Avoid swimming despite having sun overhead (8)
I believe the answer is:
sidestep
'avoid' is the definition.
(I know that sidestep is a more specific form of avoid)
'swimming despite having sun overhead' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
an anagram of 'despite' is 'idestep' which is within the answer.
'sun' could be 's' (abbreviation) and 's' is found in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sidestep that I've seen before include "Shift to right or left" , "To avoid" , "Find a way round" , "Dodge - circumvent" , "Dodge (an issue?)" .)