Although I’ve been too sick to swim, I’ve been with it enough to go fishing for new beaches to swim at. The coast between Pismo and Avila is full of all kinds of little coves with tiny beaches to explore. The trick is figuring out 1. where they are and 2. how to get to them. Last week I took my lunch break at Dinosaur Caves Park at the south end of Shell Beach. While out on one of the benches on the cliffs I noticed a little slice of sand tucked back against a cliff underneath the frontage road. All the years I’ve lived here I never knew it existed because you can’t see it from the road, or even the sidewalk above it. I saw someone walking around on the sand and didn’t see a kayak anywhere so I figured it must have a trail or staircase attached to it somewhere. I didn’t have enough time at lunch to investigate, but back at the office I took a quick peek at google maps and figured out that there’s some public access at the hotel above it.

On Saturday I went on a mission to go check it out in person. There’s no street parking along the road that goes past it so I parked over at the Dinosaur Caves Park’s parking lot and walked over to the Shelter Cove Lodge. There’s a little paved trail that scoots in front of the hotel and into a nicely manicured area with a gazebo and benches that you can watch the ocean from. After passing the gazebo walkway you’ll find the path that goes down to the beach. You’ve got a steep stair case to contend with and the last 10 feet is really just crumbly dirt with a hand rail. I measured it out on Google Maps and it’s about 650m from the lot to the sand.

Once you get down to the beach… wow… it’s gorgeous! The best part, I had the place all to myself for about an hour and a half!

The sand is a little coarse, and there’s not a lot of it. I went at high tide and there was maybe 3-5 meters of dry sand along the beach. I spent a bunch of time watching the water blast off the big rock formation on the south side of the beach and surge through the rock arch beneath it. There was a decent swell and the ocean was surging a bit here and there. There was a break off to the left amongst the rocks but the beach itself didn’t get much in the way of waves. I asked a buddy of mine that grew up surfing here about it and he called it “Little Hawaii” and said it’s a fickle surf spot but can be good under the right conditions.

On a flat glassy day I think this would be a sweet swim spot. The water seems to have the potential to have fairly good visibility and there’s kelp here and there which could make for some interesting views if you dive underwater a bit. I talked with Niel about it today and we’re going to have to do a few reconnaissance swims to figure out the spot and find all the rocks and hazards so we can keep it safe and fun. In the meantime I’m going to keep playing with Google Maps to see what other excitement I can find :)

So you may have noticed it’s been very quiet around here the last few weeks. I got sick enough to miss my first day of work in about 5 years in January but managed to shake that off in a few days. Well apparently that was just getting me ready for the real deal in February… round two of this flu took me down, hard. I haven’t been sick like this in years, it sucked. Shivering (me! indoors at room temperature no less!), intense sore throat, a little sleep deprivation, coughing, random aches and pains, the occasional hallucination, etc – what’s not to enjoy? I’ve shaken off most of the major symptoms but I still have a bit of a death rattle left in my chest. Fun right? It totally derailed my swimming for about 3 weeks. I’ve been avoiding the ocean seeing as 50 degree water would have probably pushed me over the edge into pneumonia city, and just this week I’ve gone back to the pool for a few short swims with a lot of kicking keeping my head above water. I’m getting very very very antsy, I need my cold water fix! I’m hoping this weekend to venture back in the ocean. I’ve been visiting it a lot from the shore and it’s time I finally get back to doing what I love to do. Hopefully there’s not a third round of the Rob D. Plague of 2012!

Anyways, for those of you that depend on me for vicarious salt and sunshine whilst snowed in and/or landlocked I hope to be back to the water and breaking cameras again shortly :) I went to the beach for lunch today and was legitimately tempted to crawl down a cliff face to float in the kelp in the sunshine so it’s doubtful I’ll be able to hold out much longer regardless of how I’m feeling… they say “the cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” I might try that out since it’s cheaper than my co-pay, haha

Things I Like

• The built-in swim clip is awesome – very secure hold on your goggles and it wasn’t uncomfortable on my shaved head with the added pressure of a swim cap over the top of it
• The GPS tracking is very good – my open water swim lines came out nice and straight with no weird deviations – I also did a pool test to see how close it can get to me swimming in a lane and doing flip turns, my Hydro Tracker map was a lot tighter than my Garmin map although still not perfect
• The software set up is easy as well as workout uploading
• Operation is very simple – There’s only 2 buttons and 3 lights on it, it can only get so complicated, I’m pretty confident that just about anyone could figure this thing out
• It’s only $129!!!!!!!! This is the most fiscally accessible waterproof GPS that I’m aware of

Things I Don’t Like

• There’s no display screen – I like to know how far I swam right away, but for 1/3 the cost this is a forgivable omission
• No feedback while swimming – my Garmin gives me a buzz every kilometer, I’ve always liked that feature
• Lights on the unit can be hard to see in direct sunlight – the lights let you know if the unit is on and the GPS signal is active, this is a small inconvenience but it bugged me enough to write it down

Both the HydroTracker and the Garmin 310xt are very good GPS devices and I would recommend either. Choosing between the two of them comes down to how much money you want to spend and how featured up you want your GPS. You can read my review of the 310xt here, and you can learn more or go buy the HydroTracker from FINIS here (btw, don’t forget to toss in my discount code if you do! robaquatics09).

(*full bloggerly disclosure, I have a working relationship with FINIS via my day job)

update 10:30am
And one more thing… since my pool testing has generated some interest here’s a mashup of the Hydro Tracker vs. the Garmin in outdoor pools. A quick note on the Hydro Tracker map, the spike furthest out to the left was actually me getting out of the pool to grab something out of my swim bag so that little deviation actually happened :)

It just seems appropriate that my 1000th post would encompass a perfect day of Open Water action. I got to hang out at the beach with my friends, nap a little, swim a little, take a bunch of pictures, and even watch a few dolphins patrol the water after our swim. Not too shabby :)

I was a little concerned with today’s swim prospects due to the small amounts of rain that fell over the weekend… I wasn’t sure if it was enough to be a problem or not. The good news was that the weather at the beach this morning was outstanding! Warm and reasonably still on the sand but there was a wind building up over the water. I walked down to the end of the pier to check things out. The swell was up and we had way more people out trying to surf and bodyboard than you’d usually see in Avila Beach. I didn’t really see any kind of dirty disturbance in the water, it wasn’t brown or mucky looking… not that that means anything… but I convinced myself it would be good enough. I went back to the beach and set all my stuff up and laid out for a bit and snoozed a little. Eventually Niel, Sylvia, Ed, and Duke came out but only Duke, Ed, and myself ended up swimming.

I don’t know what time we finally got in the water but I think it was late. I don’t wear a watch but Ed asked a few times if we were going to get in which leads me to believe Duke and I were running way late and were blissfully unaware of such problems :) Just to make myself later I ran to the truck real quick to grab a Frankenfish part that I had forgotten and then ran back down and got my rig set up. I was worried about the swell busting Frankenfish in half. The big sets were really big today. I know that last week I said what I ran into in Monterey was the roughest water I would take it out in, well maybe today’s conditions are the worst I’ll take Frankenfish out in… I waded out and kept him on top of my head through the surf that I was taller then but eventually I had to do some duck diving, luckily that worked and we came out unscathed!

The plan for today’s swim was to do half a triangle on the Fossil Point side to stay away from the creek which might be depositing some less than healthy water into the ocean. We swam out to the buoy line with Ed out front and Duke and I in the rear. He hung with me that first 100m to make sure me and all my accoutrements were successfully making our way through the water. At the buoy we stopped real briefly and then swam for the end of the buoy line. Before getting in we had considered swimming all the way to the point but the surf was firing down there and it didn’t seem like a good idea.

The swim out was pretty choppy and the direction we were turning next probably wasn’t going to get any better. We swam face first into the swell and chop on our way to the pier. Normally not a big deal but when towing a weighted and finned board it gets a little more challenging! We let Ed get a bit of a head start for the pier and then Duke and I took off. He swung a little wide to the left, I kept pretty straight and Ed swam a little too far inside. When we got close to the pier I made sure he could see me and pointed him out past the tip to where Duke was.

There were some thoughts of possibly doubling up on the route, but once we took a quick break we decided we’d just be swimming it in today. We went via the first buoy in order to avoid the fishermen on the pier and the surfers in the water. On this leg the water was pushing from behind us and in turn pushing Frankenfish way up in my business. I hit it with my feet quite a bit and even tagged the fins a few times. It didn’t impede my progress but it was a little irritating.

At the buoy line we regrouped and then swam for the beach. With the surf pumping I had to be really cognizant of the potential doom that awaited me if I ended up on the wrong side of a wave without Frankenfish under control. Duke was watching out too… possibly in more of a Nascar fan type of way though, waiting for an accident, haha :) Once I hit the outer edge of the breakers I pulled the board around front and used it as a kick board. I waited out a few big waves and then hustled in during a smaller set. Made it out unscathed, hooray :)

It wasn’t a super long swim but it felt good and I had fun. I stayed on the beach chatting with Niel for another hour before finally going home. From what I understand the weather is supposed to turn this week so it looks like I’ll be getting more pool time for a while… good thing I decided to chance it today!

I got my hands on a new GoPro® HD HERO2 Camera for Christmas and promptly fell in love with it. It’s been a fantastic camera for use in the ocean and I’ve subjected it to plenty of heavy surf with no problems… these are the same waves that broke my bodyboard leash last Saturday and sucked the fins right off my feet the week before. The only real issue I’ve been having is figuring out how to best use it for swimming. Its shape doesn’t lend itself well to being tucked in a swimsuit like a regular point and shoot camera and the existing mounts aren’t really geared towards swimmers so I had to come up with something myself.

I started to brainstorm and doodle a bit and my first though was to mount the GoPro to something that I could tow behind me. My first attempt was using an adhesive surf mount on one of my rescue cans. Although effective, the can was a little squirrely and didn’t track well. I started to consider finding fins to put on it but before I got that far the mount broke off. The surface of the can was a little curved and didn’t give me enough contact with the adhesive patch.

My next thought was I needed to physically drill the mount into whatever my platform was going to be much like I did with my bodyboard. At this point a kickboard became an obvious choice and I went to Big5 to buy a big thick kickboard. After that I went next door to Orchard Supply Hardware to buy a handle I could attach a rope to and some screws to hold it on along with a bolt that would fit a camera tripod hole. I ended up buying a cabinet handle which has worked out pretty well. After that I had to hit BestBuy to buy some GoPro Mounts.

With all these pieces in hand I went to my parents’ house to borrow a drill and start making a mess. My dad and I drilled in the Surf Mount and used those same screws to hold on the handle on the bottom of the board. We also put the tripod bolt and GoPro tripod mount in the back of the board. I knew this by itself wouldn’t track very well and would be prone to flipping over so I wanted to get some fins for the bottom of the board to fix that. I contacted my buddy Vince at SLO Coast Kayaks to see if he had some extra plastic SUP fins for the boards he rents that I could buy off of him. He did so I ran to Avila on my lunch break the next day and then drilled them into the board that night before going to the pool.

My first outing with Frankenfish V1 was partially successful. I used the tether from a FINIS parachute and a surf leash as connectors to the board but neither was quite right. Once I hit a certain speed it pulled the nose down and submerged the camera. It proved the concept could work, but it needed some work.

I talked out some ideas with my swim buddy Dan in the pool and got a lot of input on Facebook. After practice I went shopping again and came out with some weights for the back end of the board to keep the nose up, a stretchier rope to use as a tether, and some bonus bolts/hardward to attach things. The next day I installed the weights and switched tethers then took Frankenfish V2 to the pool. I tried different weight set ups with Mike observing from the deck to let me know how things went. It turned out I needed all the weight I had to make it work, but it did work. I could swim at a normal pace without digging the nose and even sprint a bit without trouble. Victory! At this point I was ready to take my contraption to the ocean for a real test.

I had a Monterey swim planned for the weekend and was very excited to take my bolted together masterpiece to the sea. When I got to Lovers Point the water was a little rougher than I would have hoped but I figured worst case scenario if I couldn’t tow it successfully the whole swim I could turn around early or give it to one of the paddlers assisting the swim to hang onto while I swam. I did a mix of photos and video to try out both settings. I was very pleased with the photos I took. The vantage point is very cool and almost every single shot was above water. When I ran the video the camera dipped below the surface a little more but that was because of the direction the water was moving. It was going over the camera as opposed to the front end of the board digging into the water.

As far as actually swimming with the Frankenfish goes it wasn’t too bad. I did feel it pulling and I did have to stop once to tighten my belt because it wasn’t tight enough. For the most part the board stayed out of my way but in the rough water it did get tossed into my feet occasionally. I think I’d like it better if my rope was about a foot longer (currently 3 feet but it stretches to 5 feet). The board tracked really well with the help of the fins on the bottom and it never flipped over. The fins did however catch some cross current and would pull the board to my left side on the swim to the buoy. Overall though I can’t really complain, it did exactly what I wanted with minimal disruption to my swim. I’ve included a long version of the Monterey swim below for you to see how it handled over time in rough waters.

So in looking at the practicality of my current design, I don’t know how great it is. My concerns are the board breaking from all the weight and bolts and whatnot attached to it. Kickboards aren’t really made for this. Other concerns are rust since there’s a lot of metal involved and a head injury from getting hit with it in a wave…. from all the metal involved. I have to be really careful getting in the ocean to keep it above the surf to protect myself and the board. There may be a Frankenfish V3 where I try and fix a lot of that but not right now.

After doing all this I sat down to figure out what it cost me to do all this. Here’s the rough breakdown:

Classic Speedo Full Sized Kickboard – $13
Liquid Shredder Plastic SUP Fins cut down to size – $18
GoPro Surf Mount Kit – $20
GoPro Tripod Mount – $8
Metal Cabinet Pull – $3
Various Bolts, Nuts, Washers – ~$3
Weight Plates (2.5 & 1.25 lbs) – $7
3 Foot Stretch Rope – $14
Finis Parachute Belt – $0, already had it

Total spent in this endeavor – $86

Most expensive kickboard ever. Considering a ready made device would probably be that much or more I’m cool with what it cost me to make. If any of you guys have built something similar that solves the same problem I’d love to see it! Drop me an email or a link in the comments, alternatively post what you’ve got to the Rob Aquatics Facebook page to check out.

Yesterday I went to visit my open water friends the Kelp Krawlers in Monterey Bay. They’re real similar to the Avila Dolphins in that they get together and swim in a relaxed format on Sundays. Where they’re different is that they’ve gotten way bigger than us! According to their facebook page we had 27 people in the water, that’s enormous for a February swim in water this cold!

I drove up that morning and highway 101 was a ghost town, I didn’t touch the gas or break from Paso Robles all the way to Salinas! I was an hour early to the beach and spent some time checking out the surf and watching a local bodyboarder catch a few waves. Lovers Point can have some really nice waves when the swell is pushing the right way, but it freaks me out a little bit because the bottom is so rocky. It was highly educational to see how a local gets in the water, paddles out, and changes position as the tide changes. While I was watching I ran into my buddy Chris V out for a jog with his dog before our swim. After catching up with him we moved towards the parking lot to gear up for the main event.

Up in the parking lot swimmers started to filter in… lots of them! Goggles and wetsuits were everywhere. As an added bonus we had a gang of support paddlers as well. I’m very jealous of the kayakers and SUPers that come out and support the Kelp Krawler swims… I wonder if we can find any interested people in Avila, hmmm… Once it was go time Chris gave a quick talk to the group about how the swim works before we marched on down to the water.

The water was pretty frosty, after baking in the sun before the swim the difference in temperature was pretty brutal at first. The buoy we swam too way off shore was running 52-53 but there was a very noticeable drop once you swam into the little cove at the beach. As one of only 2 skin swimmers it took me a little bit to get acclimated and started. John, the other wetsuitless adventurer, always takes off like a shot once he hits the water. I don’t know he manages to submerge and go so fast… my body would rather suffer in stages as I get in :)

For this swim I broke out my Frankenfish GoPro swim filming contraption I’ve been working on. I “perfected” it across the last week in the pool and today would be it’s first trip into the ocean. I’ll do a more detail post on Frankenfish later this week, but basically he’s a weighted kickboard with GoPro mounts, fins, and a tether attached to a belt around my waist that I can tow while swimming and take pictures and video handsfree. It got a lot of looks and questions as I lugged it around. Once people figured out what it was for they dug it. I set it to take a picture every 5 seconds on the swim out to the buoy and figured I’d run video on the way back.

On the swim out of the cove I checked on Frankenfish quite a bit just to make sure he was upright and still attached to me. The water was a little rough on Sunday and I’d only swam with it in the pool to this point so I wasn’t sure how it’d react. I was very pleased to see that it never flipped over and the only time the camera dipped below the water was when some swell or chop washed across the front of it. I was hoping to run it with the GoPro on the mount on the bottom of the board at some point and see what creatures it might catch on film, but the water was a little too cloudy. Oftentimes you have visibility for days out there but this weekend things were a little stirred up and you could see maybe 10ish feet though the water. Although I didn’t see much life one guy said he spotted a jellyfish the size of his head which is always exciting… as long as it doesn’t hit you!

As we swam further out into the ocean I switched from sighting off of swim caps to SUPers. The Kelp Krawlers usually swim to a yellow ball buoy that’s pretty hard to see until you’re right up on it. I think most of them swim there on memory. Having paddleboarders in the mix made finding the buoy way easier… I really need to recruit some locals to do that… I met up with the “A” group at the buoy and we made sure everyone gave it a kiss that needed to (you have to kiss the buoy the first time you swim to it). I’ve been there a few times but it got a kiss anyways, it’s a good looking buoy… haha :)

On the swim back to the beach I ran video on the GoPro instead of photos. The water was a little rougher on the way back and I could feel Frankenfish tugging more as the waves pushed it fore and aft. As I plodded along I swam through the second wave of swimmers en route to the buoy. Since the group is so big right now it’s split into two groups based on speed. I got some cool shots of swimmers floating past me on my way in that are in the video I pieced together from my outing. I figured you guys don’t want to watch 10 minutes of the back of my head so I cut is down to about two and a half minutes of excitement for your viewing pleasure…

As I swam back into the kelp I stopped to dive a little bit and explore the bottom. The tether on my board is long enough that I can loop it around to the front of me and use it like a regular kickboard. I did get a little tangled up in the process however. When I walked out of the water at the end of the swim I had strands of kelp wrapped up in my belt and hanging down to my knees, it was pretty funny looking. I hung out on the beach for a few minutes talking with the other swimmers and then decided to hop back in the water and take a few more pictures while I was still wet and cold.

After I dried off and changed I hung out in the parking lot and partook in some baked goods before departing for the Aquarium. I spent a few hours checking out the exhibits and was particularly excited to see the Open Sea tank open again. I got to spend some quality time with my favorites the Mola Mola and the octopus while everyone else was deeply enthralled in the Super Bowl. The Aquarium’s traffic was pretty light, just me and a bunch of foreign tourists that were blissfully unaware that this is a pseudo American TV holiday.

I really like swimming Monterey with the Kelp Krawlers, it’s such a beautiful spot full of a lot of fun people, hopefully I can find my way up again some time soon!

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!