Sunday, April 24, 2011

It was cool and overcast today and while I was driving to the beach I was passing in and out of rain showers. There was no rain once I parked but it was breezy with gray clouds that looked like they had moisture in them. The water was clear and 55 degrees with small surf and a small chop moving from right to left. Sylvia and Evonne were getting ready to get in when I arrived. This was to be Evonne's third try at ocean swimming and she and Sylvia were going to do their own swim. For the 11AM swim we had Niel, Rob, Chad, Monte (who was over from the valley) and Conner. This was conner's first swim with us. He is a Cal Poly student and a triathlete and found us through the website. He was comfortable in the ocean but wanted to learn how to swim in open water. Well, he found the right group!

We decided to do the large triangle clockwise today. That would give us a route with different exposures to the chop and multiple points for shortening or modifying the swim if we decided to. We swam out, turned left and headed down the buoy line until we were opposite the big rock at the far end of the retaining wall. From there we swam to the end of the Avila Pier. As we approached the end of the pier we discovered that the pier had been flattening out the chop by about 1/2. The third leg towards the creek to where the last buoy used to be was across the chop and probably the most difficult technically. Once we grouped up at the creek we swan parallel to the beach, under the pier to our starting point and turned in to the beach. This swim was about 1.25 miles and we were in the water for 38 minutes.

niel