The conditions at Avila Beach this evening were a surprise. It was warmer than in town, t-shirt and shorts weather. There was a gusty wind that was blowing from the SE which was almost the opposite of the wind direction in San Luis Obispo. The wind was pushing a combination of small chop and wind waves from left to right and into the shore at an angle. The water temperature was 56. Rob and I were the only ones swimming tonight. We decided to go out on the east side of the pier and down the buoy line towards Fossil Point and to let the conditions dictate how far we swam. The swim out to the first buoy set the there for this swim. The swimming was tough, the current pushing in towards the shore was strong and the chop, while too small to break over my head, was just large enough to really mess with my stroke. It seemed to take a long time to get out to the first buoy. We swam some to the end of the buoy line (now back to 3 buoys) and compared notes. Neither of us was having any fun but we decided to go to the end of the pier and to probably head in from there. The leg to the pier was across at 90 degrees to the wind and every time I sighted on the pier I had to push more to the left. I never had trouble swallowing much water but the combination of the small chop and wind waves made it very tough to find any kind of a rhythm. We headed in to the beach from the end of the pier and felt well used when we got out. We had spent 28 minutes swimming maybe 3/4 of a mile. I felt like I had put in the effort for more like 1.5 miles.
Sunday should see normal conditions.
niel
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