Sunday May 25, 2014

I was out of town on Sunday so today's post is by John Hampsey.

niel

When i arrived, the sea was glassy under full sun, and there was only a slight wind. It was great to see Rob and Alison on the beach. In a couple weeks they will be heading up to Humboldt.

Entering the water were Duke, Rick, Sylvia, Amy, and myself. We noticed the onshore wind had picked up and there was now a slight chop. By collective intuition we judged the water to be exactly 56 and a half degrees. We all started swimming south along the buoy line. Sylvia remained along the buoy line and the rest of us continued to Fossil Point, Rick and Duke actually going all the way to the rocks. Amy and I met up with Dan(new guy who had caught up with us), and we then split into two groups--Dan and Duke and Rick returned north along the buoy line and then into shore, swimming about .8 mile. While Amy and I decided to head yonder... diagonal out to the end of the pier. This ended up being a challenging swim as the wind had significantly increased out of the northwest, and the chop was now quite strong, and we were going into the face of it. When we reached the end of the pier we stopped for a moment to enjoy the view and to check out where all the fishing lines were. We swung around the end of the pier and headed to the first buoy on the other side. With the wind and chop now behind us, it felt at times like we were body-surfing... past the buoy and toward the shore. Our swim time was a little less than an hour and covered about 1.25 miles. During the time we had been in the ocean, the number of people on the beach had quadrupled! After all, it was Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, with a bright sky and a crisp clean breeze, and everyone wanted to make the scene.

John Hampsey