Day 13: Wing Point

Fun of a different sort at Wing Point. Strong south wind brought actual swells to Puget Sound, and the Wing Point sandbar created near-surf conditions at the point. Rocking and rolling in 8 feet of water made for a real ocean swim day. Stormy weather was a great time to hit Wing Point.

(photos: Wing Point from the water. Interesting how the character of a place changes day to day.)

Just inside the sandbar, where the water was a bit deeper and more sheltered, moon snails scoured the sand. Turbulence brought movement to the sandy bottom, and the sand waves (like mini sand dunes 1 inch tall) were marching slowly towards shore.

Some surprise visitors dropped by, and you should hear more about that next week.

air temp: 36F
water temp: 49F
Dec 17, 1pm, mostly cloudy
wind strong from the south, 20-30 mph
high tide, falling
visibility 5-15 feet
today's distance: 0.75 mile
total so far: 13.51 miles

today's notables:
moon snails
stormy conditions with sand waves on the bottom

Today I'm joined by Seattle Times reporter Michelle Ma and photographer Erika Schultz. We meet at the ferry dock (glad that's over with) and drive over to Hawley Cove. We talk a bit, they take some pictures and video, and then I get in the water.

Or...I try to get in the water but a bright blue broken ballon floats up to my ankles. I can't stand balloons in the water, they're terrible for wildlife. I pluck it out of the water and whine a bit about the harm caused by balloons and other trash. Like the discarded lighter on the beach. Argh, what about a light-hearted fun swim?

I resolve to dive in and have some fun, but a plastic bag floats around my calves the next time I try to get in. OK, this is too much, staged by King Neptune for the benefit of the news people. I can see writing, somebody is going to get fingered for ocean abuse. It's...OLD NAVY. How perfect is that, a store called Old Navy polluting the ocean with a totally unnecessary single use plastic bag. I can't leave it, so I pick it up and rant a bit about plastic bags killing ocean animals.

Then, finally, it's into the water. The cold shock wave hits, every time I swear the water has gotten colder. Even though I know it's coming, somehow I can never quite get used to the initial blast of cold, followed by the icy fingers of water leaking in through the seams, gaps, and actual holes in my wetsuit. The cold ring on my face is probably the worst, so I drop in for some quick swimming to fight the chill.

The south wind has a swell running, so the swimming is harder and the waves smack me around enough to cause extra flushing. That's cold water pouring into my wetsuit in a big flush instead of the more typical icy fingers. In a few minutes I'm warmed up and ready to go.

I can see the waves breaking on Wing Point, I saw them from the beach actually. It should be a bit of a wild ride out there.

No sand dollars here, the colony must be closer to the ferry terminal, just offshore of the west side of the Hawley Cove beach. I recommend it highly.

Splashing through the waves, this is much more like ocean swimming than the first 12 legs of my tour. Not a lot of exciting bottom action, most of the action is above the surface. I hear motor noise and look up, it's the ferry coming towards me. But no worries, I have a big red buoy drawing a line in the sand. Ferry on that side, me on this side. I'm glad to hear how loud the boat is, there's no way I could miss a boat this size coming nearby, even with all the wave noise in the water and a rubber hood over my ears.

I see a brilliant, beautiful moon snail bobbing along down there on the bottom. Or rather I'm bobbing up and down so the moon snail slides closer and then further away in time with the waves. I duck down and peer at it, it's a big one at least a foot long with a shell the size of a large soup bowl. Motoring along visibly, oblivious to the action above. It's a relief to finally get under the surface thanks to the majesty of a moon snail.

This is a transition that's usually easier, with my typical calm wind and glassy water swims. But with all the action on the surface and above, getting under is more difficult.

It's like looking at one of those split perspective images, where it's either two faces looking at each other or a vase depending on how you look at it, likeRubin's "ambiguous vase" illusion, visible here. How does this relate to oceans? As I talked about my tour with Michelle, I had a new insight into what I'm finding.

Getting underwater is like going through Alice's looking glass in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There," more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland. She plunges through a mirror and finds a very different world.

Most of us only see the surface when we look at the ocean, we miss the underwater world. Thus a beautiful Eagle Harbor looks surprisingly different and much sadder from underwater. This is true even for me, an ocean person with clear knowledge of what I'd find under a typical marina thanks to my scientific experience.

I'm building a new underwater awareness, the ability to look at the water that I've already toured and easily get through the looking glass and re-enter the underwater consciousness. And I hope I can convey a little bit of that to others who may not choose to get there the way I do.

Now that I've gone through the looking glass on today's swim and found myself focusing underwater, I notice something beautiful.

The turbulent, tumbling water is stirring the sandy ocean bottom, making the sand waves dance. These are the mini-sand dunes that are formed on a shallow, sandy ocean bottom, maybe 1 inch tall and 2 inches wide. As I look closer, I can see some sand particles lifted off the bottom each time a wave passes, and the sand waves are very slightly reshaped. This is the march of the sand waves, they're reforming before my eyes.

What fun this is, to find a miniature drama on the ocean bottom.

I watch the sand waves for a few minutes, hovering and riding up and down in the waves, and then head on out to the tip of Wing Point.

There are some wave deflectors built with concrete here, and a heavily armored shore. No wonder why. Crashing waves make this look like an exposed coastline instead of a sheltered Puget Sound shore.

It's a lovely roller coaster ride and I spot a person watching me from a living room window. I wave and she waves back. Hi. I'm having fun, how about you?

She may wonder, what is someone doing in the water during Seattle's most disruptive winter storm, with snow and cold (cold for us). My answer, I'm going through the looking glass for an adventure.

It's a quick swim back, running with the wind and swell. There's no good exit for me here, and it's just as easy (and more fun) to swim back to Hawley Cove to get to my car. I'll start at Wing Point next time, and head Bainbridge's outer coast to Yeomalt Point, where I've been warned about the rip currents. Yeomalt is an Anglicized version of a native word that means "where the currents meet."

Sounds fun, especially during a storm.

But to finish Wing Point right, I want calm water so I can explore the sandbar better. It's hard to see everything that's here from a roller coaster.


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Day 4: Bean's Bight

Size matters, and today's swim is proof that things are BIG and a bit odd in Puget Sound.

Today I pulled around the corner and came in sight of downtown Seattle, with the Space Needle and downtown skyscrapers. Yeah, the Space Needle is that Jetsons-looking tower built for the 1963 World's Fair in Seattle. The biggest tower around that looks like it was designed by a kid. A strange sight from half underwater. It was cold, the coast was deserted, although I did get my first people waving and hollering at me from shore, a couple of kids standing on their beach.

And I found myself turning into The Creature Aquatic, peering out of the glassy-smooth water with just my eyes showing, looking at the private shore. I've had enough time in the water this month to feel like I belong underwater, and to feel strange and a bit sad when it was time to climb out. I wanted to keep going but duty called, this was just a short weekday excursion with an ending time.

Today was colder, winter is coming. I switched back to the drysuit, and good thing I did.

Bean's Bight cast of characters:

geoducks (many, HUGE clam) largest burrowing clam in the world. Pronounced gooey duck (but it's not gooey and it's not a duck!)
moon snail and moon snail shells (BIG snail) Polinices lewisii, largest moon snail in the world
sunflower starfish (20 arms, BIG nearly 1 meter)
dungeness crabs (lots)

Not seen today, but also big in Puget Sound:
The Giant Pacific Octopus, reaching perhaps 25 feet across and 400 pounds, the largest octopus in the world.
The giant Pacific Seahorse, up to a foot tall and perhaps the largest seahorse on earth.

Air temp: 51F
Water temp: 53F
Nov. 5, 3pm, cloudy
Calm
Medium tide, rising
Visibility 10-20 feet
Today's distance: 0.82 mile
Total so far: 2.89 miles

I got in near the east end of South Beach, heading past the privately owned area with the gate and path. I'll swim past the gate and have to walk back through in my dive gear to reach my car, hope that works out OK.

The water is perfect glass, sky mostly cloudy but brilliant swimming water. Visibility is good, up to 20 feet and the feeling of the swim is magnificent.

The coming winter has brought a chill, buoys say the water hasn't cooled much but it feels colder. The air is colder too, and it's a jolt to slip gently underwater. My face hurts a bit, but the draw of the clear view is strong. In just a few strokes I'm feeling alive and at home.

This photo shows the shore, the water, and in the distance Mt. Ranier (you can't really see it in the picture, with most of the mountain hidden in the clouds. It's huge when it's out, looming over the water and covered with snow.

At the end of South Beach, there is more of the same bedrock shelves, with gravel patches and scattered boulders. Moving along, sandy patches start to appear and my first real sand flats with lots of eelgrass. I know what's coming soon, and sure enough.....GEODUCKS!

It's pronounced gooey-ducks, even though they're not gooey and not ducks.

These clams are some of the most amazing animals I've ever seen. The biggest burrowing clam on earth, with a shell size up to nearly one foot, and a siphon so huge it can't be pulled inside the shell. Geoducks can live up to 100 years, and sit 3 feet under the surface of the sand, with that huge siphon reaching up into the water.

After the fields of geoducks, a magnificent moon snail that reminds me of nothing but a big racing sailboat with a huge spinnaker unfurled. I dive down 12 feet and pick up the moon snail just to hold it. The moon snail's shell is big, and it takes a while to duck back inside when it's all ballooned out and crawling around on the sand.

The eelgrass and sand flats say "barracuda" to me, so I know I must have forgotten the cold, since I'm thinking of the barracuda haunts found in much warmer waters.


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click blue labels for notes on progress

I finally prowl the shoreline and slip out of the water where I can't see any houses...it's the damn golf course. I've heard of this place but never seen it, you can't see it from the road. It's a silly little golf course with sand "greens" and thankfully it's deserted today. I slink along the hedgerow of brambles, and wander back and forth a bit until I find a trail through the backyards and fences to Bean's Bight Road. Then it's just about a mile walk back to my car. But there seem to be people everywhere, and some gardeners smile at me, and one lady on the phone in her living room glares when I open the one gate I need to pass and slide by the path just outsider her fenced yard, where the gardener told me last week that it was probably ok to pass through. Then I'm back to my car without a hassle.

Here's the cormorants on the South Beach pilings again, this time with two herons off to the left, taking up a bit more room than the otherwise evenly spaced coromorants.

Next swim, around the southeast point and up the east side to Blakeley Harbor. That should be fun.