Building off my Lucky Duck post, I recently had a work trip to Seattle and I was able to go for a dip in Puget Sound.
My friend Ellen grew up doing summers on the Cape [Cod] with her friend Kate, and it turns out Kate was getting ready for a Channel swim of her own, along with her friend and fellow Seattleite Curtis and bunch of Aussies; a relay team led by the Channel record holder Trent Grimsey. We made the connection through Facebook and all of a sudden I had training partners for a swim on the left coast!
We swam at Alki Beach and the water was cold (60 degrees as measured by Kate’s thermometer), but certainly bearable, and about the same as it was back home in Scituate, maybe half a tick colder.
[Quick aside– after reading Marcia Cleveland’s “Dover Solo”, I’ve been borderline manic about needing to cold water acclimatize and in turn, gauging water temperatures wherever I am. I swear my thermometer is broken, and I’m obsessed with trying to understand the true temperature of the water in Dover vs. Scituate by triangulating multiple online reports of what the temperature supposedly is in each place and the real-feel of actually being in the water. Factor in onshore vs. offshore buoy readings, how the temperatures change as you swim through different pockets of water at any given location, how the relative temperatures might diverge as summer comes and goes, and it’s enough to make you insane. In short, having swum one day in the Atlantic Ocean and the next day in the Pacific (kinda cool in its own right), I was relieved to feel that they were about the same.]
The beach affords an amazing look back at downtown Seattle, and underwater the swim itself was really interesting too, and much different from New England. The seabed is lined with tall seaweed that stretches up toward the surface, so we swam far enough out so that we could clear it. Every now and then there was a clear sandy patch, a little oasis within the seaweed forest. I saw a couple of crabs crawling around in the seaweed and I also had my first encounter with a jellyfish. I was just swimming along, happy as can be, when *plop* my right hand went right into the meaty part of a jelly that must have been about eight inches wide. It was squishy and didn’t sting me, but it surprised me nonetheless. By the way, the more ocean swimming I do, the less startled I am at running into random objects. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
Kate, Curtis and I swam all the way down to the tip of the beach, Alki Point Light. Poking our heads around the corner past the lighthouse, we could see Mt. Rainier off in the distance. It was unbelievable to see the enormous peak rising above the treetops while bobbing up and down in Puget Sound.
What a treat that quick swim was, and I’m so grateful to have had the chance to do it and make some new friends. And what good timing! Kate and Curtis’ swim window in Dover was the next week, and they left for England just a few days after we did our swim together. The weather that week didn’t cooperate so they didn’t get to do their crossing, but they did get to do an epic 26-miler up and down the coast of England, and from what I can tell they thoroughly enjoyed that and their whole time there, so I’m really happy for them.
Oh, and of course the first thing I asked Kate when she posted that she had gone for her first swim in Dover was, “How’s the temp compared to Seattle??” Her reply? A very reassuring, “It’s decent! A bit warmer (17c they say) and I did not have the urge to jump back out!”
Phew.