Papa's Cruiser

The hurricanes of ’04 took out so much sand we had no beach to walk, run, or ride on in winter, even at low tide.  Summers were better– the lows are lower in summer– but it really wasn’t near what it had been until last summer.  This winter has been good; lots more beach to work with at low tide, so it’s been filling in nicely.  Clear, sunny, and much warmer this morning, so Papa took advantage of a 10:00 low and took off on the cruiser.

Slight wind out of the northwest, a nice little three-foot swell starting to break on the outside sand bar, great longboard wave, but at fifty-five degrees, the water’s still too cold for me.  I have a Spring wetsuit–short legs and arms– but I only wear it when the water’s in the sixties. At seventy degrees, it’s bare-back time, just board shorts and maybe a rash guard.  Hope to be back in the water some time in March. I miss it, and it’s a great conditioner. The anticipation picks up on days like this.

The beach empty but for a few walkers way south, and a good fifty-yard width of hard sand.  Passed the sub tower, the whale-spotters already gone, though the whales I’ve seen were at mid-day or later.  No news of any since the one that was tangled in rope and eventually died.  We’re nearing the end of the migration season. There used to be a travel-trailer campground across A1A from the sub tower, a big one, with a store and pool room. Quite a number of folks lived there year-round. It closed about eight years ago, I guess, and the land was cleared and streets put in for a new housing development, but then came the real estate crash, and nothing at all has been built. It’s a strange scene; shiny black-topped streets with stop signs at all intersections, and no houses.  A little south of the campground was a great nautical gift shop, also long gone. They had a lot of funky shell stuff, but also some nice pewter and silver nautical-themed jewelry.  The building was knocked down and the lot is still empty. Recession on Skinny Island.

I came upon a patch of dead starfish, thirty or more, in an area maybe twenty yards square. You see them frequently, but usually more spread out than this. I don’t know what kills them.  They are naturally very mobile, so I don’t think they are left alive by a falling tide and then die.  Some days there appears to be a die-off of a particular species, certain crabs, for instance, or a bi-valve.  Last fall there were a lot of horseshoe crabs, and I’ve found a couple of dead dolphin, and one very old green turtle.  The females return throughout their lives to lay eggs on the very beach on which they were hatched, and they can live two-hundred years or more.  The one I found could have been coming back here since the Second Spanish Period.

This is our lifeguard station, about a mile and a half from the house. It is our turn-around point for three-mile runs and walks, and an impressive structure.  When times were flush they used to set up manned lifeguard stands in summer about every half-mile north to the State Recreation Area, but now the last one is around the sub tower. Now, when somebody gets in trouble in the water, they go barreling up the road, or on the beach, if possible, in their emergency truck, relying on civilians to send up the alarm. I’ve always thought something like this would make a great beach house, and I’ve fantasized about building one across the road, but I imagine there is some prohibition against that sort of thing. Still, if somebody would come up with the money, I’d look into it.

Two dead rays, a quarter-mile apart, the gulls feasting. you see them frequently on clear water days, usually in small groups, but the past two summers we were fortunate to witness huge migrations.  One lasted for several hours. We sat on the beach deck and watched thousands go by, illuminated in the breaking waves by the late sun. They were small rays, like this one, maybe a foot across, with brown tops and white undersides.  In May you see the big Manta Rays with ten-foot wing spans catapulting out of the water in prodigious leaps, usually a good ways out, but they come into the shallows to feed, too.  I was out on the board one day and one swam right under me.  They actually fly under water with big, slow undulations, their wingtips frequently breaking the surface.  When I first saw this one I thought it was two sharks swimming ten or twelve feet apart–the wingtips look like dorsal fins–and then I saw his great dark body.

I turned around after two and a half miles, and found the wind a little tough to pedal against coming back. About half-way home I came upon this crab.  You usually see blue crabs and sand crabs washed in, but I’ve been seeing more of this one recently. I don’t know what it is, but it looks like a rock, so maybe it’s some kind of stone crab. Quite a tough-looking guy, and maybe one of those rascal bait-stealers that likes to deplete my shrimp supply.

That’s it.  Nothing special, really, but a world apart, and different every day. Something to get lost in.