Wednesday Evening, April 20, 2011

There was light rain falling as I drove to Avila at 5PM. It had slacked off to a mist by the time I got to the beach but there was a strong wind out of the West, blowing from right to left along the beach. I met up with Rob and we decided on a swim. Tonight we would go in on the right side of the pier, out to the lone buoy, down the phantom buoy line to the creek, over to the Poly Pier and retrace our route back. I had not gotten here early enough to get a water temperature but based on the temperature for our previous 3 swims we agreed that it would be cold, somewhere in basement of the 50's. Wading in the water felt nippy on my feet and hands but Rob, in his 'traditional' cold water gear, feels it all over and he was feeling the cold. As I was swimming out I started thinking that it wasn't that bad, maybe even mid 50's. Our leg down to the creek was into the wind and chop and took some extra work. I could taste the presence of fresh water as we neared the creek. Once we were off of the mouth of the creek we angled towards the Poly Pier and got a surprise. As we pushed towards the pier and swam out of the creek water we crossed a 3 or 4 degree temperature drop. This felt like 51 or 52 for sure. We did not spend any time idling at the Poly Pier and headed directly back towards the warmer water and the first buoy. Once there we stopped and reviewed the swim but not for too long. Treading water let our feet fall into the cold salt water that was below the fresh on top and our feet started freezing. We headed in, got dried off and changed. This swim was 1.55 K and we were in the water for 34 minutes.

niel