Wednesday Evening, October 27, 2010

It was a gorgeous evening at Avila Beach last night. There was just a breath of wind, a few thin clouds no fog, some occasional large waves but with glassy conditions beyond the surf line. I broke my thermometer while getting the reading so we are going to be using the tingle toes scale of water temperature until I get a replacement. I didn't see any birds, seals or fish on either side of the pier. We had four swimmers; Niel, Rob, Ryan and Pete. We decided to head straight out to the buoy line and swim all of the way down to Fossil Point and back. This would be about a mile. There was a lot of comments, expostulation and gesturing while we were getting in and I gott'a say most of it was from Rob but Ryan was contributing his share. When we regrouped about half way to the point the consensus was that the water temperature was 56 or 57 degrees. We continued along the line of the buoys all of the way to the point. We got to the rocks just as a big set of rollers came through. I felt a swell go underneath me so on my next breath to the right I took a good look and found myself looking up onto the face of a 5 or 6 foot wave with the lip just starting to curl over. I caught an extra deep breath, made a hard right turn and managed to just swim through the curl without getting tossed. I continued out for another 70 yards before I was beyond the break zone. Ryan and Rob had been behind me but nobody got washing machined. We regrouped and headed back along the way we came. The sun was dropping behind the hills and it was getting into dusk but the light was beautiful and the swimming conditions were great. Afterwards Ryan went for a run and Pete had to head home. Rob and Heidi joined Kris and myself for dinner at the Mercantile. The weather looks good for Sunday so I'll be back. Next Wednesday will be the last opportunity for an evening swim, as we go back to standard time on the 6th/7th. Rob and I are thinking that we would like to swim but will probably keep it short in order to get out before it gets too dark to keep track of each other.

niel