Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday Evening, September 15, 2010

We had four swimmers Wednesday evening; Eric, Niel, Pete and Ryan. The water was exceptionally clear and 59 degrees. There was a steady offshore wind, which in Avila blows from left to right setting up a current along the beach to the west and pushing up a small chop that was coming into the beach at 45 degrees from the left. There was a big raft of small shore birds that extended from off of the end of the Avila Pier half of the way over to the Poly Pier. They were just sitting on the water with not much feeding going on. I only saw a few pelicans and no seals. Not wanting to swim in water that was full of bird poop we elected to swam parallel to the beach on the left side of the pier. We swam out to the buoy line and down the beach to the left all of the way to Fossil Point and back. The chop was small enough to not be a serious challenge. We swam all of the way to the point, close enough for Ryan to climb up on an exposed rock. The water was clear enough that you could see a lot of detail on the bottom. The wind was dying but still had enough in it to give us a push on the way back. A couple of small seals picked us up when we got close to the Avila Pier and followed us in to the beach. We were in the water for 42 minutes.

niel

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