Update: June 2011

As a result of high seas in the week 13-17 June there has been a general reduction in beach height. With calmer conditions over the past week the sea swell and wave height has reduced and prevented the dune toe being further damaged. No works are required at this stage and staff will continue to monitor the situation regularly. The warning signage and fencing relating to the former land fill site will remain in place until further notice.

A workshop was held on 27th June to brief Councillors on issues at Ocean Beach. A report outlining options for future treatment will be presented to the Community Development Committee on 27th July, and public consultation will be undertaken on recommended options for the long term management of Ocean Beach after this date.

Nice (Wall) Rack

So the nice people at Nice Racks sent me a wall rack to try out, which on looking at the stack of boards in the corner of the Child's room and with the summer visit fast approaching, seemed like a good idea. It duly showed up and looked quite clever, a nice modular system where you can keep adding racks if you want. I'll admit to thinking it might be a little lightweight and it definitely seemed just waaay too easy to set up. Luckily, it was indeed lightweight simply because it was plastic, and it was ridiculously quick to install, under 10 minutes even with a lot of double and triple checking placement and straightness. The thing is great, and best of all it's made from 100% recycled plastic and it's made in the USA, a rare claim these days. Excuse my photos (the top two), it's not easy to make a black wallrack look exciting, so I went for a bit of colour with a couple of showboat boards. You'd think that after all this time working with Glen Friedman, Stecyk, Kidman, Jamie Brisick, Joe Curren and so on I'd have picked up some photography skills, but no. Trefz would probably have shot it with a Hasselblad and some grainy b&w film and made it look great, so just try to imagine that. Very nice Rack though.

Los Angeles History

Humble beginnings indeed.

Bonzer!

One of Mackie's boards; 7', lightly used and $700 will have the thing in the U.S. for you. He's on a roll is young Mick, the stuff he's been building of late is stunning. Email info @ foamandfunction.com with inquiries, comments and so on.

Friday Harbor

The University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratory has been perched here on the point north of the town for most of the last century. The research focus was historically more on marine biology and rocky coastlines than on beaches, which makes sense given its location.

The lab, like other water-oriented developments, has grown somewhat organically along the edge of the water - with the interest clearly more in getting to the water or using the water (the labs thrive on a lifeblood of circulating salt water) than in the shoreline itself. I found the waterfront a little ragged with its crumbling stone walls, its collapsing piles of riprap, and its abundance of pipes.

It might be interesting to look at historical photos of the lab's shoreline. I wouldn't expect too much natural change, although I saw some evidence that the beaches (limited as they are) may be continuing to erode. They would have done so anyways, plus any material that would have originally eroded from the banks to resupply them is safely secured behind all the riprap!

But it's sure a neat place to have a meeting! It's not exactly convenient, but it's a far more pleasant venue that an interior conference room in an office building in Olympia.

Eagle Cove

If you take a rocky coastline and add a little sand and gravel, you'll get pocket beaches and there are no shortage of them here on the south end of San Juan Island. I knew this one existed, but didn't know you could actually get to it without owning it, until I found the little public access and parking area amidst the Sunset Magazine centerfolds.

The beach is only a few hundred feet long, it's sand and gravel isolated from every other beach in the world by rocky headlands and deep water. The gravel stays high, piled in steep berms and buried under drift logs. The sand forms a rippled terrace in the lower intertidal.

South Beach

The south end of San Juan Island is why you can't categorize Puget Sound beaches in any simple way. It's the same ocean, and the same physics, both here and on the forested shores of Eld Inlet, but the beaches are cut from completely different cloth.

South Beach is a broad gravel berm that appears to have built seaward over time from the original base of the slope. It is covered with logs - apparently this is the last obstacle for logs trying to escape Puget Sound and many get no further than this. There are sand dunes - well-vegetated ones for the most part - climbing the slope to the north. The most obvious source of the beach gravel is the high eroding bluffs east toward Cattle Point, although I wonder if this beach also tells a story about the gradual erosion of Salmon Bank, which extends far offshore.

American Camp, of which this all part, is overrun with non-indigenous foxes. Cute little beggars - certainly cuter than those chickens all over the beaches on Kauai!

Jakle's Lagoon

The north and south sides of the peninsula that ends in Cattle Point couldn't be much different. The south side is high grassy bluffs looking over the broad gravel strand of South Beach and twenty miles of water at the Olympic Mountains. The north side is forested and slopes down to Griffin Bay, where it is broken into a wonderful series of barrier lagoons. At the west end, down towards Fourth of July Beach, is Old Town Lagoon. At the east end, down towards Cape San Juan and it's exclusive nest of high end real estate, is Third Lagoon. And in the middle is Jakle's Lagoon, with it's gravel barrier, its lagoon, and its forest.

There is some evidence of an occasional tidal opening near the west end, but certainly not a persistent or regular connection. The wide gravel barrier gives rise to a broad marsh and eventually to a lagoon, its edges lined thickly with old drift logs. The pickle weed (Salicornia virginica) was doing its best to survive a colorful infestation of dodder (Cuscuta salina), a plant parasite that apparently takes many forms the world over.

I walked the cobbly beach to Third Lagoon, and then worked my way back via the mossy trail that follows the top edge of the bluff. On one shady section of beach, the upper intertidal gravel was covered with small snails (Littorina littorea, I assume). I've never seen them gathered so densely and have no explanation.

I've exceeded by usual quota of Latin, normally enforced by my ignorance of biology. Fortunately, the evening that followed this great day of beaches included dinner with people who actually understand this stuff.

Cattle Point

Cattle Point is a rocky headland at the south east end of San Juan Island, jutting out into the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The lighthouse is perched on dunes, which are in turn perched on top of glacial sediments, which in turn mantle the underlying bedrock. There are a couple of wonderful pocket beaches just north around the corner and South Beach stretches out to the west.

Ship Harbor

Ship Harbor is a north-facing cove just east of the Anacortes Ferry Terminal. It's a swash-aligned barrier beach and marsh with a long and complicated human history. It's basically a pocket beach trapped between Shannon Point and the ferry terminal to the west and the old railroad grade on the east. There may be some sediment trickling in from adjacent shorelines, but certainly no way for it to get out, except by gradual attrition or perhaps some loss offshore.

The shape of the beach is altered a bit by the remains of the old cannery -- metal slag (old tin can cuttings?), concrete foundation piers, and a forest of piles - each with it's own gull. The sand and gravel segregate themselves, both across the profile and along the beach. There was a sandy berm encroaching on the vegetation at the east end, suggesting some accretion there recently.

I'm not sure how the wetland drains - through the berm or through a pipe somewhere out of sight? There is a small "stream" bubbling from a concrete vault on the east end, carrying storm water from the new subdivision on the hill. It forms a small low tide delta -which is probably the sink for any extra sediment that makes its way to this end of the bay.

Ship Harbor, February 2009

Trefz & Mulcoy

Go here and you can check out a very awesome edit of Josh Mulcoy surfing that was made by Patrick Trefz. Apparently it's in some deal put together by Taylor Steele where you, the punter gets to choose what sections go in his next movie. If you vote for Josh it'd be great because he's a lovely bloke, the surfing and clip are wonderful and how great would it be to hear Gil Scott-Heron in a corpo surf movie?

Flex Path pt5- Futro

This is where it's been taking Mackie. EPS/Epoxy with uni directional carbon fibre, concaves, keels. He'll make you one if you want.

The Winner Is....

I've gone on about how good 'Lost In The Ether' is for a while now, and it's not because Andrew's a mate, or he owes me money (actually, I think I owe him money) or some such consideration. It's because it really is an exceptional film. It seems other people think so too, as it just won the Jury Prize for Best Feature at the Surfilm Festibal in San Sebastian. Here's how they described it:

'The latest film by the versatile Australian artist –his fifth, which also comes in the shape of an exquisite book– explores the process of surfboard shaping and how the final outcome is a manifestation of the shapers themselves. Kidman tracks down the single fin board that a young Michael Peterson shaped, the one he rode on that cutback he did on Morning of the Earth.'

Sums it up nicely I'd say, and they don't know the half of versatile- he's officially a family man, a shreddy ripper, a home brew wizard and now an award winning Director- but I bet he still has to do the dishes. Nice work young Kidman, and the film is for sale here.

Update: April 2011

There has been some lowering of beach sand levels over recent weeks. In one spot, to the west of Moana Rua Road, sand levels have dropped by two metres and rubble has been exposed at the toe of the dune for a distance of approximately 75 metres. The rest of the beach has lowered somewhat, however this is likely to recover over time.

Further tests were commissioned to better determine the extent of contamination of the dune surface and the areas adjacent to the former landfill at Kettle Park. The results of these tests have been analysed and none of the samples collected from the beach, the windblown sand on the sportsfield and the sportsfield surface levels, tested above acceptable limits. Indications are that the contamination is localised.

The warning signage and fencing will remain in place until further notice.

Jeff Ho Surfboards For Sale

The word has come down from Jeff Ho that he's going to shape a run of his boards- the model that Alan Sarlo has been riding at Malibu. Basically a wider squash tail shape, tri or quad and clear sanded. He's done a few and they've been ridden and liked at Malibu and in the old stomping grounds of Venice. Naturally there's no decent picture of the board, but it is the shape Sarlo is riding in the clip a few posts back, and it definitely seems to be working for him. Best of all, at $850 the price is reasonable, especially for a shaper of Jeff's caliber and history. Email info @ foamandfunction if you're interested. And a disclaimer- Jeff is of a mercurical nature so no guarantee how long this deal may last. We'll do our best though.

Soapy Simmons For Sale

A couple of takes on that old workhorse the mini Simmons. First up is a pretty classic 5'6" Mackie built for Skater Andy down in the southerly latitudes. By all accounts Andy's a skilled rider of the little wheeled boards, so this little finned one is going to be a lot of fun for him I believe. Next is a range of Tyler Warren shaped beauties form the recent Loft 9 shows. Tyler's been involved with the Hydrodynamica project from early on and has ridden all manner of RK's experiments and I have no doubt that these are some fun and functional boards. If you're interested in one (and there's any left) just email rk@hydrodynamica.com. If you want any sort of Mackie, email info@foamandfunction.com. There's a flurry of board production happening for summer it seems, so check back as there will be nice stuff popping up here over the next few weeks.