Calling an end to my streak.

I was reading my swim logs and it looks like I'm safe calling my streak a success.  I got many swims in and did the cold water swims through the winter months successfully.
I've driven by the beach the last several days and the water is dirty from the Oceanside Harbor dredging and it is also too warm to be called a challenge.
The last time that I tried to swim through the winter with just trunks was about 9 years ago, and I only made it through the first week of February.  In that year's attempts, I was wearing a short-sleeved rash guard also to keep me a bit warmer. 
So, it looks like I improved a bit in my cold water tolerance, and my swimming improved along the way.
I think that I'll just do the swims now as I feel the need.  I'm not sure if I'll continue posting the blog or not.  Thanks for your reading.


"The first time you quit is the last time you try."

Avila Beach Pier Swim

I was able to sneak in a swim on our quick trip to see our daughter play her concert in San Luis Obispo.  I got in at Avila Beach and swam out to the first white buoy that says "Detour Underground Pipe"  and than circled it and came straight back in.  Took me 40 minutes and was fun.  It was chilly so I hardly gave the recent shark thing a thought.  A lady told me that a dog peed on my towel while I was out, so that was different.  Up there the beach is a more relaxed atmosphere, I think, because the bad guys haven't taken over yet.  I don't know how far my swim was.  I hope it was over a mile.  No pictures-too bad.  You'll have to look at Rob Aquatics Blog for photos of the Avila Beach area.


"The first time you quit is the last time you try."

Kayaker in Cambria, CA mistaken by great white for food.

See attached clip.

"Shark Attack?


"The first time you quit is the last time you try."

Oceanside Harbor Dredging Dirty Water Today

The water looked nasty today and it sure was...Brown water is not my favorite color.  I guessed the direction of the current correctly, which was nice, but I had a hard, rough, kinda' gross swim today.
The water is too hot.  There is all sorts of small bits of nasty dirty stuff in the water and some of it smells.
Getting in was rough.  I got a workout getting through the surf-and it was a bit scary rough.
I don't have photos but it wasn't a beautiful scenic day at the beach.  There were about 1 to 2 dozen surfers on the south side, where the water was a bit less dirty.  I didn't really like the swim today.  It was just a rough slog through choppy, dirty, smelly, rough water.  When the city does its dredging of the harbor, they pump all that cruddy sand and water down south on the beach that causes the problem.  I was actually reminded today while swimming of my old Navy SCUBA diving school training in San Diego harbor in 1979.  We learned to dive in the nastiest water at the 32nd Street Navy Shipyard.  We actually dove in our own urine and feces in the harbor.  It seems crazy nowadays but it was quite normal and laughable to us back then.  One guy would say something like, "I'm going below decks to the head and I ate corn last night.  Look for it."  So then we would gather at the rail of the diving barge where the toilets flushed the crap above water level right out into the harbor where we dived.  If we saw corn we'd all go crazy cracking up laughing.  Things sure have changed, eh?


"The first time you quit is the last time you try."

Against the Current

Lots of people down at the beach/pier area enjoying the day.  The water is warm enough for jumping in, and some folks were enjoying it.  Not too many surfers because the waves weren't very big. Let me check surfline.com now:  62-65 degrees. Wow.  That's summer temperature.
I tried to figure out the current and looked at fishing lines, the direction of the surfers' boards, any movement of swimmers in the water after being washed over by a wave, etc.  The outside water looked like it was moving southward but the inside water had a definite northward movement, even when I went in on the south side of the pier, the water was flowing northward.
So, I swim out, expecting to be going with the current, and the farther out I get, the stronger the current is moving from north to south.  I had a heck of a time swimming against the current to reach the pier and get around and past it.  The folks watching from above must have been wondering if the swimmer would ever get around the pier, because I was wondering it myself.
I checked my watch at the pier--28 minutes to get there--that's a long time.  I hit the beach at 46 minutes.  I had to pull hard with my skinny arms.  There was also a lumpy, one-foot chop to the water.
So, all in all, it was a good workout, ending just before sunset.


"The first time you quit is the last time you try."