Beach Time

This past week Marney has been in Houston visiting daughter Kate and I’ve been hosting a sailing friend from Rockport TX (Pete) and his son from Aledo TX (Pete – or as Dad says, “Re-Pete).  We’ve been having a great week.  Beyond the sailing (three hours yesterday, with the winds at our back, doing 8 knots in a 10-12 knot wind), we’ve been mostly snorkeling, including yesterday, when we anchored behind Sandy Spit off Little Jost Van Dyke (remember the privateer named Joost?). 

Sandy Spit, off Little Jost van Dyke

 The stopover at Sandy made me think of beaches around the world and some of the beaches I’ve visited.   For someone who grew up in Ohio, I’ve been blessed to have a fair share of time at the beach. 

It takes a long time to make a beach.  They are formed by wind and waves moving sediment (sand, pebbles, rocks, seashell fragments) around.  Beaches are constantly changing.  They can change dramatically between summer and winter.  Winter winds and storms can erode a beach, only to have it rebuilt again the next summer as the sand is carried back to shore by the waves.  (see a short National Geographic article in the  PS of this reflection).

A beach is one of the most accessible places in God’s world to observe the interplay of life at the shoreline, where wind, water, and earth engage one another.  Constantly moving, shifting, changing but bringing a sense of peace by the never changing rhythms of water lapping or pounding a beach’s edge.   Beaches can be mostly pebbles and rocks as in the more northern/southern latitudes and mostly sand along the equatorial regions.  Regardless, they offer a beauty that lifts the spirit.

The other evening I came across a list on the internet: The World’s Top 25 Beaches.  The list was put together by travelers to the middle regions of earth, so they are sandy ones.  It was put together by Trip Advisor, and there I learned that the number one beach in 2016 is found in the Turks and Caicos (south of the Bahamas).  It replaces a beach in Brazil that fell to the number two spot.

By the time I’d seen pictures of all 25, I realized that I’ve visited three of them and would contend that I know a prettier one on the same island that the number four beach is found.

Here they are:  Number Six is Flamenco Bay, Culebra, Puerto Rico.  We just visited this beach in early March.  Truly amazing…

Flamenco Beach

Number Eleven can be found on St. John, US Virgin Islands.  It’s Maho Bay, a short sandy beach surrounded by lots of palm trees.  Think “Tahiti” from my earlier reflections.  (I didn’t know it was so popular, but I’m not surprised).

Maho Bay

Number Sixteen is in the British Virgin Island: the Baths on Virgin Gorda.  This is an amazing collection of large boulders (rock that has been wind-eroded to look like boulders).   It has a small sandy beach but its main attraction is a walk/crawl through the boulders.

The Baths

The one I’d have an argument with is Number Nine: West Bay on the Island of Roatan in Honduras.  It’s very popular (the basis of Trip Advisors surveys), and has lots of good snorkeling and fun things to do, eat and drink nearby.  However, I once visited the northeast edge of Roatan and fell in love with Camp Bay.  See for yourself.

West End, Island of Roatan, Honduras

Camp Bay, northeast Roatan

(If you want to see the whole list, go to: Trip Advisor.com, and across the top is a category “the best of 2016”…click there and look for “beaches”)

Beaches are great places to play.  Think sand castle competitions.  As a child, I loved making “drip” trees .

Sand Beach Competition, Port Aransas, Texas, 2014

Beaches are great places to sleep, especially in a hammock where the breezes can lull you into a nice nap.

Our son, Nick, in the Bahamas, early 2000's

Hammock at Hawksnest Bay, St. John, USVI

Beaches can have some of the funniest names.  This year we visited Anegada (northeast edge of the BVI) and took a walk on Cow Wreck Beach on the edge of Cow Wreck Bay.  The story is that a ship load of cows coming from England didn’t quite make it…

Cow Wreck Bay, Anegada, BVI

To be honest, Marney loves beaches more than I do.  She loves the warmth of the sand.  She loves walking along the shore.  She loves shelling and even when most of us can’t see something to pick up, she finds the tiniest of “hats” and miniature “conchs” to add to her collection.

I love beaches for the colors.  I love how the blues and tans and greens meet together there.  And, I like to cool off in the water because I don’t like the heat of the sun bouncing off the sand.  I don’t have the ability to sit or lay quietly on a towel for hours at a time. The shade of the palm trees is pretty nice, especially if it’s breezy and not too buggy.  And there’s a hammock nearby.

But, at this stage in life’s journey, the best beaches are where the grandchildren are!

with granddaughters Addie and Tali in Galveston, TX

Now you may think that living on a boat is all work, and chores, and fix up projects, and taking buses to town and taking the dinghy to the laundromat.  True confession:  there are some play days that are part of this life, especially when we host friends and show them around.  And those play days may involve some snorkeling, or a walk on an island, or paddleboarding.  But they nearly always include some beach time.  

Beaches hold a special place on God’s pallet.  Every beach has a special beauty, even the rocky ones of the northern latitudes.  And they are the way God makes the shoreline most accessible to the majority of people.  It’s where we can go to watch the shoreline change, stand in awe of the fish, birds, trees and plants, and appreciate how the rhythms of water/wind/earth unfold.  The water rolls in and then out.  The water brings in sand and shells or pulls them back out, and the beach adjusts. 

And besides, when you walk a beach, you never know what you’re going to find!

Starfish on the water's edge of Trellis Bay, Tortola, BVI

Fair Winds and Calm Seas

Dave

PS:  from a National Geographic internet article:  A beach is a narrow, gently sloping strip of land that lies along the edge of an ocean, lake, or river. Materials such as sand, pebbles, rocks, and seashell fragments cover beaches.

Most beach materials are the products of weathering and erosion. Over many years, water and wind wear away at the land. The continual action of waves beating against a rocky cliff, for example, may cause some rocks to come loose. Huge boulders can be worn town to tiny grains of sand.

Beach materials may travel long distances, carried by wind and waves. As the tide comes in, for example, it deposits ocean sediment. This sediment may contain sand, shells, seaweed, even marine organisms like crabs or sea anemones. When the tide goes out, it takes some sediment with it. 

Tides and ocean currents can carry sediment a few meters or hundreds of kilometers away. Tides and currents are the main way beaches are created, changed, and even destroyed, as the currents move sediment and debris from one place to another.

Beaches are constantly changing. Tides and weather can alter beaches every day, bringing new materials and taking away others.

Beaches also change seasonally. During the winter, storm winds toss sand into the air. This can sometimes erode beaches and create sandbars. Sandbars are narrow, exposed areas of sand and sediment just off the beach. During the summer, waves retrieve sand from sandbars and build the beach back up again. These seasonal changes cause beaches to be wider and have a gentle slope in the summer, and be narrower and steeper in the winter.