Wednesday Evening, September 31, 2011

I've been out of town for 10 days so this was my first time in the ocean in almost two weeks. Our string of warm Wednesday's is over, with this evening's below 60 water temperature of 58. There was a steady SW breeze. The chop was not whitecapping but there was a noticeable current from the right to the left along the beach. A big south swell was predicted to create 8' to 10' waves on the south facing beaches between Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday evening we saw occasional 5' sets with long spans of smaller waves between. Here to swim were Bobby, Ryan, Niel and Rob. Rob decided to get his boogie board and catch some of the waves. There was a huge concentration of birds feeding on bait fish on the right side of the pier so we decided to go out on the left side to the end of the pier and swim in the opposite direction to the last buoy and then down to Fossil Point and back. When we got to the end of the pier the birds had moved to a point farther out but to the left of where we were. We didn't hand around and boogied to the last buoy, canceled going to the point and swam back along the buoys to the pier and came in. Low tide was about 6:20 and when we got out the surf had flattened out, much to the disappointment of the surfers and boogy boarders who were in the water looking for the big waves.

Rob and I will be on the beach to swim this Sunday at 11.

niel