Sunday, August 29. 2010

There was no fog at Avila Beach today. At 10:15 it was sunny t-shirt weather and there was no wind. There were several individual and a couple of groups of seals on both sides of the pier. There was a very large group of 100's of birds roosting on the water about 3/4 of a mile directly off shore from the beach. They were not feeding and were moving steadily to the west. A pod of approximately 6 large dark grey dolphins swam by from east to west about even with the end of the pier. I think that dolphins are always a good sign because of their reported agressive behavior towards sharks. In keeping with its recent habit of providing warm water on Wednesday evenings and cold water on Sunday mornings, the ocean temperature was back down to 54 degrees from Wednesday's 62. We had nine swimmers today; Sylvia, Niel, Joe, Rick, Chad, Allison, Duke, Pete and Yvonne. Sylvia, Joe, Allison and Yvonne decided to swim a shorter route along the buoy line. The rest of us selected a long buoy line route, starting by going down to Fossil Point, all of the way back to the last buoy at the creek, and back along the way we came, under the pier a second time and in. Rick was the only one of the swimmers on the long route who had on a farmer john instead of a full suit. He elected to cut his swim short as the wind was kicking up and his arms must of been freezing. A strong wind had come up quickly and when we emerged from under the pier onto the creek side of the buoy line we were greeted by a head high chop and current pushing towards us. When we regrouped at the last buoy at the creek the flags on the boats in the bay were standing straight out and the chop was starting to develop white caps. On the way back to the pier the chop was now breaking over my head and I was getting regular mouth fulls of water. Buy the time we were on the beach the whitecaps were in all of the way to the surf line.
Rob and I will be back on Wednesday evening expecting another dose of warm(er) water.

niel