Navarre Beach restorations all but gone and rip currents horrible

http://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/2014/09/01/louisiana-man-drowns-navarre-beach/14946245/

Terrible way to go.

The young man from Slidell, LA drowned across from where we live. So sad and tragic . . . 23 years old . . . . dammit!

I have been caught twice in powerful rips on Navarre Beach.....it really is very dangerous.

2seaoat wrote:http://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/2014/09/01/louisiana-man-drowns-navarre-beach/14946245/

Seaoat, you say the beach restorations are almost gone? Wasn't it just last year they did it? I never go to Navarre so I'm just wondering.

There were rip currents on Pensacola Beach yesterday as well. A young woman from out of town was swept out about 1/2 mile from shore, but her husband and lifeguards were able to reach her. She's fine, thank God.

I've had it happen several times... it's like the floor just disappears underneath you. The furthest I've been swept was only a couple of hundred yards though... and most of the times I had a fishing pole in one hand and swam with the other.

People panic. That is sad.

People don't know what to do in a rip tide. I've often wondered if, in addition to the warnings of possible rip tides, instructions were given on how best to deal with one if you are caught in a rip tide. Swim parallel to the coast instead of trying to swim toward shore. Swim 100 yards or so and chances are you're out of the rip tide and can relax and easily swim in to shore.

Markle wrote:People panic.  That is sad.

People don't know what to do in a rip tide.  I've often wondered if, in addition to the warnings of possible rip tides, instructions were given on how best to deal with one if you are caught in a rip tide.  Swim parallel to the coast instead of trying to swim toward shore.  Swim 100 yards or so and chances are you're out of the rip tide and can relax and easily swim in to shore.

. . . . . additionally if you are not a strong swimmer STAY THE HELL OUT OF THE WATER . . . . . DUH!

I swam my first mile swim when I was in fifth grade and was always a good swimmer, but one rip I got caught in was tough because after the restoration about six years ago, there are sand bars which funnel that current into extremely strong rivers flowing out between sand bars. I knew to float and calmly paddle parallel, but it is amazing how quickly it grabs you and you lose control. I never go out very far without a boogey board, and never let the kids go out without one. If people would just tie a lead to their wrist or foot, almost all these drownings could be avoided, but people fight the current and wear out. The worst experience was going over to Orange Beach to meet some friends where they gave the town where a couple drowned who had two kids who watched it.......same town.....two kids, but it was not our friends.....that was a long ride over.

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The is no correlation between frequencies of drownings and beach renourishment projects.   The rips are a natural phenomenon caused by the build up of gulf water on the beach by wave action and more sand on the beach will not prevent rips from forming. The key is to educate the visitors to the dangers and how to spot rips

I look for the sandbar breaks when I surf fish... the piled up water pushes sand fleas and minnows through them and that's the best place for the big fish to ambush them. I've walked miles to find them before... my buddies call it a forced march... lol.

Vishnurvae

Pensacola News Journal, May 1, 2010                Bonner Treadwell nineteen years old, of 1319 Blount, in the North Hill section of Pensacola is missing. He was last seen by friends while surfing the heavy waves just east of the Fishing Pier, a place where local surfers enjoy the sport. It is not clear among his friends just when he disappeared although it has been three days since he was last seen. His surfboard has not been found which indicates there would be no likely possibility of drowning since he, like most surfers, tied his tether cord to his wrist. So then where is Bonner, his friends ask?

(Pensacola News Journal)  June 1, 2010    by John Gregson, Staff Reporter
    The strange case of the missing Bonner Treadwell, a nineteen year old surfer who just plain disappeared from the emerald waters of Pensacola Beach has just become even stranger and more bizarre. It has now been one month since Bonner Treadwall disappeared into mystery. And now it is even more mysterious since The News-Journal began an in depth study of people missing from this part of Pensacola Beach. No, Bonner is not the first to go missing from these surging waters. There have been others, many others. Not all have been surfers but all have been lost in the surf, usually in the spring of the year when the tides are at their seasonal highs. These higher than normal tides are called Perigean Tides that occur when the moon is closest to the earth. The undertow at this time is savage and if a swimmer ventures too far out they can be caught in this current and not be able to reach the surface before the air in their lungs is exhausted. People who have been lost during this spring tidal phenomenon have not always been cast upon the beaches as drowning victims, most are never found, but drowning victims are always found during the rest of the year. Victims of the sea almost always come ashore, often incomplete due to the ravages of seawater and sea predators and scavengers. But of those who have been lost during the Perigean Tides, none have been found. Not a trace and all have been lost in an instant, never to be found, just gone.
    The News-Journal staff has searched the Archives back as far as 1862 and found an alarming incidence of disappearances of people lost during the time of this tidal activity. During the last one-hundred and forty-eight years there have been numerous incidents. Following are just a few.
On April 20, 1910 William Herbert was drift fishing beyond the third sandbar and witnesses saw his dinghy capsize but he was never seen again.
In 1926, on May 8, Luis Manolo Hernandez had taken his skiff out beyond the second sandbar hoping to catch a large mackerel that would feed his family and leave a large portion that he could sell. As he rowed and fought the surf his wife and two small daughters watched from the beach. They saw him heave his sand anchor out. He turned and waved to them and then just disappeared. His distraught wife ran screaming to three fishermen in a larger boat that were heading out and told them what happened. They searched but found nothing.  Neither Hernandez nor his boat was ever found.  
On April2, 1930 Aubrey Wallace had paddled his kayak out past the third sandbar to fish for mackerel.  He and the kayak both were lost.
Another disappearance occurred on the 12th of May in 1942.  Roger Morris and his fiancée Julia Arragola were floating on a large inner tube, laughing and enjoying the sun and he cool clear water. Family friends said the pair just seemed to disappear. After an extensive search authorities concluded they were caught in a particularly powerful undertow and carried out to sea.  Pensacola Beach is visited by thousands of people every year and sadly people also die there. But their bodies are always found, Except for the people lost during the Perigean Tides. None of them were ever found, and marine experts have concluded that when the massive tides recede they carry the bodies of the drowned through the ship channel and far out to sea.
      Pensacola Beach starts to come alive in early May when the waters warm up, people by the thousands flock to the beautiful white beach to soak up the warm sun and cavort in the clean, clear emerald green waters. The young and the old, the black and the white, the lazy and the athletic, all come to the beach, the life guards scan the horizon and watch for swimmers in distress. Sharks also live here in the Gulf, and the jellyfish, called the Spanish Man-of-War with the stinging tentacles, but the only real danger is the riptides that will carry a swimmer to a watery death if they are caught up by the awesome powerful currents.

     About two miles out in the Gulf is a deep hole, a half mile deep, and at the bottom, completely buried by the sand is a sunken hulk, a Spanish galleon that perished in a hurricane over five hundred years before. Inside this relic a hole has been tunneled and shaped into a lair, a den, a safe place, a hiding place for the Vishnurvae, a creature from far away who has lived a long, long, life in many different parts of this world. Although Vishnurvae has an intelligence of some inexplicable sort it has no memory of where it came from or how it got to where it is. It is now a shapeless mass of protoplasm that exists in a sleep mode most of the time, only awakening once a year, prodded into consciousness by a change in water pressure, a change brought on by the proximity of the moon once a year, bringing on the spring tides, the highest tides of the year. Its one great eye opens and it begins to shape itself into the form best suited for the annual feeding needed to nourish it for another year.  It slides and slithers out of the open hatchway of the ancient vessel and changes its color to match the seabed. Much like an octopus, the Vishnurvae has the ability to change its shape and color to match the terrain around it perfectly.  The hunger it feels upon awakening is an unimaginable aching knot of necessity, a pain of fierce hunger as it eases itself toward the shore and the life giving protein that is there for the taking. As it nears the shore the depth of the water lessens and as this occurs it flattens itself into a thin blanket of starving need and a long snout like appendage slowly weaves its way toward the surfer who has just fallen from his board and is pulling it to him by the tether. Now in it’s attack mode the snout is shaped like the bell of a tuba, a bell twenty feet in length and ten feet wide which is rapidly enlarging into a netlike grasping appendage with sharp hornlike teeth and suction cups which literally sucks the surfer and his board into the slippery slime covered gaping esophagus that is the entrance into the digestive tract. All in a few seconds and observed by no one. One prey animal is all the creature requires and it slowly slips back into the deep water.

    Vishnurvae once again is sated and fulfilled, so it slides back down into the depths to its lair to sleep and to wait.

2010                                   The end

by 2seaoat Yesterday at 2:50 pm
http://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/2014/09/01/louisiana-man-drowns-navarre-beach/14946245/
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Way to jump to conclusions old man. Totally unrelated.

Those spring tides can be tough... especially in the pass. But that's when the cobia run... so that's where I wanna be.

Way to jump to conclusions old man. Totally unrelated.

The washed away restoration sand has formed a series of large sandbars where the natural rip currents are magnified and narrowed increasing the velocity of the water.....this is not rocket science if you have ever been in the water. Navarre Beach has become this narrow steep beach backed up by the dune which after high tide leaves incredible drop offs. Before development much of the sand would form where the current Regency is, yet there is no sand anywhere on the first two miles heading from the bridge to PB. It has become extremely dangerous even in yellow flagged waters where these unnatural sandbars have formed since being washed away from the beach.

2seaoat wrote:Way to jump to conclusions old man. Totally unrelated.

The washed away restoration sand has formed a series of large sandbars where the natural rip currents are magnified and narrowed increasing the velocity of the water.....this is not rocket science if you have ever been in the water.  Navarre Beach has become this narrow steep beach backed up by the dune which after high tide leaves incredible drop offs.  Before development much of the sand would form where the current Regency is, yet there is no sand anywhere on the first two miles heading from the bridge to PB.  It has become extremely dangerous even in yellow flagged waters where these unnatural sandbars have formed since being washed away from the beach.

lol yeah right

lol yeah right

Thank you for confirming.