3 Rs - Bird Rock, Sunday

I chose the Bird Rock orientation over the Pier 2 Cove.  Let's just say I've made better choices.  But, as it goes with poor choices, I learned a few things along the way.
Thing #1 - don't swim at Bird Rock. surf it
Thing #2 - if you just have to swim at Bird Rock, do it at high tide with flat seas (and something about direction of the swell, but he lost me)
Thing #3 - if you must swim at low tide, wear booties, wet suit and mitts to protect you from slipping on the jagged rocks.  but in all that getup, you might as well dive it.

Party in the ocean

There was a party in the ocean today. I haven't seen much of anything in the water all spring, but today all the  sea creatures were out struttin their stuff.

It was the 8 a.m. curtain call. Steve D., Ken and TFTC braved the morning traffic in from the east county.  Conditions were stellar--flat, warm water, clear to the bottom once we swam past the murky part inside the Q.  On deck, Hovic gushed over his sighting of 3 soupfin sharks.  Another swimmer saw a jelly "well below the surface".  Oh, this was gonna be good...

Steve gettin friendly with the jelly.

And mother ocean did not disappoint.  At the Q, it was like night and day.  Everything was suddenly visible!  Starring straight down to the bottom, I almost collided into the purple-striped jellyfish that was reportedly "well below the surface".  This guy was 18" diameter and beautiful!  (And the jelly was impressive too.)

We tagged the half and turned toward the Marine Room to look for leopards.  Along the way there were hoards of bat rays hanging out on the bottom, partially embedded in the sand, some in flight.  They were so thick, it reminded me of an M.C. Escher lithograph. Didn't see any leopards, so we headed back through the ray zone.

Bat rays or Escher.  You choose.

Past the ray zone and nearer the Q, we spotted a dorsal fin down there.  But it disappeared.  Of course we had to discuss this new sight, and while we were comparing notes, Steve sticks his face in the water and comes up sputtering,  "there they are! underneath us!"  Rapture ensues and we swim around.  There's not one, but FOUR Soupfin sharks!  Hovic you were right!

Toni and Steve think Soupfins are good luck.

Bringin it on home, I thought that the only way to make this a perfect swim would be a dolphin sighting...but alas, it wasn't to be.  Instead, the ocean offered up a sea lion fiesta.  Just at the entrance to the cove, the sea lions were rafting in numbers.  I watched as they surrounded Steve and Ken, buzzed them, laughed behind their backs and invited them to play.  I swam up and they practically gave us all high-fives.  I've never seen them party with swimmers--they always swim away or keep a safe distance.  But we were diving down with them as they checked out our moves.  For several minutes!

They want to play!

'You think you got some moves? Check out these moves!'

All in all, this swim was one for the record books.  Hope to see ya'll out there again.

Steve and Ken taking it all in.

a day in the life

swim report sunday, 11:30; cftc, sunshine, (her name, not the weather) claudia, ralph, lftc met under grey skies, mostly flat seas with surface chop and head to children's since sunshine hasn't been thataway. plus, we knew viz was CRAP, had been CRAP and will likely continue to be CRAP for awhile according to the mightiest mc last week. we swim along sans fins because i had been having fin drama! fin trauma, people! you didn't hear? it was on the news, wasn't it? i left my beloved magic fins on deck saturday due to distraction, i had my stuff, ali's stuff, our stuff, stuff on deck, stuff on the beach and stuff in the club. ali goes down to the water and rips all her clothing off, throws her stuff down and forgets it, i do this too but usually keep it in my backback. this one time i flaked, i was busy stuffing magazines, coffee cups, ali's clothes, my clothes and homemade jam into my backpack and i left my fins on deck. after i had been telling diana to get fins, get them now, bugging her daily and when she finally does, i lose mine. yikes, i even told her she must sharpie her phone number on them. damn. 
anyway, this morning i realized my beloved fins were gone, someone very likely took them because they are the most bitchin fins ever.  i hate to be overly dramatic but my faith in mankind had been deeply shaken, i may never be able to trust again! david, i need the bank card too, it's the only way i can carry on! my fins make me want to live, how could he deny me the will to live? but we are running late so we head to the beach to meet the crew and of course i check with the guards who.... had not seen them.  i implore doug to find my fins, wendy is going to hunt for them and kick someone's ass, she's wearing a skimpy bikini so dave encourages this, claudia and cami say i don't need fins ever again and ralph is totally ignoring me.  then the swim, finally. on our way back up i stop at the guard bench to give them watermelon, i mention the fins one last time and guess what? they had them! someone turned them in while we were out. it's a christmas miracle! my faith in humanity has been restored! i will learn to love again! ok, so now we move on my little swim peeps because there is more. always more. 
after we collected our stuff from the beach we all carefully scan, do we have everything, everyone? dave has zander, sunshine has her boy, wendy has wylie, claudia has me, ralph was in the jacuzzi, cami is collecting up hundreds of toys but where's ali? look for the hair..no ali, we figure she found someone up top and went to the jacuzzi but as we walk across the beach claudia finds ali in a deep hole, they had dug the deepest hole and she was just hanging out in the hole. we all end up together and say goodbye, i love you, see you soon and so on but i can't find my clothes so i go to the garage to find david who may have my clothes (if you see me walking around a non swimming area in a speedo, you know there's a problem) and i see  cami, wendy and dave deeply involved in the trunk of cami's car. cami is bent over her trunk madly jiggly the lock, jabbing things in it, the kids are racing around like banshees, hollering for the echoes and throwing beach balls. what? what is happening? cami yells out that she locked her keys in the trunk. well, i'm almost naked so good luck with that. tools are looked for to no avail, kids are asked to hush to no avail and i still can't find my clothes. after several minutes i hear whooping, it seems that our dave and wendy are the the macgyver's of the cove. his know how and her blade did the job. that's right, wendy carries. that supposed fin thief would have been in serious trouble. heroes! 
i guess this is more of a day in the life report than a swim report, sometimes the adventure is landbased, more often than not, things go smoothly but occasionally we have messy days that can already be looked back upon with amusement and fondness for the memories of our cove days will carry us for all our days. word. 


and now this:

lftc-out

the ladder of doom

dave hooking up some thingy

see the boat hovering 60 feet over the sea? i was the winch wench.

dave climbing down the ladder of death

claudia and me hanging on to one another, we have built in floats.

claudia after the climb up the ladder of death, see her wounded leg? the red on her thigh is ladder damage. 

boat adventure report: it's all about the ladder, the evil ladder of death that swings in the air between pier and sea, swaying and jiggling around, slippery when wet and you either hang on for dear life or die, there is no in between.  we took our little boat out today for a boat swim trial run, dave and i launched the boat from the pier using a winch. it was easier than i expected and dave was smart enough to warn me in advance that he would be hollering directives at me, that he would be speaking very loudly, lest i think he was simply ordering me around to be a dick. (we have been in this territory before like when he ordered me to 'stand by'. you can imagine my reaction) the boat is down and now the ladder for me. i don't know how to articulate my feelings over the ladder, i was nervous but i work out, i'm strong and dave assured me that if i didn't let go, i'd be fine.  i walk to the hole in the pier and begin my 50' descent and i can tell you now that all that core training doesn't mean jack if the mind is akimbo with fright. i go down, down, down one rung at a time saying 'oh my god oh my god oh my god' all the way. ok, under control, right? wrong, silly people! commander queeg is now telling me, loudly, that i have to swing my body around, cirque du soleil style, to the front of the ladder since i was climbing down the side. i bet you didn't know that this kind of ladder requires you climb from the side, did you? after a mini freak out i managed this trick and then all i had to do was leap into the boat from 6 feet up then immediately unclip the boat from the ladder. keep in mind that everything is swaying and rocking, the boat is drifting fore and aft, (check my new boat lingo!) i managed all this and then cried for a few minutes. i would have preferred swimming out in a hurricane.   however, i'm on the damn boat and i'm going to enjoy it for a bit so we cruise around, waved to some loose swimmers, parked at the marine room where i jumped out and swam around and felt right at home. i'm better suited for being in the water rather than on it. claudia met us, we swam around together for awhile and then gracefully (hehe) climbed back onto the boat. claudia bravely decided to back to the pier with us for moral support during the climb back up the death ladder.  it still sucked, i was still scared and couldn't look down due to the bobbing boat, sea and ladder, i couldn't look up because it showed how much i had left to go and i couldn't close my eyes because i needed to see the rungs. it was all a blur. i did it though, claudia did too although she was much quieter and no cursing! she did however get chain burn on her thigh due to being pantless. some people take no pants to extremes. way to go, claudia! we managed to recover the boat and while captain ahab collected all his gear, claudia and i watched two more boats come in. i was deeply interested in how these people, and dave too, managed that ladder. they just climb up and down that thing like monkeys, swinging on it one handed, jumping on it, leaping off several rungs at a time, simply manhandling that sucker. as an aside, i swear to god when we arrived, the boatmaster or whatever he's called, was talking about banana sandwhiches! how apropos is that? dave tells me that with experience i too will be a monkey on the ladder. he's so wrong. 
so there is the boat adventure report which reads more like a ladder report. 
water was 65, very little viz, very cool air and that damn ladder. 
lftc-out

Scripps Pier Swim -- Laura says POST!

See the white water?  Laura you'd have loved, loved, loved it!  

Did I say, see the white water?  Beautiful day, though, really!

Okay, I'm really too tired to post, just so you know... wonderfully wasted and washed up from the swells and the surf today.  But Laura says POST, so I thought I'd better do it. A great swim with a group nearly as big as they get -- Kathy's unofficial official birthday swim was a big success (except for missing our peeps gone MIA and you, of course, know who you are... at least, you know you were missed.).  There were at least 14 brave swimmers, though I lost track as we assembled on the beach and started heading out to the pier in batches, like waves of dolphins leaping through the surf...


Bill, me and our new swim friend, Ashley headed out trying to catch up with kickin' it Carol and Leonard...

We were falling way behind Doug, Chris and I think, Bob... Kathy, Janie and Don were bringing up the stragglers (Kathy said something about this being a great hangover cure!). I'm sure I didn't get everyone's name... we just all said YES, (finally after many minutes in various huddles) we're in! We're not short-cutting the swim -- we're ALL going to the pier and so we did... it was loads of fun with swells and currents swirling and never a dull moment.

Janie's view of the pier -- way out there -- I mean WAY, FAR AWAY out there!

Water temp was good, not much viz, but all good...Surf was way up at the pier too, so we had an exciting exit surfing into shore... dodging the pier, Bill kept coaching me on how to stay alive in the big surf and I did! Much to my surprise... it was fun too.,. we tried to stay out of the surfers way and then Janie and Don came in and nearly shot the pier (not a good thing in the big surf)...  Anyway, a good time was had by all... Bill, Ashley, Janie and I decided to walk back (bare feet, wetsuits and all!) -- we were just too tired to get back in and go back -- okay, lazy then... just too lazy. The sun had come out, it was a gorgeous day and we had a lovely walk back to the cove... Bill and I jumped in the water again at the cove and greeted Leonard who said he left Bob, Carol and Kathy at the caves (THIS WAS NOT A GOOD DAY FOR THE CAVES--READ: HIGH SURF!)... anyway dearest Leonard was concerned about their safety we all floated around in the cove until we saw them come out (Carol lost two pair of goggles in the cave -- hers and Kathy's!). She said, and I quote: "I didn't think I was going to make it out alive -- wow! It was wild, it was fun! I was scared!!!" -- so, we were ever-so-grateful, all came in that went out to sea and all is SWELL -- sorry, couldn't help myself -- Laura said WRITE, so this is what you get... I know...

Made it back to peace and calm and a few little waves in the cove... gorgeous!

We missed those who didn't make it (we did see Claudia and Al on deck as we went out and invited them, but they needed to go shorter and no one was shirking from the pier, so I think they just did their own thing).

Here's a few shots of the pier thanks to Janie and af couple from me post swim to get you all excited and inspired...that is, if you're not asleep yet...

Happy swimming!
Cary

Cute guys everywhere lounging about -- wish I was too!

so cami turns to me and says.....

why is no one posting reports? come on you guys, don't let this blog die, make it better! like this:
cami and i have come a long way! we found each other in the water, literally, and began an innocent partnership based on fear, which everyone knows is a good way to begin. things were so sweet in our little fear fest: thanks for swimming with me! can you swim tomorrow? you're such a good swimmer! and so on, it was awesome. as all relationships grow and change, so did ours, we moved quickly into deeper conversations about dirt and shovels, husbands and kids, it was therapy for us both then came harder workouts, serious grooves, long side by side swims in near perfect sync, it was killer and we felt that we had kinship. happy happy joy joy! all this glory has peaked into true partnership when yesterday cami turned her head in the water to tell me that i was such an asshole. i knew then that we had a perfect partnership. truly!  i was working to keep up with her, she never, ever loses it no matter how long her absense-god, i hate that, i miss two days and it's like i have never swam in my life-and she in turn was working to stay with me, and like all things that matter and inch us out of our comfort zone, out of the laying around zone, it was pissing her off. i'm perpetually pissed, i can never really tell if i'm extra pissed. unless i am. so you see, people, this is what to strive for, people in the water that you can lovingly call an asshole. that's when you know it's love. i love you, cami!
elsewhere, water was 66, semi clear, some light surface chop but generally fun and a big group of 7 for a friday! cftc, lftc, alexis, sunshine, claudia, ralph, guila, a new friend of claudia's visiting from seattle.
lftc-out