Saturday, June 9, 2012

Patrick Kelley is a surfer and swimmer from Oakland who was going to be in town and had contacted Rob about finding someone to swim with on Saturday.  He and I exchanged e-mails and arranged to meet at the beach at 12:45 with the idea of swimming about a mile and a half.  Once again Avila surprised, or lived up to its reputation, for being a special place.  It had been windy all night and through the morning in San Luis Obispo so I was expecting blown out conditions.  Instead it was sunny, calm and very warm at Avila.  The air temperature was in the  low 80's.  The water temperature was 54.5 with a flat, glassy surface with only an occasional 3+ foot wave.  I did not see any pelicans or seals.  There was a lot of small boat traffic between the new catamaran and over towards the Poly Pier so I was thinking that a route that was mostly along the buoy line would be good.  I hadn't seen Patrick yet when I walked down to the guard tower to let them know where I expected that we would be swimming.  When I got back and started getting into my stuff I saw a swimmer going left along the buoy line and wondered if it was Patrick.  I suited up, got in, swam straight out to the buoy line and met up with the mystery swimmer on his way back to the pier.  Sure enough, Patrick had arrived while I was talking to the Life Guard and had taken off looking for me.   We got introduced and familiar with each others swimming experience and decided on a route.  Compared to the water in the Aquatic Park in San Francisco Patrick was finding our water to be very comfortable so we planned to stay in for a while.  Since he had already done the east side of the buoy line we headed west under the pier and to the last buoy at the creek.  At this point I hadn't seen any boat traffic and the conditions were so nice that I suggested that we head over to the Poly Pier.  When I caught up with Patrick at the pier he told me that I had had a seal tailing me for the last 100M.  Three or four seal heads popped up and checked us out while we were talking.  On our way back to the creek Patrick stopped and pointed out two sea otters who were on the edge of the kelp bed near the Poly Pier who were giving us the stink eye.  They clearly did not think that we belonged in what was their patch of ocean.  Patrick was excited because he while he sees plenty of seals and dolphins when he is surfing he never sees otters.  This was probably the pair that we have occasionally seen over near the Avila Pier in the last month.  From the creek buoy we swam the full length of the buoy line to the end on the east side and then back to the Avila Pier and in to the beach.  On the leg to the east end a strong offshore breeze came up and it started getting a bit bumpy.  When we got out the sand was so hot we had to run up to our stuff.  Patrick had a great time and was good about waiting for me.  For those of you who know Casey, Patrick would dust him.   By the time we had showered off there were white caps forming in the bay.  I was in for 54 minutes and Patrick more like an hour.  I swam about 1.5 miles and he 2.0.  I was still very comfortable after almost an hour in the water today, possibly because of the warm air temperature and possibly due to the massive patching job that I did on my wet suit after Wednesday's swim.


niel