Sunday, March 3, 2012

What happened to the weather?  A sunny, warm and humid Saturday was followed by a coolish Sunday morning with thin overcast hiding the sun.  The was no wind, the water looked very clean and green and the water temperature was up three welcome degrees to 52.  Yvonne and Sylvia were going to enjoy the beach.  Niel, Rob, Byron and Casey were swimming.  Allison was riding herd in her new spiffy red kayak which has more features than a new Japanese car. We wanted to swim about a mile and Casey spoke up first and suggested that we start by swimming out to the end of the pier.  Once there Byron suggested a trip over to our usual turning point about 1/3 of the way out along the Poly Pier.  Going over there and coming back to the foot of the Avila Pier would make for a 1+ mile swim so off we went.  The leg between the end of the Avila Pier and the 1/3 point on the Poly Pier is one of my favorite swims at Avila.  It is about 600M and lets me settle into my stroke and on a flat day like today I like to see how I can push my pace.  Once there, instead of trying to swim to what would be the west end of the buoy line if the No Boating buoys were in place, we headed directly for the beach at the base of the Avila Pier, another 600+M swim.  Afterwards Byron and I felt like we had had a chance to stretch out and put in a nice effort.
A Bit of Context Here  - The Avila Beach Pier is about 420 M long while the Cal Poly Pier is 600 M to the west and 900M in length.  Swimming the length of the Poly Pier is long leg in what will be a long swim.  The seaward end of the Cal Poly Pier is about as far offshore as we commonly get on our swims, and we would only head out there if we have someone on a kayak or paddle board along for support and visibility.   
There is no map of today's swim because I am sill trying to figure out how to operate my Finis Hydro Tracker's two buttons properly.  This unit doesn't have a screen and neither beeps or vibrates, the only indication of its status or that a command has been executed is the 4 lights, which are not visible in bright sunlight.   I'm counting how long I'm holding a button down but if I go too long it rolls past the desired command; today's track wound up including my drive over to the port and to home.  This thing works great on my morning runs when the lights are easily visible but I need to polish up my counting in order to get it right at the beach.  Version 2.0 definitely needs a beep/vibrate function.

niel