Evanston, August 12

No Lake swim last week, I was out of town, I had hoped for a dip in the Atlantic Ocean but that did not pan out. Our hot summer has broken and this weekend brought a northeaster. The Lake was "closed" on Saturday due to high waves, 10-15 feet in spots. So Jody and I moved our swim to Sunday. There were still some residual swells of up to 3 feet, but mostly about 1 foot, and the wavelengths were large so mostly it was smooth going. When Jody and I got separated by 25 yards or more it was hard to see each other because of the swell in between us; the only other potential problem was that underwater visibility was about 2 inches. Since our course has shallow area it wasn't clear where the bottom was, this was especially disconcerting at the bottom of a swell. The air was 63 and water was a pleasant 72 which is more normal for this time of year, we had some sun at the beginning but then it clouded over. No August inversion yet here but there is some very cool water off of the Michigan shore so a wind shift may bring us a surprise.

We swam our usual wall to wall route. When we finished we tried to find some remnants of the rip tides that were predicted during the storm but found only the usual circular current off the near groin. We did get a few good rides from the waves coming into shore but we won't claim great body surfing.