We did some maintenance around The Little Hacienda this morning, and then, as is our habit, took a dip in the ocean to cool off.  Air temp 83; water temp 78. There was a decent little waist-high swell pushing through, courtesy of a retreating low pressure system which threatened to blow up into something a few days ago as it stalled off our coast, but fell apart instead.  These waves were coming in at quite a distinct angle from the northeast, unusual for this time of year.  We generally have a southeast or straight east swell during the summer, due to the trades, but when something gets stirred up, then moves out to sea toward Bermuda, we see this kind of activity.  In winter we get one nor’easter after another, of varying magnitude.  Everything changes, but runs in cycles.

I saw some finger mullet in the breaking waves, backlit by the still eastern sun, and went back up to the house to fetch the GoPro camera.  So I will now contradict what I said in the last post about all these photos being taken with the iPhone.  Until they come up with a real waterproof version, I’ll use the GoPro in the water.

When I got back out the mullet were gone, of course, but there were still some fun shots of these little perfect waves breaking.  These little rascals packed quite a punch.  They roughed me up pretty good as I was trying to get shots of them breaking on me. This would have been ridable if we still had a sand bar.  Hurricane Matthew and subsequent lesser storms pushed the sand bar we had for years up onto the dune and it hasn’t formed back out again.  Waves, even small ones like these today, used to hit the bar and break, peeling into a deeper section before re-forming as a shore pound.  Now they just roll straight through to break in shallow water just off the beach.  Unridable.  We’re hoping for a storm just rough enough to drag some of the sand that’s accumulated high up, back out to form a new sand bar.  We don’t want anything more than that, thank you.