Category: The Word On Swimming

The three sisters’ swimming

Svara’s Short Course Junior Olympics 2020

By Svara Jayasinghe

On the 7,8, and 9th of February 2020, I swam at the SI Short Course Junior Olympics. I qualified for 8 events, but was only allowed to swim 6 events, including the 200 freestyle, 50 breaststroke, 100 breaststroke, 100 backstroke, 100 butterfly, and the 200 IM. Overall, it was a great swim meet. I dropped time in almost every single event, and our team, Renegade Aquatics, placed 7th overall. I made it to the finals in two events, the 200 freestyle where I placed 5th, and the 100 breaststroke where I placed 7th. I made it to the consolation finals in the 50 breaststroke, 100 butterfly, and the 200 IM. I also swam in the 200 freestyle relay, and the 200 IM relay. No one really had the chance to take videos of my races because my swim team was running the snack bar, and my parents and sisters were busy helping out.

That was my consolation finals of the 50 yard breaststroke.

We Bought A Summer Waves Pool — Here’s How We Set It Up

Since we’ve been in quarantine, my sisters and I haven’t been able to have a swim practice in two months. We needed to be able to get some swimming in, so we decided to get ourselves a makeshift pool. We bought the Summer Waves 15 foot circular pool. It’s thirty three inches deep, but the water level is only 26.5 inches. It’s just deep enough for us to swim properly, and just wide enough for all three of us to fit side by side. 

The pool is fairly easy to set up; it took a little bit of manpower to hold the pool up while we slid beams through the slits in the pool, but it was straightforward after that. We set the pool up over two tarps to protect the material from the rocks in the ground. Then we started to fill the pool. The first thing we noticed was that the pool was slightly higher on one side. It was only higher by an inch or two, and didn’t make much of a difference. But just in case, we put slabs of stone under the pool legs to hoist the lower side up.

After we let the pool sit for the night, we discovered a tiny hole that the stone slab had punctured. We also found rocks that poked through the bottom of the pool, which were bound to cause holes in the future. We tried patching the hole with duct tape at first, which stemmed the leak but wasn’t totally failsafe. Since other rocks were probably also going to make holes in our pool, we decided to drain the pool before we tried to tackle the leak again. 

We drained the pool, but the drain left around three to four inches of water at the bottom. We used buckets to get rid of most of the water, which took about four hours total. Then we half-dismantled the pool, swept away the remaining water, and moved the pool away. We removed the tarp from the area, re-prepped it with patches of fake grass to cover any rocks, then covered the grass with a better tarp.

We patched up the hole in the pool with FlexTape, which supposedly works underwater. We covered the hole on the inside and the outside and let it sit for a couple hours. Then we moved the pool back into position and began to fill it again. But even when covered with FlexTape, the tiny hole still leaked a steady stream of water. We covered the FlexTape with Gorilla Tape, then put another patch of Gorilla Tape on top of that and another patch on the outside of the pool.

The hole still leaked through five pieces of tape. We inspected for other holes and found none. Eventually, we found a couple air bubbles in the tape that was letting in some water. We took all the tape off and put on new Gorilla Tape, making sure not to leave air bubbles. Moral of the story: clean your base thoroughly before setting up your pool!

Finally, the leak was patched and our pool was finally ready! We filled the pool the rest of the way. It took about 12 hours to fill completely. The pool was still not level, but it didn’t make too much of a difference in the end result. To see how it looks and how we swim in it: click here.