Yesterday's Road Trip to Long Beach in Sag Harbor was unfortunately rained out, but today dawned sunny and clear, if a tad chilly, and the line of swimmers' cars waiting to get into the beach at West Neck stretched back nearly to the roadway as we waited for the lifeguards to arrive to open the gate (thank you, Julia!). With the tide dead-low but incoming, the Sailboat beckoned in the distance, and the assemblage of a dozen or so swimmers (minus those who were participating in the John Daly One-Mile Ocean Swim in Long Beach (the other Long Beach!) slogged up-current through unusually murky water that -- happily --cleared as we traversed the Causeway. Pockets of September-cold, though, nudged up against the still-sultry August water, prompting even those of us wearing wetsuits to cut short our usual Sailboat-social and head back to the beach even before the back of the pack had arrived. The stragglers' eventual return to the beach turned out to be an anxious one, but the imposing-looking Lloyd Harbor Police officer they saw chatting the rest of us up by the showers was a "friendly" -- the Pod's own Vinnie O'Shaughnessy, who promises to join us Tuesday morning for our 6:30 swim!
The day was too gorgeous to go back inside, so Carole and I rounded up various friends and family members and spent the afternoon kayaking and paddleboarding from the Mill Dam in Huntington Harbor through the channel into Huntington Bay past the Lighthouse and then deep into Lloyd Harbor. Past the last of the moored boats, Lloyd Harbor -- which would be virtually empty of water at low tide -- was vast and still and silent but for the cacophony of bird calls our arrival set off, as scores of egrets, osprey, hawks and herons took flight, scolding us for the interruption. The Sailboat -- its mast, anyway -- was plainly visible beyond the "house at the end of the Causeway," but no more reachable then than when I have it in my goggle-sights and am trudging towards it against a relentless current...much like I'll be doing again on Tuesday morning...See you (and Vinnie?) in the Salt!
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