Swim Pembrokeshire - Blog #sighting

Open Water Swimming Techniques - Sighting

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 05:56:47 +0000

Sighting Techniques for Open Water Swimming

Sighting is one of the most underrated and under practised elements of open water swimming. Do it wrong, you kill your stroke. Do it too often, you drain your energy. Not enough, you zigzag. If you are going to do sighting, do it right.

When a swim student asks us to show them how to sight, the response is always to split it into several parts:

1) how to sight

2) how often to sight

3) what to sight on

4) practise makes perfect

How to Sight

There are two basic techniques to do sighting, one more efficient than the other.

The Classic Mistake: Combining Sighting with Breathing

Most people have not really been taught how to sight properly and tend to do it when doing the breathing phase of the stroke. This consists of either breathing first, then bringing the head around to do the sighting; or sighting first, then swinging the head round to breathe.

Advantages: Fairly easy to do as it is an 'extension' of your breathing phase.

Disadvantages: Causes the had to raise and be out of the water for too long, which causes the legs to drop.

Crocodile Eyes: The Efficient Sighting Technique

Split sighting out into a separate phase of your stroke. Do not breathe when you sight - "sight when you sight". The physical sighting can be done on either arm and the technique involves arching the back slightly and looking directly forwards, eyes out the water, mouth underwater - "crocodile eyes".

Advantages: Requires an efficient stroke as basis to master sighting, minimises drag as legs remain in higher position.

Disadvantages: Takes practise, requires a good base stroke. May not be so effective in choppy conditions.

Efficient Open Water Sighting: Step 1

Here we see the swimmer has done the pull using the left arm and instead of breathing or keeping the head down he does a sight and uses his back to arch and lift the head slightly our of the water - the mouth is still submerged.

Efficient Open Water Sighting: Step 2

The water clears from the face and the land features/skyline are visible. This swimmer is using the apex of the headline hill as their sighting reference feature.

Efficient Open Water Sighting: Step 3

After seeing the reference point and making any adjustments to the swim course the swimmer drops the head down and continues swimming.

Here's how sighting - using the 'crocodile eyes' method - looks from the swimmer's perspective. You can see how he breathes to the side, but sights to the front, at which point he is not breathing, but instead keeping the eyes just out of the water and the mouth submerged. The sighting reference is the apex of the headland hill.

How Often to Sight?

How often to sight is an important factor that many people pay little or no attention to. Do it too often, you drain your energy. Not enough, you zigzag. There's an easy drill to work out how often to sight:

Stand in the shallows, focus on a sighting feature.
Get calm, focus on the feature, start swimming with your eyes closed.
It is imperative you keep your eyes closed but swim normally, heading towards the sighting feature in your mind.
Get a friend to walk behind you and count your (single) strokes before you start veering left or right.
When you start veering your friend taps your feet to stop and repeat.
Do this 3 times.
Calculate the average number of strokes.
Subtract 3.

That's your sighting frequency at that point in time. So...

Frank focuses on a church on the skyline...

He closes his eyes, swims off on attempt 1 and does 12 strokes before he starts veering left.

His friend taps his feet, he repeats the activity and does attempt 2 in 12 strokes before veering off course.

Attempt 3 results in another 12 strokes before veering left again.

Average: 12+12+12 = 36 divided by 3 = 12

Subtract 3: 12 - 3 = 9

This means Frank should so a sighting every NINE single arm strokes for maximum sighting efficiency.

TIPS:

If you miss the landmark on your sighting stroke, don't worry - get yourself together, try again soon after.

The number NINE is a guide at that time - this number should go down as you improve your stroke. Do the above exercise every few months to be as efficient as possible.

What to Sight On?

What to sight on depends on the unpredictable nature of the sea conditions.

It can be flat calm or it can be completely crazy, with large swell and one metre feet waves. In this case it is unlikely you will be able to sight using the buoys, even though they are brightly coloured and 6 feet high.

In this case it makes sense to sight on permanent, land based features that you can see easily and quickly:

Church spires
Houses
Prominent buildings
Prominent trees
Patches of woodland / copses
Cliff edges
Fields with distinct coloured cops, eg. wheat fields in late summer, rapeseed fields etc
Rock formations
Hilltops, mountain peaks
The sun
Etc.

TIP:

Choose features that are silhouetted on the skyline as they are much easier to see in the short time you have whilst doing a sighting stroke.

Practise Makes Perfect

There's no other way to improve your sighting than to practise, practise, practise!
You can practise in the pool or in open water.
A useful drill in a 25m pool is to 'bounce' in the water, with a lungful of air, lifting the head slightly on each stroke/bounce, focussing on the end of the pool, not breathing, just sighting. This will help build the muscles required for an efficient sighting technique for use in open water.
Over time your sighting frequency should come down and your swim track improve.

Learn Sighting With An Expert

Why not book one of our swims and learn how to do proper open water sighting from an expert?

Swim Pembrokeshire's Head Coach/Owner Andrew has been sea swimming his whole life and is an ex-Welsh champion age group swimmer. He's done the IMW route in 53 minutes and has swum it hundreds of times and has expert knowledge of the key swim spots around the Pembrokeshire coastline.

Learn all of the above sighting techniques from him as part of your swim booking, including valuable tips and tricks that you can only get with local expertise.

Click here to book a swim.

Click here to book the Tenby Ironman Wales swim.

Good luck!

Swimming The Ironman Wales Circuit

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:52:06 +0000

Preparing for the Ironman Wales Swim

The Iron Man Wales event that's hosted in Tenby Pembrokeshire every year is widely reckoned to be one of the toughest Ironman events in the world. Here's a snippet from AI:

One of the hardest and most relentless full-distance courses in the world. It features a chaotic, choppy sea swim, a punishing bike route with nearly 2,500m of elevation gain, and a hilly coastal marathon.

For a realistic breakdown of why this course is so notoriously difficult:

1. The Swim (2.4 miles)

The challenge: Held at North Beach, the swim takes place in the open and sometimes turbulent Irish Sea. It involves a two-loop course with an "Aussie exit" (running out onto the sand before diving back in) and requires navigating choppy waters and swells.

The iconic transition: Once out of the water, athletes face a famous, lung-busting run up a steep, zig-zagging ramp and through the town to get to the transition area.

2. The Bike (112 miles)

The challenge: This is a hilly, two-loop route through the Pembrokeshire countryside. Unlike flat, fast courses, Ironman Wales forces constant effort changes with almost 2,500m of total climbing.

The atmosphere: You will face steep inclines like Saundersfoot and "Heartbreak Hill". While the crowds provide an electric, Tour de France-style atmosphere that pushes athletes up the climbs, the undulating nature of the course means your legs get very little rest.

3. The Run (26.2 miles)

The challenge: The marathon consists of four hilly loops through Tenby and the surrounding coastal terrain, racking up about 500m of total ascent. It is entirely uphill or downhill, meaning you are constantly stressing your quads and calves.

The aftermath: Because of the grueling bike leg, tackling a hilly marathon exposes any nutritional or pacing errors you made earlier in the day.

Course Difficulty Summary

Average Times: Due to the extreme terrain, the median finishing time is usually between 11 and 14 hours.

Cut-Off Times: You have the standard 17-hour cut-off to finish the race, but the high difficulty contributes to a higher-than-average Did Not Finish (DNF) rate, typically hovering around 8% to 12%.

Tackling the Ironman Wales Swim...

For many people the Ironman Wales swim circuit is an extremely tough challenge and one they do simply to get through it and get on to the other disciplines, certainly not because they enjoy it!

However with a bit of preparation and if possible some repeat training sessions doing the actual course with people who know how to swim it, it is possible to turn that challenge into a really enjoyable part of the overall event.

Clockwise or Counter Clockwise?

The swim route used to run clockwise, in an inverted triangle, and as mentioned above there was an Aussie style exit where you would have to come out of the water and run around Goscar Rock to do the second lap.

That changed fairly recently and it is now an anticlockwise swim with the buoys on your left side, still in the familiar inverted triangle shape.

Currents

There is a lot of talk about why this change was made but it's generally agreed that it was due to currents that usually flow from east to west when out of the lee of the headland, that is, from right to left when looking out to sea from North beach.

I've heard many people mention problems with currents even with the new direction, but having swum this route thousands of times in my experience the current does tend to flow from right to left, which means the new route is easier as the current will be behind you when you swim along the 'base' of the inverted triangle. This is not meant as a statement of fact, it's just my experience swimming this route many many times, over many years. I think this is probably why the route was changed because I have seen swimmers trying to go the other way (the original route) and swim for 20 minutes without moving along that triangle 'base'.

At any rate, it is important to note currents are only applicable on this route on the 'base' part of the inverted triangle because on the two 'sides' there is no current because you are protected by a large head land with a convenient castle on top, which we will mention later! And actually, sometimes there is no current at all.

The Start

Without a doubt, the start of the swim and the entire event is an incredible experience. The sun rises in the east just as the Welsh national anthem is played and sung along by thousands of spectators who line the cliff tops behind the athletes. This is followed by a good bout of AC/DC along with fireworks and excellent commentary, just to get you extra pumped up before thousands of swimmers enter the water in a rolling start.

For many athletes this is one of the most nerve wracking parts of the swim. There's no other way to describe it: it is utter chaos.

You really just have to find your 'place' and if the physical nature of swimming with so many people in close proximity is a major problem for you then my advice is to get on the edges away from the centre pack.

It does really help if you can get into a rhythm by understanding your stroke rate and having some kind of counter 'mantra' as part of your stroke; as well as make use of effective sighting so that you can stay on course, even if everyone else around you is veering off left right and centre!

Sighting

Sighting is often one of the most underrated and under practised parts of open water swimming. There are generally three parts to effective sighting:

How to sight
How often to sight
What to sight on

Learn more about sighting techniques here.

"What to sight on"

As mentioned in the above description from AI part of the challenge of the Ironman Wales swim is the unpredictable nature of the sea conditions.

In September it can be flat calm or it can be completely mental swell, with five or six feet waves. If you get the latter conditions on the big day there is a strong chance you will not be able to sight on the buoys even though they are brightly coloured and 6 feet high.

It makes sense to have a backup and sight on permanent land based features that you can see easily and quickly. As a guide you can use the following features that are usually dead centre aligned with the swim buoys:

Leg 1:

The most obvious sighting feature here as you can see in the image below is the ruined castle on the top of the hill. It is almost directly in line with the first buoy and has the added advantage that it is clearly silhouetted against the pale sky and therefore easier to see, especially when you consider the first leg will be when most people are going to be swimming in front and around you.

Leg 2:

The shot below was actually taken at low tide and on the day the beach you see in the foreground would all be underwater. This leg is in my opinion the most difficult to sight from because it is very difficult to know exactly where the buoys will be placed until the day before the event. With this in mind, I recommend you go to the location as soon as the buoys are out, walk up to this very spot on the pathway that winds below Tenby castle. From there, take a look and align yourself behind the first buoy looking to the second buoy.

There are a number of features on the skyline you can see that can be used to sight from if you are unable to see the buoy during the swim:

the right edge of the wheat field
the small copse on the skyline, almost centre of the shot
the very obvious drop off the cliff on the right hand side...

Any of these can be used for sighting as it is not necessary to sight on something that is exactly in front of you - you can sight on something that is at 11 o'clock, or 1 o'clock, or 2 o'clock to your position. By checking out the location of the buoys beforehand you will get an idea of what you can site on for leg 2.

The final leg...

After a small stretch between buoy 2 and 3 (see above route map) you are into the home stretch back to the beach. There's a lot of advice flying around on the internet about what to sight from including different coloured buildings or gaps in buildings on the skyline.

Forget trying to notice building colours on the terraced houses: If you have enough time to register the colours of tightly packed terraced buildings then you are not sighting correctly and your legs are dropping!

That said, coloured objects can be used if they are 'stand alone' and very easy to see.

Although taken at low tide the image below shows some good examples of what you can (and cannot) use for sighting.

Good...

The red cafe to the right of Goscar rock - not perfect but it is separate from terraced houses on the top of the Cliff and fairly easy to see.
The white apartment block on the right side - very bright and very easy to see but would not be taken as a "12 o'clock" sighting reference, but rather a 2 o'clock reference point, with you swimming to the 12 o'clock direction.
The gap between the elegant terraced houses and the apartment block on the right side - reference points as above.

Not So Good...

Goscar rock is the size of a church and although you might think it would make a good sighting object, as you can see in the image below it's actually quite difficult to see as it gets camouflaged with the cliff behind. If you can see it though, use it.
Coloured terraced houses - it is almost certain that you will not be able to sight and have enough time to distinguish different coloured houses. In addition with the nerves of the event you will more than likely forget what coloured house you are sighting on!

The Exits

If the waves are big then it's actually an advantage for you on the third leg of the swim and on the exits.

Use the energy of the waves and give a little extra kick or pull as a wave comes over you and then you will be able to ride in 1-2 metres without any effort.

When you exit, swim as shallow as you possibly can. Use the waves an bodysurf right in. I'll typically surf in to a depth of about 30 centimetres if I can.

Dig your fingers in the sand to get a good grip and then launch yourself out into a full run to get around the rock or out when you exit after swimming full distance.

Conclusion

After many times swimming this route it's easy to say that it's not so difficult, but without sufficient exposure to the conditions or without practising the above kinds of techniques it will be a tough swim, especially when the wind is up and the waves get bigger.

Never underestimate the sea - when you get out of the protection of the headland the entire mood and sea conditions can change. It can get pretty scary pretty quickly so the keyword here is "resilience" - build your exposure to adverse sea swimming conditions by getting out there as often as possible preferably on the course that you are going to do. Learn how the sea behaves and what wind directions will result in what sea conditions. If the wind is offshore (blowing from the land out to sea) then you are in for an easy swim. If the wind is blowing onshore (from the sea to the land), then you are in for a ride!

Try to make sure you go to Tenby a few times if possible, or for a few days, in order to do as many swims around the route as possible so that it feels familiar on the day.

Use Expert Advice

If you prefer to be accompanied around the Ironman swim route, feel free to book a swim with us and we will show you how it's done and provide useful tips and tricks as well as expert feedback on your stroke.

Book Our Ironman Wales Swim Route

Good luck!

Sighting Using the Sun

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 16:42:37 +0000

When the sun is in your eyes and you cannot see features on the land itself as they are silhouetted by the sun, it's often hard to sight on anything noticeable when open water swimming.

In this case, you can use the horizon itself, a feature on the horizon, even a small dip or rise, something that is on the horizon.

Or, if your swim is not going to take so long that the sun will move, you can even sight off the sun itself...

In this video we use the sun as a great sighting 'landmark', to take us back to the beach:

Notice we mentioned you could use such a bright and obvious object as the sun when sighting both on top of the water and underwater?

This way you do not need to expend valuable energy looking up all the time as the sun, if it's out and if you have chosen to use it as a sighting mark, it's strong enough to be seen under the water too.

This means you can keep your head down longer, increasing streamlining and stroke efficiency. We've exaggerated the look up a bit here to show how easy it is to use the sun for sighting but hopefully you can also see how strong it is and how it can be seen very easily from under the water.