Sunday, November 11, 2012

At Avila today it was sunny, very clear and as long as you stayed out of the breeze, warm. There was a light offshore breeze that had a nip to it that would get your attention.  The water was clean and empty except for one or two pelicans, a small pod of dolphins and one seal.  The water temperature was 55.5 degrees, 3 degrees lower than the reading over at the port.   We had seven swimmers and two paddlers today; Allison and Kris were out in their kayaks with Duke, Casey, Lee, Sylvia, Rob, Amy and Niel swimming.  We agreed to head out to the first buoy on the left of the pier, turn left and to make up our route as we went along.  We wound up doing what could be called the Big Triangle; we swam the last buoy in the line and continued to Fossil Point.  From there we swam to the end of the Poly Pier.  Amy turned in along the pier and the rest of us continued to the end of the buoy line at the creek.  We swam back along the line, under the pier and in to the beach.  As we left the end of the pier the breeze had turned in to a wind that was coming directly off of the shore and pushing up a small close chop which required a bit of extra work on the swim to the creek and turned out to be surprisingly troublesome to swim across on the way back to the pier.   The complete route was about 1.5 miles and we were in the water for 51 minutes.
After the swim it was nice and warm up against the wall, in the sun and out of the wind.  

niel