It depends how one defines strong swimmer. Strong swimmer as someone that can freestyle for extended periods of time or someone that can do survival swimming. I spend no less than 3 hours in a pool a week, but more like 5-6 hours. Not all swimming. Much of the time in the deep end, with water that is over my head. But I am comfortable. I do practice my strokes while there. However, my husband, has no desire to practice his at all or even any desire to learn the front crawl. However, when he was in the Marines, he was in a boat company. Each year they had water survival skills to pass in order to remain within the company and allowed on the boats. He can do all the survival stokes in under the required time for passing scuba or Fundies requirements. But he is comfortable in the water. Even more so than myself and I am in the pool a lot. As some of his skills were blind folded, turned and dumped from a pretend helo into a pool, unbuckle, and swim to the surface. Drown proof skills, as they were out on the Chesapeake a lot, the ocean and rivers of NC and over seas. Heck, I think they spent more time out of the boats than in in the black of the night. When we are in the pool together, I have him show me what they used to do and I do them also, just another tick to add to my bag. I would have to say. one should be very confortable in the water in order to scuba. However, I have to say, that before I took up scuba, you could not get me into water that I could not see. I hated all the stuff touching me, but since scuba, that fear of the unknown has gone away. I remember the first time UW at the quarry on my check out dives and actully seeing all the green goop growning, seeing where the fish are, just seeing the things that I did not see while on land, made it all better. I remember, living in Jacksonville, NC and walking along the beach and something swam out from under my foot, I never went back in the ocean after that. And since my husband was in the Marines, everyplace he got stationed had an ocean by it. And I grew up in a river of Ohio swimming all the time when I was a kid and I could not anything in that water. I guess it had to something to do with the 2 guys and drowned after wrecking their car and now come and grab onto swimmers, as the story went.
Swimming should be strong, however, confort level in the water needs to be even higher.
