Wednesday Evening, May 25, 2011

Swimming tonight were Rob, Niel, Ryan, John and Damion. John is from Palm Springs and swims with us when he is in town. Damion lives in Shell Beach and wants to resharpen his open water skills. The water temperature was 55 and it was blowing hard from the SW. The wind was pushing wind waves that were 1'+, about 10' apart and just starting to break. It looked like real open water swimming conditions! We decided to do the traditional triangle route counter-clockwise. We went in on the west side of the pier and grouped up at the buoy. The swim down to the creek was an adventure in different stroke and breathing variations, trying to find which combination worked best. At the creek everyone was up for more so we headed to the end of the Avila Pier. The direction of this leg was perpendicular to the wind and had us swimming parallel with the faces of the waves. The third leg to the last buoy on the east side of the pier was downwind, and the one where I swallowed the most water. Something about having the waves pick me up from behind made it hard to get in sync. The last leg back towards the pier was the easiest. We were headed into the wind but in the shadow of the pier. The chop is reduced by having to pass through the pilings so the water got flatter the closer we were to the pier. Rob measured 1600M and I had a total time in the water of 35 minutes.

Sunday, the 29th, we will swim long, to the Fossil Point rock or the end of the Poly Pier, 1.5 or 1.4 miles, if the wind lays down Saturday night as predicted and we have a support kayak. If the conditions are not favorable or we do not have support we will work out something appropriate closer to shore. The swim starts at 11 and there will be a pot luck lunch after the swim.

Monday, Memorial Day, I want to go longer and do a lap of the Martini Swim which is 2.4 miles. This is dependent on Rob returning form Long Beach on Sunday afternoon with his kayak. If we do not have a bot or it is too blown out, again, we'll figure out something. It is BYOlunch on Monday.

niel