I wonder if I'd jump off a boat far from shore if I was sailing in the Mediterranean - if others did and it was a known area where people do that. It seems like a very "European movie" thing to do. Ha.

R57, in the open ocean, I swim out about as far as where the pier ends, and we (always with a buddy) sometimes swim from pier to pier. It's a huge workout and has to be done in the early morning before the chop and swell of waves gets rougher. But it's very freeing and rewarding and feels so different from a pool or where people are wading. I've always taken open water swimming to mean any natural body of water that isn't a pool and where people are no longer standing/wading.

I definitely wouldn't open water swim any lake or body of water that I'm not familiar with. You never know what hazards lurk beneath. But I kayak/canoe solo a lot of the time (go figure).

[quote]Hopefully this isn't a Rose question, but you have music to swim to... are you alone at your own pool? or some kind of water-proof headphones? or?

Not a Rose question - the answer is waterproof headphones. Swimming alone at my own pool would require a large pool for lap swimming and extremely tolerant neighbours to put up with death metal wound up to 11, as thats what I swim to

These are the headphones I use, they're fucking awesome, and they go loud

I took up rowing several years ago and learned, when we had to do a flip test with the boat (in the deep-end of a pool), that I had absolutely no confidence in myself when bobbing about in water where i couldn't touch the bottom. Not that I panicked in front of others, but to tread water well and consistently or swim? Yea, that was NOT going to happen.

I just completed two months of swim lessons at the Y. Man do I need to keep doing this... I'm 63 and trying to learn something ain't easy...

When I was six my family joined a private pool. I asked my mom why so many of the kids had the same swimsuits. They were on the swim team. I coveted one of those exclusive Speedos like nothing else. You could not try out for the swim team until you turned 8. I made my mom enroll me in swimming lessons even though I could swim ok (although I am sure my freestyle stroke looked like a six year old flailing about). I hated getting up early and getting in the cold pool first thing in the morning but I took lessons and swam every day for two summers until I could try out for the swim team.

I was on the swim team for five years. I did ok but I didn’t love it. I truly was motivated by the Speedo.

R59, I might have to get a pair!

Is she the one who chopped off 2 toes in the lawnmower accident?

Well, shit. wrong thread, sorry

I'd better be: Greta Andersen was my swimming teacher.

I’m 66 and can’t swim despite living for 6 months of the year in a hot climate and by the sea.

I have never learned to swim freestyle . I just can’t.

No. I'm afraid of deep water

Are your little swimmers good swimmers? Not like it matters anyways.

I never learned to swim but I love the water. The most irresponsible thing I've done is kayaking. It was thrilling. I do want to learn but I haven't yet.

I was. Good at endurance, if not form. Now my shoulders are giving me some trouble but I still try to do a few laps when given the opportunity.

My family "joined the pool" when I was 7 and I always loved going there (no "floaties" in those days!). But my freestyle was terrible, because I always got water in my nose, mouth, and ears. My breast stroke was pretty good (seriously!), and I could do the side stroke all day long.

There was an indoor pool at my high school and we were required to take swimming ever year for a certain number of weeks/months? IDR. One of the things I learned was how to take my clothes off in the water (there was no "shallow end" in this pool) and blow up my shirt or pants to use as a flotation device. Those were the days!

Back then -- and even when I was in my early 40s and my landlord had a pool -- I could tread water all damned day. I would get up before work, get in his pool, and tread water for at least 1/2 hour. But it was really boring.

Now? Pul-eeze. I'm lucky if I can walk for half an hour. The Covid I had last August knocked my ass out and I haven't been the same since. And a few years ago, when I first moved here, I went to a spring down the road and I couldn't swim three strokes without being exhausted. Intending to go back and make it a habit, I bought a little paddleboard but I never used it and I never went back. Shame on me!

R68, don't be. Take an introductory swimming class! It may change your life.

Yes, my father had us in swim lessons before I could read. I spent my summers at the pool, but I didn't really learn to swim properly until college. I took intro swimming over and over until I could swim laps and get a good workout.

I've always been turned on by swimming. I think it's a combination of having so little clothes on, feeling free in the water and being around other half naked guys. Even as a kid before I knew I was gay.

[quote] having so little clothes on, feeling free in the water and being around other half naked guys

I am so envious of men who grew up free-balling in ponds, rivers, and lakes! Or even the local YMCA. That was certainly not my experience, unfortunately.

I'm not sure it still happens, but in the dark ages when dinosaurs ruled the earth, the young gays would flock to Jones Beach from Manhattan on sunny summer weekends cavorting on the beach in their speedos, but as soon as they were in the water, the speedos would be shucked off and worn around the neck. I wasn't a super strong swimmer, but I wasn't afraid of being in the water. If the surf was especially high, I might get rolled onto the beach, which I hated, but it wasn't frequent. It was very exciting and very daring to be in the ocean with hundreds of semi-naked gay men.

The whole experience was exhilarating, from meeting friends on the platform in Penn Station, emerging from the tunnels on Long Island, and then counting down the stations until the train arrived in Freeport.t From there, we would take a bus to the barrier island and most importantly, the Field Six bathhouse. Then it was a fairly long trek (perhaps 15-20 minute walk to get to the more or less exclusively gay section of the beach). I've been in other naked pool situations, such as in gay resorts in Palm Springs, but I never found them to be so erotically charged.

Wow R77, that is one true post on DL!

I, on the other hand, am a native of the Island and worked at Jones Beach for 3 or 4 years behind the counter, making burgers, fries, pouring sodas and beers, sweeping up trash on the deck around the picnic tables.

Us "locals" would watch you city-folk get off the buses from Freeport and smirk at all of the accessories you brought for a day at the beach. You were good looking men and women... far too pale for the day, many quite pink for the trek back to the city.

I didn't have much gay-dar back in the late 70s/early 80s, but at Field 6 there were many good looking men who would traipse off eastward to the "gay" section, which conveniently had a lot dunes to wander, right?

Lots of dunes and reeds (arundo donax- 8-10 feet tall and capable of making pretty dense cover.). Or so I was told....

A visual to go along with this story

Found this photo on gaycities - supposedly the gay part of Jones Beach. Not sure of the vintage.