Sunday, August 22nd, 2021

 Chased Out of the Water By the Red Tide

Things looked OK from shore. Tom had swum earlier in the day and texted that he found that the red tide was bad at the end of the Cal Poly Pier but OK everywhere else. We planned a route that didn't include the end of the CP Pier and set out ready to rethink our plan if the conditions went down the toilet.

Today we had Duke, Niel, Leslie, Jodi and John swimming. This was John's first time with us. He lives in Cambria and swims bareback in San Simeon Cove.  It was sunny, about 75° and the water was 60 - 61°. The wind had come up and put a 6" to 12" chop on the water out of the SW. The surf was the same as yesterday with small waves with widely spaced sets of 4+ footers.

We decided to swim to the end of  the east buoy line, go to the end of the Avila Pier, on to the third crossbars on the CP Pier, in to the second crossbars and then back to the west end of the buoy line, to the pier and turn in.

It was choppy but the water was fine until about 300M after we left the end of the Avila Pier were we ran into thickening red yuch. We angled to the second crossbars and found even worse conditions. At about this point my Garmin apparently reacted to the water conditions and started tracking all over the ocean. It was either head back the way we came or directly to the beach. We headed to the beach. Half way in along the length of the Avila Pier the water cleared up. My read if that the wind and chop had pushed the red tide in from the end of the CP Pier. 

I could have done some laps back and forth along the buoys but was frustrated enough to just call it quits and go sit on the beach. 

By the time we were cleaned up and back at our chairs the red tide was at the end of the Avila Pier and angeled over to the last buoy on the east side. 

Duke, Niel and Jodi at the last buoy on the east side.

The only picture that I got of John's first swim at Avila was of the back of his head, looking back along the buoy line towards the pier. 

Duke and I will be back at 8AM on Tuesday morning to chase some clean water.

niel