… to steal a line from Forrest Gump… “like my mama used to always say… Open water swimming is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you are going to get!”
Which, of course, is true! Usually you get worse than you expect… but not today! So I checked the water forecast… and it was showing the temp at around 56F… maybe colder. But I figured that’s still swim-able… barely. But for the last swim we can suck it up and do it… we swam in colder at the beginning of the year… so why not now?!
The question was… was anyone going to join me? So I dropped Jillian off for her swim workout with OAK at Appleby at 7:15 and was sitting in the jeep at the foot of Navy St at 7:20. Nobody was there. 7:30… still nobody. 7:35… Dawn showed up. Phew, at least I’ll have one person to swim with. Feels like a high-school party when you invite everyone and you’re afraid no one will show up for you party! But, low and behold… people came. A few more… and then a few more still… until we had 17 LOST swimmers! Not bad considering the air temp was 10C / 50F.
So I checked the water. It was pretty rough, so rather than wade in and check it, I just scooped up a bit in the thermometer and watched it drop from 63F… to 59F… then I dumped it out… I didn’t want to know if it was going to get colder than that! 😉
We were all standing around getting a little chilly… the rocks were chilly to stand on. So I gave my little safety and re-emphasized the cold water preparedness. A few people got in… but no screams… in fact, I heard Michele say her feet felt warmer in the water… but I assumed that was because they were cold from the rocks. Anyway we all got in… and surprise… it was warm! It ended up being 65F!!! Bathtub water!
Based on my earlier assessment, because I thought it was going to be a little chilly, I said we’d just go 20 minutes out and 20 back… but we could have gone forever in this temp! We ended up going about 45 – 50 minutes… and it was nice! There were some pretty good swells out there… the waves were probably 1 – 2 feet from one trough to the next peak… but from one peak to the next peak was probably 25 feet… so a nice wave length. Those are fun to swim in! It’s the chop that sucks (small, waves that hit you from all directions)… this was nice!
A good little swim… and a nice coffee… with a good bunch of friends makes a nice way to start a Saturday!
So… we’ll see if we can squeeze another week out of this season… feels like we cheated the season! I’ll let you know at the end of the week! Hell, maybe this will be the year we swim until October… wouldn’t that be cool!
Cheers,
Rob