The ocean is returning to normal

The ocean is slowly returning to normal, back down to less dangerous, more surfable heights. Well, more surfable for most surfers.

I missed the three biggest surfing events in 25 years: Thursday at Tres Palmes at Rincon, they were tow-in surfing 35 foot waves. (Tow-in is where the surfers are actually towed out to the wave by a jet ski 'cause the waves are too big to paddle through.) Traffic and parking were so bad you couldn't get close to Tres Palmes. I've heard Thursday at Wilderness was epic, a day for the ages. (I tried to get there late in the morning but our little car wouldn't go through the massive puddles left by the storm surge.) And lastly, the marathon all-night night surf session at Crashboat. Oh, well.

By Saturday morning all the wave-starved surfers were at Wilderness. The parking area was packed and cars were parked all up and down both side so the "road" in. I quit counting when got to over a hundred surfers in the water. And that doesn't count all the surfers down toward Pressure Point and up the shore toward Ruines.

There are new pictures on www.puertoricosurfphoto.com, the first new surf pictures in more than a month, from this week at Wilderness and Surfers.

Now that things are calming down, it's time to assess what the storm left. A LOT of sand was moved around. Some beaches have been reshaped. The dune was breached in a number of places, especially at Middles and Golandrina. (There are some pictures on Flickr.) We're pretty lucky: the dune along Bajura and Shacks beaches suffered minor damage. It will be interesting to get back in the water and see what happened to the reef. Darryl has already been diving at Crashboat and says there are things on the bottom he's never seen, exposed by the shifting sand.
Fortunately for us, there was no rain. Several times during the big tide and storm surges, the normally dry little river behind us was actually flowing backward because of the push in from the ocean. If there had been any significant rain, the flooding would have been bad. But there wasn't any rain so there wasn't any flooding (except in the low spot int he road at the corner by Tropical Trailrides, Villa Montana, and Villa Tropical and the Shacks neighborhood).