Sunday, June13th, 2010

The conditions at Avila Beach were a bit of a surprise today. It was warm and sunny in San Luis Obispo so I threw a sweatshirt in with my swim stuff as an afterthought. When I got to the beach I was greeted with FOG and a very cool breeze blowing onshore out of the fog bank. I was actually sunny over the beach but there was a wall of fog from the end of the Cal Poly pier to Fossil Point that was just hanging there. The breeze that I mentioned had built up a medium chop that had not yet formed any white caps. The water temperature was 55 with small surf. We had nine swimmers today; Sylvia, Dale, Brittany, Chad, Duke, Dave, Dana, Dale and Marni. My shoulder seems to like resting so I was sitting this one out. Everybody headed down the buoy line to the left and came back and through the pier. Sylvia and Brittany came in and the rest of the group continued on to the last buoy at the creek. At that point Marni, Chad and Dale returned back along the buoy line and Dana, Dave, Duke and Eric headed over to the Cal Poly pier. From there they swam to the end of the Avila pier and came in to the beach along the pier for a total time of about 50 minutes.



Sylvia and Dale were at the Alcatraz swim last Sunday (the day after Rob's Around Alcatraz swim) and were shut out by fog. Bummer! They were on the boats and out at the rock when the race was called because the fog was not lifting and they were moving out of the time window for the tides. Sylvia said that while they were waiting on the boat at the start point that she could not see Alcatraz from the boat. The start of Rob's race the day before was delayed because of fog and the late start cause the swimmers to experience some difficult and potentially dangerous conditions. Canceling the race was a tough but correct call by the organizers because getting into the water outside of the tide window could result in a swimmer getting a tour of the Golden Gate or having an encounter with a container ship. The organizers held a consolation race in and around the Aquatic Park in which both Sylvia and Dale placed first in their age groups.

I'll (and probably Rob) be there on Wednesday.

niel