Sand Projects

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For those of us who went through Hurricane Ike and were part of the rescue and recovery efforts afterwards, it was easy to think that things would never get back to normal.

On Monday afternoon at the Casa Del Mar listening to Kelly de Schaun, Executive Director of the Park Board, talk to a crowd about the potential for three separate re-nourishment projects all within a years’ time made me shake myself. It felt almost too good to be true after all we’ve been through to see forward motion, but it was encouraging to see a person in a leadership position put herself out there and do what she could to make it happen.

The first project is coming up within a month or so. It involves putting over 118,000 cubic yards of sand at the west end of the seawall. The second is scheduled for next fall, about a year from now. It would involve putting 16.5 million cubic yards of sand from 16th to 61st street. And the third, the one that we’re all hoping will happen, is to put sand from 61st street to 103rd street. This third project is probably the most interesting of them all as it would involve creating a beach where there is not one already and the sand comes from a source that is new for Galveston. The sand would come from the Corps of Engineers when they dredge the ship channel. We’d only have to pay the extra cost to move it by Hopper Dredge to the site.

Surfers, fisher folk, Lifeguards, and beach people develop a sense of how sand moves and is affected by ocean processes. Any of these people will confirm what the engineers say about sand replenishment projects. Nature abhors a vacuum. Since there is sand almost all the way down our 33 miles of beach with the exception of the stretch from 61st to 103rd it is essentially a dead spot that sucks sand from other areas. If it is filled, the entire beach benefits. Sand moves up and down our coast line. By the same token, by putting a bunch of sand at the end of the Seawall, the west end will see a subtle increase of sand, even if currently it’s not feasible to directly re-nourish the west end.

The other big deal about the possibility of creating a new beach is a new income stream. The 2008 Angelou Economic Report for every dollar we invest in the beach we get 4 back. Now some say it is much more. Either way, we’ll see an increase in hotel tax, property tax, and beach user fees. In ’93 when the big re-nourishment project was done on the seawall we had to increase Beach Patrol (which went from receiving 1 penny to 1 ½ pennies of hotel tax) and Beach Cleaning budgets to cover the new areas. These are areas that will have to be addressed creatively, but at least we’ll have some increased funding streams to choose from. And the returns will be exponentially increased.

Why They Come

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Early Saturday morning I took my daughter, Kai, to the D’Feet Breast Cancer run at Moody Gardens. She had a great time and did the kids 1K, which was the first race she’d ever entered. Afterwards there was a kids’ party that had a whole lot of sponsorship tables with art projects for the kids. She and a couple of her friends from school were manically jumping from one table where they made stain glass windows to another for pet rocks, to yet a third where they made necklaces. It was a really wonderful event.

My wife was out of town and I really don’t know what to do when I don’t work on the weekends. Kai cooked up some scheme that I went along with. She invited a friend for a sleepover and then we invited a few of her friends and their parents to our place for beach and surf time.

It turned out to be a beautiful day. Kai and her friend Chloe, both 8, went with me to the store to get snacks, which they prepared as if they were top chefs in a fancy restaurant. The mob showed up and we set up umbrellas and chairs and boards and sand toys. I grabbed a 12 foot longboard and took 3 or 4 kids at a time out to chest deep water and pushed them into wave after wave. They squealed and laughed till I thought they’d bust a gut. They switched out and made sand castles, looked for shells, played with hermit crabs, and then came for another round of surfing. I got relieved by another couple of parents and went to hang out under the umbrellas.

Sitting under the umbrella I started to relax a bit. Some parents were chatting quietly and others were just sitting and watching the kids play together. The day was perfect and sunny and neither hot nor cool. And that’s when it hit me:

People do this all the time! And they do it because there’s not much better than sitting on the beach under an umbrella in a comfortable beach chair with friends. And I’ve been missing out. Since I’ve been 16 I’ve always worked on beach holiday weekends and pretty much every weekend that’s warm enough for the beach. I’m not complaining at all, it’s a fantastic job. But when there are 300,000 people on the island there is nothing relaxing about working the beach.

Spending that time made me realize why we have almost 6 million visitors a year. We live in a wonderful place. When they get tired of the beach there are so many great things to do between the strand, Moody Gardens, historical buildings, Schlitterbahn, nature tours, great bars, restaurants, and shopping and more. But mostly they come for the beach.

Sitting under that umbrella and listening to the kids playing, the waves rolling to shore, birds, breeze, and all the sounds that make up the stillness was a real reminder of why they come.

Surf Story

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The 10 year old boy lay on his battered surfboard on the west side of the 10th street pier. He had caught a couple of waves by standing besides the board and pushing off the bottom. Now he was a little farther out and was trying to paddle into waves.

He’d had success a couple of times and had caught a couple of rides where he actually stood up, turned and surfed down the wave staying ahead of the white water. He was hooked.

More success increased his confidence and he went farther and farther out after each successful ride. He was about ¾ of the way out to the end when he spotted a pack of surfers just off the edge of the tip of the jetty. He sat up on his board and stared in wonder as one of them caught wave after wave, flowing gracefully. The surfer would take off and make a hard bottom turn that led straight into an off the lip, cutback, or short tube ride. Then he’d meld that seamlessly into another and another maneuver before kicking out right next to the jetty and float effortlessly back out to the end.

The young boy wanted to see more and paddled even further out. As he sat on his board peering over the waves the surfer he’d been watching came screaming down the face of a larger set wave heading right for the boy. Everything happened too fast for the boy to get out of the way and, instead, he ditched his board and dove for the bottom. He grabbed sand and waited to the wave and pointy boards passed over before resurfacing. When he broke through the older man was right in front of him.
“YOU STUPID KOOK!” the man yelled balling up his fist. “I was here first!” he yelled, his little tween voice cracking. The older surfer looked like he was going to hit the boy for a minute, and then seemed to think better of it. Instead he paddled off, a deep gash on his leg trailing blood (which he glued together with crazy glue and kept surfing). He turned, glared at the boy and yelled, “GET OUT OF THE WATER AND GO HOME GROM!”

I learned a lot that day. And now, almost 40 years later, I’m intimately familiar with all the rules I broke. The person on the wave has the right of way. The person closest to the curl has the right of way. The first person to stand up has the right of way. Beginners (“groms”) should stay away from the pier, the rip current, and the pack at the end. And in every surfing pack there’s an “alpha”. That guy or girl gets their choice of waves and should be shown respect at all times.

Nowadays there are more surfers and fewer fights. But the unwritten rules haven’t. Fortunately, it’s a gentler learning process for those versions of the early me out in the water today.

 

Photo Credit: Stan Shebs

Colombo

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I’ve written before about Leroy Colombo, the most well-known lifeguard to come from our island, but someone so larger than life deserves multiple visits.

We all know that he was formerly credited in the Guinness Book of World Records with saving 907 lives, the most of any lifeguard in recorded history. Most also know that he was stricken with spinal meningitis at age 7 which left him deaf and without the use of his legs. With the help of his brothers he started swimming to rehab and eventually became a champion distance swimmer. As a champion swimmer and the first hearing impaired lifeguard he is a real testament to the human spirit’s ability to overcome adversary.

But it wasn’t until much later in life that he was considered a hero. As with almost all lifeguards it isn’t a career that leads very often to accolades. He did reportedly get a tip for saving a woman’s false teeth and for saving a poodle. And he got a couple of cans of beer once for saving a young girl from drowning. But there were hundreds saved without any type of recognition, even though he is said to have nearly drowned 16 times while making rescues.

He made his first rescue at 12, and by the time he turned 18 in 1923 he tried out for Galveston’s prestigious “Surf and Toboggan Club”. To do so he had to swim 3 hours without stopping. He officially became a Galveston lifeguard that year as well. We continue this tradition today with our “night swim”, the final physical challenge for the incoming lifeguards. All the staff joins them in completing a tough course involving lifeguard skills including swimming, rescue board paddling, running, climbing, and even some knowledge based activities, which can also be as long as 3 hours.

He followed the tradition of the Hawaiian “Waterman” (which included women) in that he lived in a way that was close to the ocean and practiced many of the disciplines related to the surf environment. In fact he was one of the first people in Galveston to practice the sport of surfing. His close childhood friend and fellow lifeguard, Ducky Prendergast, told me stories of how they used to overinflate long surf mats so they were rigid enough to surf on. We were fortunate to receive a wooden surfboard that he owned that eventually will be a focus point in a Lifeguard museum here on the island.

He exemplified the “Lifeguards for Life” motto of the United States Lifesaving Association. Even after he retired at 62 due to a heart condition, he kept swimming for the remainder of his life. That level of commitment doesn’t end just because the flesh wears out or the job is no longer an option. He’s a real role model for those who carry on with the tradition.

Hopefully those of us who share his love of the ocean and commitment to serving others through lifesaving will inspire future generations. He has certainly done this for us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall and G-Bay

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You can feel summer slipping away. It’s not just the cooler temperatures and the fact that we’re starting to see frontal systems push all the way through. There’s something in the light, the shorter days and the look of the surface of the water that is just different.

Last Sunday was the last day of the year for John’s Beach Service at Stewart Beach. Max Wilson has been working for decades along with his brother Walter. It’s a model business that runs like clockwork. Part of the winning formula is to not change what works. They open each year on Good Friday and close the last Sunday of September. They dig the holes at 7:30am and the umbrellas come off the beach at 5pm. Like the birds that migrate south, Max leaves just after they close to travel the world. For many years he went all over the place. But countries are like people and people are attracted to both like-minded people and countries. Max spends the majority of his off season in Australia. But for me, Max leaving is as much a portent of fall as the cooler weather.

For me this signifies the best time of the year. The beaches are beautiful and empty. The weather is still warm but more comfortable. And the burden of managing a staff of over 100 millennials and a day camp of nearly 100 teens and pre-teens is lifted somewhat. I love them but am happy to have some time that involves more planning than in crisis-management. I also like the way that without all the distraction of crowds it feels like we can see the beach and all the wildlife again.

Tuesday will be our very last day for working seasonal guards. Stewart Beach Park’s last day is Sunday and East Beach is already closed for the season. The lifeguard towers will be picked up mid week and moved to a central location so our staff can refurbish them during the winter months. But we still have plenty of guarding to do. Our full time staff of 9 will be working double time to cover the beaches from the rescue trucks and will continue to patrol until December. Then in February we’ll start again although, like always, we’ll continue to provide emergency response to 911 calls year round.

Last weekend was the G-Bay Paddle that was based at Moody Gardens and happened in Offats Bayou. This event was held for the second time and nearly doubled in size since last year. It is a day of racing Stand Up Paddleboards (S.U.P.s) and kayaks. Beach Patrol and the Galveston Police Department Marine Division provided the water security and Galveston EMS handled the medical coverage. It went pretty well. We only rescued one person who ended up being ok after a little attention from EMS. The sport of S.U.P. is taking off in leaps and bounds and we should expect to see more of this type of event in the near future.