Calm Restored: Ocean Swim 4/14/2022
It’s Thursday. We are over the Wednesday hump and I can smell the weekend. It smells good like bread baking in the oven. I just finished reading Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers and am planning to start the limited series on Hulu tomorrow night. I love reading books and then watching them on the screen. My favorite one recently was Emily St. John’s Station Eleven. Such a great book and then, amazing enough, an even better limited series on HBO Max.
Anyhoo, the days have been windy lately and I have been curious how that would impact the ocean temperature. Strong, prolonged West winds are a recipe for Ocean cooling on the West coast. It causes a phenomena known as upwelling where deeper, colder water is drawn to the shore surface. We had quite the blow out on Tuesday and yesterday was better but still pretty breezy. Today has been the calmest since late last week and from what I could see on the Surfline cams, the water surface looked pretty mellow.
It was about 58 degrees outside as I left the house at 9:30 and on its way up. When I got to the house on Via California at the end of Camino El Molino, I could see that its flag was still. A good sign. The water at Doheny looked calm and from the parking lot at the Strand I could see the same.
Walking down the stairs the pavement feels warm on the bottom of my feet. It’s good. I hear birds singing. Very good. Lots of smooth, rolling blue in the distance as far as the eye can see.
I get to the water, stuff my shirt in my backpack and head out to sea. The tide is high and there is steady surf rolling in. I dive under the breaks. The water does feel just a notch cooler than Monday but is still north of “darn cold.” It feels good. Not much visibility today. I can barely make out the tops of the taller stalks of kelp. Past the first few feet of water its just a blue void. Its a wonderful sunny day and I see the rays of the sun interact with the water to create glowing lines in my periphery.
At both South and North ends of my swim, I am met with this brown muck. I see this every once and a while. I have no idea what it is but it is kind of gross. I keep my mouth closed but I’m sure it will all wash off before I finish.
Time to head back up to the car, go home and get back to work. Not a bad break from the grind.
