Organisers of this year’s Broughty Ferry New Year’s Day Dook are looking for willing participants to join them in the harbour on January 1.
Entry forms are now available and Ye Amphibious Ancients Bathing Association are hoping to get as many dookers as possible this year.
The Phibbies have set themselves the challenge of recruiting more than 1,000 dookers by the 2017 event so they can clinch the Guiness Book of World Records title of the “World’s Largest Dook on January 1.”
Last year 430 brave souls welcomed in the New Year by making their way down the slipway, cheered on by thousands of spectators, and chief ancient Joyce McIntosh said she hoped for even more this year.
“We would like to increase it year on year,” she said.
“This year we will still go down the slipway but when it peaks over 500 we might go in off Beach Crescent.”
The annual dook is held in aid of YeAABA which encourages children and adults to participate in open water swimming.
Joyce, who is also Dundee Citizen of the Year 2013, said: “Ye Amphibious Ancients Bathing Association is both an open-water swimming club and a charity, and we desperately need support to keep the sport of open-water swimming alive in Scotland.
“It’s a great responsibility to know we are the only open-water swimming club in Scotland but one we very much aim to keep alive. We couldn’t do this without the marvellous support of everyone involved.”
The club now wants to get clubs and schools involved to boost the numbers.
Each year the club must raise £20,000 for the upkeep of its clubhouse, boats, engines, equipment and the training of volunteers and the New Year’s Day Dook helps meet those costs. The Phibbies will launch their new boat on New Year’s Day.
The first recorded Broughty Ferry Dook took place in 1891 when the event was first recorded in the official minutes of the club.
In the past it has been known for club volunteers to have to break the ice of the Tay with pickaxes before the New Year event can start.