Sunday, January 27, 2013

We had more nice conditions today; sunny, scattered clouds, offshore breezes, 4'+ surf and water that had warmed up to 52 degrees. Duke, Niel and Ed swam while Ruta, Sylvia and Brad enjoyed the warmth up close to the sea wall. We began on the right side of the pier, swam out and headed parallel to the shore towards the mouth of the creek. There was no chop, just the swells rolling under us, so the swimming was easy. Once my hands, feet and face numbed up the swimming was quite nice. When we grouped up at the mouth of the creek we decided to go over to the Poly Pier and double back. Ed had never been over to this pier so it would be something new for him. We stayed closer to shore than usual, taking a line that would have us intersect the Poly Pier much closer to the shore than our usual route. This line took us over the stretch of rocky bottom that is dense with kelp in the summer but this time of the year we just had to do a bit of weaving around the few remaining strands. I thought that it was like flying through the canopy of a forest. We took a course back that missed more of the kelp and swam directly to the Avila Pier and in. We covered just over a mile in a total of 35 minutes.
There is no map of today's swim because I had my first malfunction with the Finis GPS today. Either it never achieved a GPS lock or I messed up with the buttons. Since the indicator lights cannot be seen in full sunlight launching the unit can involve a certain amount of trust. Perhaps this is an opportunity for an inventive entrepreneurial person with an interest in sports products to come up with a new product.