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I swim a mile 2 to 3 times per week. I can't imagine swimming much more than a mile though and I do it in a heated pool!
I honestly do not know the longest distance i have covered swimming, but I do know I earned the nickname; 'Fish' because I loved the sea. I used to swim so much that hours would go by without notice. I also reached the ability to walk the bottom of a pool, lay down on the bottom of a pool, perform rescue maneuvers and more.
I don't know how to swim I'm VERY afraid to learn how, I am very afraid to die on water, after an incident when I was 13 trying to learn how to swim, my teacher throw me to the deepest of the water, I was so frighten than I could never learn how to swim again. It was a horrible experience.
LDS, what a terrible teacher! I was quite afraid of the water as a child. I would even scream and cry in the bath tub when I had to have the soap rinsed out of my hair. I was afraid the water would get on my face and it would hurt. I found out many years later that as a very young child I had almost drowned. Maybe this is why I was so afraid.
I would encourage you to find some place that has lessons for adults to learn to swim. I think it is very important for your safety and your son's safety that you be able to swim. Plus, living on an island like you do, I would think it could be a real drawback not enjoying the water. Maybe you will never enjoy the water, but you could at least be confident in your ability to survive if anything ever happened. But, you just might end up loving it! Swimming is one of my favorite things to do now.
My mom used to be afraid of pools and the sea too (not that much though), but since she started swimming classes she lost her fears. As tenaheff said, swimming lessons for adults will help you. You could also try hydrogimnastics, that's a great exercise and helps you loosing your fear of swimming too.
And of course choose a nice teacher, not an evil one who throws little children to deep waters
Well, LDS, I know it isn't fun to be thrown in the deep end, but the rational behind that, is they gotta swim if they are gonna get out to complain about it. That was how my grandfather taught me to swim. He'd take the boat out to the middle of the lake and toss me overboard and have me flail until I could get back to the boat. He'd let me catch my breath then toss me in again. Until I could swim decent like.
As for distance. I don't swim distance. I actually don't swim anymore, well, at least a year or so now. Which definately isn't cool. Swimming was always so much fun.