Turn off the lights, and the mermaid will glow

[thevirginiamermaid]

Hey everyone!
I know a lot of mer’s have trouble with public pool so here’s a story to liven up the spirits.

I had a sort of cool experience last week at the pool. I go to my college gym’s pool to swim in my tail. Since I have a magictail I usually wear a speedo, cap, googles, and just take out the mono fin to train because it’s easier and less conspicuous. Anyway, I just finished adding vinyl fringe to the end of my tail and heel fins and a dorsal fin out of the same material and I wanted to take it out for a test run.
I went to the gym late at night when no one was there and swam around for a while. Since I don’t take the whole tail out that often I decided to let my hair loose and wear the bikini that matched the tail instead of my normal getup. I was the ONLY one in the pool and the lifeguards were college guys and got bored as college guys do and decided to turn off the overhead lights and turn on the pool lights. So I’m underwater with my eyes open ( I usually wear goggles but I forgot them and chlorine doesn’t hurt my eyes so I could see fine) and everything goes dark but this glowing blue light come on in front of me. Naturally I was super surprised so I came up for air and the whole pool was GLOWING turquoise.
So I started freaking out because some on….that’s super cool! So basically I found myself in my own private full sized glowing swimming pool and just went to town after that, diving down, reaching out my hands toward the lights, seeing my mermaid shadow on the bottom, popping up in the dark corner of the pool where no one could see me except when I splashed my fluke (aquamarine??) It sounds silly but I felt like a real mermaid swimming up from the deep toward a mysterious light (13

th year anyone?) I even swam past the life guards stand (which was right above a light) to give them a good show.



In conclusion,

I fucking love being a mermaid

[sashiyoop]

That sounds like it was an amazing experience!

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[halesloveswhales]

I love this! I've never been night swimming in my tail, but now I guess I'll have to try it. :)
I just went to swim in my college gym's pool with my tail for the first time two days ago, and it was just magical! I had been with just a monofin before, but swimming in a tail is a whole different story. The pool manager allowed me to swim in the closed lanes, so I didn't get any weird stares. And then I just did my thing! I swam laps for 45 minutes, and it was so great. I'd never swam for fitness in my tail before, but the next day, I could totally feel it in my abs. It just felt so wonderful! Practiced some bubble rings and flips, too, AND I learned how to swim upside-down without blowing bubbles out of my nose! Progress!

[thevirginiamermaid]

That's great!! I haven't been able to do many tricks yet because my breath hold SUCKS but I always feel the burn in my abs. When ever I tell people I go swimming in the tail at the gym pool their jaws just drop and I'm like "what is that so hard to believe?" No one has ever given me crap at the gym though, if I get any comments they're always curious or positive. Usually negative criticism comes from ignorant people but I think college campuses have a lot of open minded people who thinks things like being a mermaid are cool and interesting.

[Lotus]

I LOVE swimming in a lit pool at night. My fav thing ever!

[Echidna]

Pools lit at night are indeed awesome.

I'd go night swimming more often if there weren't always dozens of couples making out in the pools here.
Since I'm mostly underwater, even if I try to not look, I always get a few glimpses too many seeing just...what they are doing.
Pretty disgusting, therefore I rather go during the day, it's still thronged, but less couples.

However, if a pool is empty and I'm the only one in it, that's magical, day or night! ;)

[JaceAquarius]

Hmm I never thought of swimming at college... I'll have to check that out with mine! Great story! I just might have to try night swimming!

[Mermaid Danielle]

That sounds like it would be awesome!

[PearlieMae]

Okay, this is a little off topic, but please, someone...WHAT IS 13th YEAR?

[Triton-Mahtlinnie]

Thirteenth Year is a Disney Channel Original Movie from the 90's about a boy who begins to turn into a merman on his 13th birthday. It's pretty good. (Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb74tVTW_2I ) The film used to be on YouTube, but I guess Disney had it taken down.


On topic: that sounds totally awesome. I love swimming at night, but I almost never have a chance to do it now a days cause I mostly swim in lakes and the ocean. I maybe do it once or twice a year at cons in the hotel pool, but then of course the pool's always packed with congoers.

[thevirginiamermaid]

PerlieMae-The tail in the 13th year is also pretty iconic like the tail in splash or the Disney’s little mermaid. Mike Van Daal recreated it for mermaid Melissa and also uses the fluke style in many of his tails (Alyssa the blue mermaid’s tail, merman Antonio’s tail, linnea mermaid’s tail etc.)
original 13th year tail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NRwBV_AFLw
MVD recreation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rno3A6rHUk

[thevirginiamermaid]

Also the great thing about swimming in the pool at my college is that they don’t really have rules restricting monofins unlike bigger pools like the YMCA that are run by large corporations and have lots of safety rules. If you are attend a college that has a pool I highly suggest swimming in it!

[PearlieMae]

Thanks for bringing me up to speed!

[JaceAquarius]

I hope my college has lights like that! I grew up watching 13th year so it's a classic for me!

[Kumori Kitsune]

i go to IUPUI Ill have to see If I swim there with my tail

[XMermaidMarinaX]

Ugh I can't WAIT to go to college, and hopefully have a Merbellas tail. My school will actually be a school for art and design, so even more people may find it cool. Hopefully I get in, I'll apply in like junior or senior year. I'm spending sophomore getting my grades as high as I can, keeping an A or high B in photography, but I've already done a TON of research, and the dorm I like the most has an amazing pool from the things I saw.. I hope to eventually make my own tail and swim in my grandmas pool at night. This just sounds like an AMAZING idea!

[kellygracee]

That's an amazing experience :)

I do a lot of my performances at night and we designed a glow in the dark pigment tail for it. Maybe I can post a few photos later showing how it works but it's been fun.

Really cool story and hope you get to swim more often at night :)


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[Mermaid Cataleya]

That's an amazing experience :)

I do a lot of my performances at night and we designed a glow in the dark pigment tail for it. Maybe I can post a few photos later showing how it works but it's been fun.

Really cool story and hope you get to swim more often at night :)


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Do u have a preference between the flow in the dark to the uv pigment ?


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[kellygracee]

Do u have a preference between the flow in the dark to the uv pigment ?


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We honestly used both :) for my current tail.
I love the realistic shimmer metallic pigments have but truly love the uniqueness the glow pigments do for silicon.

Down side: once silicon has glow pigments in it, it will not glow through paint once covered by a airbrush. So we opted to having my tail "nude or raw" with no paint over the silicon. Once I saw the tail first poured I actually wanted the whole tail not painted but was suggested it looked "flat and can look unfinished". So we added the other metallic pigments to contour the tail- using black,green, and gold.

The pros-
I am in love with the glow! It's honestly so amazing to have a fun feature to add a "glow effect " in dark waters.

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160619/d9ba258564b02c92ca92724d024b9533.jpg tail in the darkest part of my condo I can find... The bath room lol

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160619/2445861e13cfb82c37533ef01c660174.jpg lights out. (With a small flash on my iPhone as shown)

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160619/84980a855ee38121a8c36ac538d29477.jpg
And placing my iPhone flashlight laying on my tail for about 20 seconds to charge. You can see my tiny green glow dot. :) when I have two huge lights above it it will charge like that (but pretty much the whole tail) for up to 8-10 hours at night.


I like metallic pigments for my tails but I needed a glow tail to be made for my night swims since it went with the theme of the business we swim for. I honestly will probably make most of my tails that are full silicon now to glow after seeing how much I enjoy seeing the reactions people had to it.

I'll send you a video of the charge it has from a simple cell phone light. It's pretty fun to play with.


The next tail order we are getting will include both UV pigments for black lights and also Glow Pigments. If you have the choice to do both, do it :)


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[Mermaid Cataleya]

Lol yea I bet that could be a really fun feature to mess with. Is the UV the one that you need a black light with? And the glow-in-the-dark just uses the suns rays it got before to glow in the dark correct


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[kellygracee]

Lol yea I bet that could be a really fun feature to mess with. Is the UV the one that you need a black light with? And the glow-in-the-dark just uses the suns rays it got before to glow in the dark correct


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Yes.

You need a bit of a stronger charge for the glow pigments to glow brightly so I would suggest a higher light source than just the sun or the regular lighting in your house.

The UV need black light to show from what I've experienced.


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