THREE hundred people gathered to watch 163 brave souls take the plunge into the chilly water at Rhu Marina for Helensburgh’s annual New Year Swim.

The annual event has been taking place in Helensburgh for around 100 years and the tradition is still going strong with the event hosted at the Marina by the Helensburgh RNLI lifeboat crew and facilitated by the marina owners, Quay Marinas Ltd.

This year the water at the marina was 7.5 degrees, slightly warmer than in recent years, and one swimmer enjoyed her dip so much she went round and did it again!

This year’s youngest swimmer was Manni Gillies from Dumbarton who was just six years old and swimming with dad Christopher – while Jim Brannan from Balloch was doing the swim for the 53rd time and put his enthusiasm down to “stupidity”.

Throughout the morning the members of the Helensburgh lifeboat craw were on safety duty with many of them spending the entire time up to their waists in water.

And afterwards the ladies of the local RNLI fund raising committee provided hot soup, tea or coffee for the swimmers as well as special foil blankets to provide extra warmth as the participants came out of the water.

The foil blankets were kindly sponsored by Tunnocks and proved popular with the swimmers of all ages.

The lifeboat crew were David Dundas, Ken Miller, Dean Durrant, Neil Petric, Iain McCormick, Gary Thompson, Andrew Bullingham, Grant Scott and Robin Lane and they were ably assisted by Jim Foster and Simon Fraser as well as two coastguards, Neil and David.

The ladies were Patti Summers, Wendy Lightoller, Jo Clark, Margaret Whitham, Penny French, Rosemary Lang, Margaret Morrison, Jean MacKay, Joy Michie, Morna Millar, Dinkie Fairlie and Terry Paterson.

Carrick Roy, who took over as local RNLI operations manager from Colin Gardiner on New Year's Day said: “I think everything went very well and we are delighted so many people turned up to take part and to watch.”

The certificates — which include the phrase coined by Helensburgh artist the late Gregor Ian Smith, “Many are Cauld but Few are Frozen” — are much coveted and are produced every year by Donald Fullarton on parchment paper donated by Admin Systems of West King Street.

Originally the swim at New Year was one of a series of sea swims held throughout the year in the Helensburgh area, including the Craigendoran Two Pier Swim from Craigendoran Pier to Helensburgh and the Rosneath Swim from Kidston Park to Rosneath.

It took place at high tide on January 1 from Helensburgh Pier, no matter what hour that was.

This tradition continued until the early 1970s when the Ibrox disaster saw 66 football fans killed when crush barriers collapsed, and the then regional councillor Billy Petrie wondered about the safety of the railings on the town’s pier.