Surfing Sandy

Surfing at Crashboat Monday, October 29

The Mid-Atlantic region certainly got the worst of Huracan Sandy but her reach is still being felt her in PR, 1600 miles away.

Sandy is still pushing big waves to Puerto Rico, but only a few places have had good surfing . Playa Crashboat, which is usually sheltered and rarely sports surfable waves, let alone big waves, was one of the best spots in the area. Many of the usual surf spots - Middles, Jobos, Surfers Beach, Wilderness - have been "blown out," big but sloppy with no real organization. Even down to Rincon there were big waves but not much surfing.

Sandy's northward trek took her more than 600 mile west of us, over Jamaica and Cuba so there is a lot of "west" and "northwest" in the waves in Sandy's wake. For us that's a very odd direction; most of the time our waves are from the northeast.

The waves have cause some minor damage, a lot of it in downtown Aguadilla. The boardwalk on the jetty is pretty much gone. There was quite a lot of damage in Parque Colón and waves smashed into a bar/restaurant there.

The waves pushed seawater up the little river behind us. The low area at the crossroad to Villa Montaña and Villa Tropical is flooded with seawater. It's not a big deal, just an inconvenience for those who have to get in and out. If we get a heavy rain, it could be a problem because the water from the river is not escaping to the ocean. That's when we get flooded.

What may be the most significant damage was at Crashboat. The southermost pier collapsed. It's not the first pier to collapse. Two others are on the bottom as well. Now there are only three of the original six. We'll miss diving among the legs of the pier but now we have another "wreck" to dive. What really make this important is that particular pier held a ton of tsunami detection and warning gear. So far, there is no word if the tsunami warnings went off or if the gear is still working under 25 feet of water.