Wet and wild. Cold and challenging. Tough and terrifying.

The world of ocean swimming in South Africa is not for the faint of heart or those who prefer the chlorine jungle. It requires guts, training and a sense of adventure.

In My Element, an autobiography by marathon swimmer Theodore Yach of Cape Town, South Africa. After successfully swimming across the English Channel in 14 hours 25 minutes, he sets his goals in local waters.

He has since completed the Robben Island to Cape Town crossing a record 77 times and was the first person to swim around Robben Island from Cape Town and back in an 11-hour swim. In the brilliant hardback book, In My Element, Yach presents his inspirational story about his modern-day approach to aquatic adventure where he explains the environment where he is both most comfortable and most uncomfortable.

The book was among the nominees for the 2012 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year and its proceeds are donated to the National Sea Rescue Institute.

The WOWSA Award nomination of In My Element reads, “In My Element is a colorful, entertaining explosion of open water swimming exuberance packaged in 163 pages. The hardcover book, self-published by its author Theodore Yach, is an outstanding mix of beautiful photography, explanatory text, and personal insights by a uber-tough marathon swimmer from Cape Town. Set in the backdrop of the wild waters off the South African coast, Yach tackles myriad subjects of the open water swimming with an intense passion that can only come from first-hand experiences with cold, sharks, tides, currents, jellyfish and thoroughly inhospitable conditions in the open ocean. His ability to describe the scenes and challenges of the open water world with child-like wonder, punctuated with gorgeous photography, is a page-by-page joy to savor over and over again. For his ability to bring alive the sport of open water swimming, for his investment in a book that will go down as one of the best-selling swimming publications of all time in his native South Africa, Theodore Yach’s In My Element is a worthy nominee for the 2012 WOWSA Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year.”

Copyright © 2014 by World Open Water Swimming Association