Sunday, April 16th, 2023

Tom's Sunday swim report: heavy marine layer again today. It was about 54° when I arrived at Avila at 9:45. The water was smooth and glassy. My toes tell me the water was 49°.  I swam on the west side in search of warmer water...  and found it...  maybe.  Hard to know for sure, but when I got back to the Avila pier it definitely felt colder. Excellent day of swimming. I am expecting another couple degrees of warmer water by next Tuesday

Niel's Swim report - 

When I arrived at 10:20 Avila was a cool feeling 53° and very gray with thick high clouds. There was a hint of wind which had put a ripple on the ocean. The surf was small and lifeguard training was happening on the east side of the Avila Pier.

Swimming today were Niel, Pat and Shawn who has recently moved to the area from Santa Cruz and had not been in the ocean since September.    

Our plan was to swim the west buoy line to the end. Shawn elected to do some laps of the buoy line, not knowing how he'd do with the water temperature. Pat and I swam over to the CPP at Crossbars #2 and to the end of the pier. At this point we found that the wind had come up and there was a one foot plus chop on the water out of the SW. We swam with the chop back to the end of the Avila Pier. The chop and swell had me stopping a couple of times to look for the boat that had caused the larger sets that rolled under me but it was just the chop combining. It was lot's of fun with the wind and chop following but at the end of the Avila Pier we decided an hour had been enough and came in. Especially because following the original plan and swimming back to the #2 crossbars and back to the buoy line would have been across the chop both ways.

I measured a water temperature of 50° with some cold spots.

It will be nice if Tom's water temp predictions are right. 

Pat and Niel at the end of the CPP

Next week I'll swim Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings at 7 and Sunday at 11.

niel