Indian Island

These shots are from back in October. Most of Indian Island is off limits, thanks to the US Navy, but the southern shoreline on Oak Bay includes some of the nicest spits and lagoons in this little corner of the world. The exposed peat ledges are the remnant of the once much larger salt marsh that existed before the canal was constructed early in the century and the spit began its rapid retreat.

Salsbury Point

It's time to catch up a bit -- beginning with a blogger's retrospective. The picture was my best effort at something related to the web that was still taken near a beach. Salsbury Point. A great example of small-scale beach nourishment carried out in October 1995, though it could use a little refreshing. Deserves a future post.

I began this blog a little over a year ago - 60 posts and I suppose a couple hundred pictures. I don't even know if Google/Blogger limits my storage, or do they just keep adding servers on my behalf in big warehouses in places like eastern Washington with cheap land and cheaper electricity? Or maybe tomorrow they'll tell me I've exceeded my allotted space!

I have no idea how many people visit the site, though I don't expect many do unless I specifically point them to it. I know no one links to the blog, since it still fails to come up in any search engines (maybe a good thing). I think there is some way to subscribe to it, in case you want to get updated some evening when I start posting stuff after a two month hiatus. I think the site has actually served my needs very well -- I just enjoy pushing my pictures and my musings out there. Hopefully, some folks enjoy it or learn something about their favorite beach or come away with an idea for a thesis, but if someone doesn't like it, they can just click on the "Next Blog" in the top right and go visit someone else.

Fort Worden

A blustery day in Port Townsend. Strong winds out of the south and a high tide. A plume of sediment traveled north along the beach toward the point, though it looked like it was taking a detour around the pier/jetty and the Marine Science Center. Nearshore waters always get muddy (silty?) after heavy rains and when waves are churning up the beach, but these were probably exacerbated by the very recent landslides between the Fort and Chetzamoka Park - since the tide was probably eating directly into the fresh dirt.

Out at the lighthouse, the waves were wrapping sharply around the point, breaking westward along the north beach. The south beach at Point Wilson is swash-aligned and you could see it today - waves at the pier were breaking to the northeast and waves at the point were breaking southwest - with a null point somewhere in the middle. This may be why the south side of Point Wilson appears to be building - it is collecting sediment both from the bluffs to the south and from the persistent erosion of the north side of the point. It's hard to conjure a storm that would erode the south beach significantly. (I guess this may need a cartoon to really understand).


Postscript: JAPANESE TSUNAMI? I was looking at the tide record for Port Townsend during the storm,which shows the 8.3' midday high tide coming in at almost 10', and noticed some interesting one-hour wobbles in the water level curve that lasted all afternoon. They are only a few inches in amplitude, but it just happens that Wednesday afternoon is when the Kurile Island tsunami reached Crescent City and the rest of the west coast of North America! The pictures above were taken about 1:20PM local time - though conditions weren't exactly conducive to observing a 3" tsunami! Probably requires some more analysis to confirm, but tantalizing.

Clinton

The beach heads north from Possession at the south end of the island, eventually growing wider and forming Columbia Beach. Then it squeezes under the ferry dock, and surprise, it pops out on the north side in a new park. They tore down the old buildings and have created a great, and much needed, little diversion for folks waiting to catch the boat.

Freeland Beach

Freeland. I've been swinging by this beach now and then to watch how it responds to the new stormwater outfall in the middle of the park (not terribly well, as the flows seem sufficient to carve a significant channel across the beach and transfer much of the sand offshore, which also results in erosion of bank adjacent to the outlet). This time, however, the beach was doing okay - other than it was blanketed with 6" of dead eelgrass. This is a typical autumn phenomenon, albeit one that varies significantly from year to year and that is probably more characteristic of some beaches than others.

Ledgewood Beach

Lessons in drainage. Big pipes, little pipes. Leaky pipes, broken pipes.

Skyline

Building ON the beach. Literally (or littorally?). This style of development is, fortunately, pretty rare on the Sound once you get away from the urban waterfronts. Somehow seems more like Orange County than Skagit County.

Point Partridge

I'm digging back in photos after a long absence - to early September. Back to Fort Ebey State Park, scouting for a field trip and wondering if a tour bus can make the bend at the end of the road (three weeks later, it did, but just barely).

Angle of Repose. Not just a novel by Stegner, but a measure of the angle at which slopes form in loose materials. In gravel and coarse sand, typically around 34 degrees. Check it against the horizon line - it really works!

Maple Beach

It's always fun to visit a beach I've never seen before. Maple Beach is on the east side of Point Roberts, facing out over Boundary Bay with views of Mount Baker and the eastern portions of Vancouver. It extends north to the border, which is marked by a tower, a road and the backyard fences of suburban Vancouver.

Point Roberts

Lighthouse Park is at the southwest tip of Point Roberts, that little orphaned piece of the USA that hangs down below Vancouver. The high ground of Point Roberts and neighboring Tsawwassen was once an island, until subsumed by the growing Fraser Delta.

The west side of Point Roberts is one of the few places in the Salish Sea where humans may have managed to alter the direction of net longshore drift (there may be another smaller example northeast of the Hood Canal bridge). We can block it or reduce it, but it took the Canadians to actually reverse it. Prior to the causeways to the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal and the Roberts Bank Delta Port, net shore drift was probably to the south, driven by the extended fetch from the north, but the causeways may provide some shelter, increasing the relative importance of southerly winds and waves. This is all pretty speculative, but makes an interesting story.

Lighthouse Park has a difficult erosion history, probably complicated by changes to wave and sediment patterns and the unfortunate location of the old lighthouse building. Seems like everything would be easier if the structure could be removed (the navigation beacon could remain) and the beach allowed to do its own thing (but then I always say that).

This visit was pleasant, but didn't match my first visit, when a kid's concert was going on at one of the shelters and a pod of Orcas headed past just offshore.