After getting rained out last week I was really itching to get in a swim today. During the week I ran off to the beach to catch the last bits of daylight and take pictures from in the water… if you follow me on Instagram (aquarob) of Facebook you probably saw some of that action… but 30 minutes kicking around in the surf is no substitute for a real swim!

I hit the beach around 10am and Niel showed up a little bit later. We walked up on the pier to get the water temperature and soak in just how beautiful of a day we were dealing with, it was Summer in January for sure. The water was flat and calm, there was no wind and the skies were clear. The water temp left a little to be desired at 52, but that’s been par for the course for quite a few weeks now. I saw some activity over by our stuff while on the pier and it looked like Duke and maybe some other mystery guest had shown up. By the time we got back Sylvia was on the beach and Duke was gone but there were three sets of swim gear left behind that ended up belonging to him Casey and Berto. Eventually we added Amy and Ed which brought our swim total up to 8 which is huge for a Sunday swim in January! We also had two potential swimmers drop in and say hi today that might join us in the near future for some swim action.

Since we had some folks that hadn’t been in the ocean for a while and it was pretty cold Niel decided on a route just along the buoys to make for an easy departure for anyone that froze out or got uncomfortable. Getting in wasn’t too bad, I guess my recent evening dips have been helping, but I was still one of the last ones to actually start swimming. I typically acclimate really quickly once I start swimming, it’s just hard to force your body to make that first plunge when you know how much it sucks!

I worked on chasing down the group and thought they’d stop at the first buoy but they kept going to the end of the buoy line. I worked my way up through the back of the pack and swam until I hit the fast guys hanging out waiting to regroup. Despite the cold it was really amazing out there, I’m really glad we had the weather we did and so many swimmers came out to enjoy it.

Once we had everyone together we planned to swim the buoy line back to the pier and pause right before swimming under it to make sure we have everybody. At each of our stops I hung back a bit to try and snap a few pictures and give a couple of the slower people a big head start so that they wouldn’t be swimming alone for too much of the way. Duke and Casey did the same, but Casey still managed to be one of the first ones to finish despite waiting to go. I figure it’s ok he beats us since he’s angling for Olympic Trials in Triathlon this year :)

After swimming under the pier we made our way to the creek buoy and regrouped. A few people were starting to show signs of being pretty cold… glossy eyes and a little shaking… so we left that buoy pretty quick so they could keep moving. I hung back with one that I was a little concerned about to make sure she stayed on track.

We passed under the pier one more time and then turned for the beach. I tried to actually swim quickly this time around to make up for my cruising speed swim on the last leg. I was waiting for Casey to come blow past me so I could try and hang off his feet and draft a bit. He ended up swimming right across my line and I tangled my hands up a bit in his feet as he crossed over. I got like 10m of draft before I couldn’t hang anymore… the kid’s fast man.

As everyone got out I turned back to the sea to find a little wave to surf in. The waves were small today, the “big” ones had like 2-3 foot faces, but I still got an ok ride into the beach. According to my GPS we swam about a mile total, not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon :) If this weather continues to hold I’m hoping to scare up some weekday swimmers… we’ll see how successful I am with that though.

I hit the beach Sunday morning and was greeted by a very calm and shiny ocean. No chop, minimal wind, not much surf… just flat, flat, flat. My only concern was a jetski jamming back and forth down by the point. He was towing a surfer into waves, but the waves were so small he wasn’t getting airborne or anything like that so I fail to see the point of what they were doing besides making a bunch of noise. Anyways… I set my stuff up and took a mini nap in my chair until Niel got there. He brought me his extra pair of Force Fins to try out again. I’m considering picking up a pair of their surf fins and wanted to try his again since they’re so much money.

We went and took the temperature off the pier and it’s still running right at 52 degrees which is cold for most days but since I can think of 6 people off the top of my head that were out Sunday attempting ice swims (1 mile in sub 41 degree water) I guess 52 ain’t so bad :) When we got back down to the beach we’d picked up one more swimmer, Ed, who has been out once or twice with us before.

Since the jetski was still zooming about by Fossil Point we decided to get in on the opposite side of the pier and start a triangle with intentions of reassessing the situation when we got to the tip of the pier and negotiating the rest of the swim then. Getting in took me a minute… had to do some swearing and fidgeting before I could convince my brain that submersion was an ok idea. We had a small crowd of people on the pier watching us wade into the ocean wondering what was wrong with us :)

I was the last one to start and the last one to the buoy line, but once I got that far I felt pretty good. We swam out to the creek buoy and then swam up to the top of the pier. The ocean was so mellow everything was really uneventful and relaxed. When we were floating off the tip of the pier the jetskier shot past us on his way back to Port San Luis. Since he was now out of the equation we were open to swim the rest of a triangle. We set a course for the far buoy on the point side and started swimming. This particular buoy is always hard to aim for and we always seem to lose someone to either a closer buoy or the reef buoy. We lost Ed for a little bit after he locked onto the wrong buoy but he righted himself once he realized what had happened. Niel and I were already at the last buoy so we swam out to meet him and start our final leg of the swim.

We swam down the buoy line, past the last buoy and to within 10-15m of the pier. We still had a bunch of people watching us out in the water. It’s always fun this time of year because people are absolutely certain that you’re out of your mind for wanting to swim right now. Little do they know that nice “winter” days are oftentimes the best days we have in the ocean.

I should be pretty active in the pool this coming week as I start to swing more seriously into gear. Our Midnight Masters group is gaining steam again and the one hour swim perked me up so I’m looking forward to doing some work this week!

This weekend consisted of a couple trips to float in Avila. Saturday I did some experimenting with my GoPro in the small waves at Olde Port Beach (aka the Dog Beach). I put together a swim contraption that I needed to test to see if it would work to record a swim in progress. It was made of a lifeguard rescue can and a couple GoPro mounts… I was anticipating having to add some fins as stabilizers to keep it from flipping but needed to check the angles first. I took it out into the water and swam back and for a bit, things went ok. It stayed upright most of the time but did lean pretty hard to the side. If chop or swells of sufficient size hit it sideways the whole thing went over. I deemed it semi-successful. Works in theory but needs some kinks worked out.

I went back to the beach after swimming a bit and moved my GoPro from that mount into a wrist mount that I had ordered up a week ago but hadn’t tried yet. The wrist mount is a little awkward. It points in every direction except the ones you want it to. I bodysurfed and swam with it too see what I’d get from that, and then I took it off and used the strap to just hold it to my hand instead and switched from video to photo. The GoPro takes nice 11 megapixel pictures and has a really cool burst feature that fires off 10 shots in rapid succession which makes catching the right part of an action shot a lot easier. I got cool wave and dog pictures.

On Sunday I was back at in Avila at the main beach around 10am. I brought my swim filming contraption and it promptly fell apart between the truck and the sand. The adhesive on the mounting disc just wasn’t cutting it apparently. I was bummed I wasn’t going to get to try out my GoPro on the swim, luckily I had a new little point and shoot cam in my bag that I could bring with me instead.

Since I was there early I took a chance to return a call to my buddy (and Chesapeake Bay Swim host) Dave in Maryland. Niel and Sylvia showed up on the beach a little later. I went up on the pier with Niel to get the water temp and it wasn’t pretty… 52.5… definitely didn’t match how nice it looked outside. After a little debate and surveying the sea we decided to swim for Fossil Point today. The tide was fairly high and there wasn’t much surf left over from the week’s big swell series so a point swim wouldn’t be too dicey.

Getting in sucked really hard today. My body just wasn’t in the mood at first. The water burned on my feet and didn’t get much better on the way up. Definitely one of those days where you wonder why you think this is fun :) Eventually Niel and his luxuriously thick wetsuit took off and a few waves later I started swimming too. I was feeling it at buoy number one… here I am apparently meditating away the cold, or possibly peeing…

We swam down to the end of the buoy line to regroup again. I felt pretty ok by then, it just took me a while to process the cold through my system and kick in the internal heater. From the buoy line we headed straight towards the point. As we got closer you could feel a lot more water moving underneath us but it wasn’t shallow enough there to break so we were ok. I haven’t been down to the point in a long time so it was cool to get a chance to see in up close and in person again and snap a few pictures.

After a prolonged break we decided on the next part of our route since we only planned up to the point. We decided to swim to the tip of the pier in a straight shot with no stops which is about a 700ish meter leg. Niel and I swam parallel to each other for most of it and even had a mini arm tangling at one point. Half way there I felt something in the water but wasn’t sure what was going on. I popped my head up and spotted a small boat moving incredibly slowly past us. It must have been electric or something because there was zero motor noise. Luckily they were paying attention and going slow because they passed very close to us, a little too close really, but the boat was so quiet Niel didn’t even know it was there until I told him about it later!

Out at the tip of the Pier we decided to extend the swim to the creek buoy before turning in. We made a quick stop at the buoy then turned for the pier. I though we were going to swim to the pier then turn in but Niel kept going under the pier so I chased him under to the other side. We had a small group watching from above and they were on the other side to see us pop out as well. We took a brief moment to soak in the sights and then arced back in towards the beach. Niel had 52 1/2 minutes on his watch which was a perfect compliment to the 52 1/2 degrees we had in the water. Overall we swam about 1.7 miles.

I spent my lunch on Thursday out in Avila surfing some waves and experimenting more with my new GoPro camera. Normally I’d go for Pismo at lunch since it’s closer and the waves are more surfable, but two things held me back… 1. the area around the pier tested dirty this week, boo bacteria 2. there’s an enormous W-NW swell breaking on the coast that is way to much too handle. Avila was the better choice since it’s a south facing beach. It still gets some of the size from the swell wrapping around the coastline, but it’s not as big and out of control. The waves were anywhere from shoulder high to a little overhead when I got to the beach and the weather was insanely beautiful. Despite it being January it was hot on the sand, while changing into my boardshorts the sun liquified some of the wax on my board! I’ve never seen that before!

The water was about 54 today but the air temp was so nice it almost didn’t even matter, at least to me. I eased my way in waiting for a lull to paddle out without getting hammered. There were a few other guys out most on boogie boards, on on a shortboard. Everyone was having a good time and catching waves. I spent about 45 minutes in the water catching whatever I could and had a ton of fun. I experimented with a few angles on the camera and got some fun shots. I got a series of ridiculous beard shots… it looks like they came from a photoshoot for bacon donut scented cologne :)

I’ve been asked a couple times how you mount a GoPro to a bodyboard since they don’t make accessories specifically for that. First off, DON’T use the tiny adhesive mount that comes with the Hero2 surf kit, it’s no good on foam. What you need to get is the older version of the surf kit with the big disc mount, you can get it from GoPro direct here or from ebodyboarding.com like I did. You’re also going to need a couple of leash plugs.

Next up you need to pick where you want the mount to go (don’t forget to account for any stringers your board might have!) and drill some holes. I used the adhesive base to hold the disc down and then drilled holes through it and straight through the board. I started with a small drill bit and worked up in about 3 stages to a huge one to made a big enough hole for the leash plug to sit somewhat flush. Once the holes are in place you can screw in the plugs and then clip in your camera, easy! So far my mount job has been super solid. It’s gotten bashed around in fairly serious surf with no issues.

For a more in-depth version of how to do this, here’s a video from ebodyboarding.com