Boat owners and swimmers, please BEWARE
The Devon Avon is becoming increasingly popular for outdoor or ‘wild’ swimming but many swimmers seem oblivious to the dangers posed by their poor visibility to power boat owners, in particular. If you are wearing a dark wet suit, you will be almost invisible to boat users down at water level, especially if the water is choppy.
Please consider your personal safety when swimming in open water that is used for other recreational activities. Although organised events such as the Bantham ‘Swoosh’ are well supervised from a safety viewpoint and wild swimming websites generally offer extensive personal safety advice (see, for example, http://www.wildswimming.co.uk/health-safety/ ) they make surprisingly little mention of the need to make yourself visible by wearing brightly coloured headgear, for example.
Swimmers personal safety is their own responsibility but boat owners should be constantly on the look-out.
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