Ecospirit Life

After the storm we have a look at the carnage

The wall of futility meets the tides of relentlessness. I have been working on our shoreline a lot this year. Creating a wall of logs to protect the shoreline from the occasional day of storm surge coupled with higher tides. Our biggest tides are 17’ and these are infrequent but still happen often enough I won’t call them rare. A 17’ tide doesn’t quite reach the base of my log seawall. To bolster it I have it reinforced with wire and weigh logs down with other logs and rock. So far so good, it has withstood everything. I have more to do but had a feeling I was out of time. For this morning we had 5’ waves predicted just as the tide peaked at 8:30 am. I prepared as well as I could and the big waves 2 days earlier delivered a huge and heavy log right across the front of my log barrier wall. I tried to drag it closer with the UTV and the 6000lb winch but could barely budge it so I came up with a plan. I rolled a chain around the log and connected it to the winch. When I tighten the winch it will try to roll the log closer to me. I left it hooked up like this overnight and set an alarm. At 7am the tide was still 1.5 hours away from peak but you could already feel the impact of the waves as they lifted and smashed huge logs into the shore. Down at the beach the waves were just starting to move the huge log I had the chain around. As the waves pushedI would tighten the winch line and bring the log a bit higher up the beach a few inches at a time. It was acting like a keystone holding everything behind it secure. By 8:30 the tide was peaking but the waves were huge. Survive another hours and it’s all good. Then the winch line snapped. Synthetic winch line isn’t as erratic as steel cables so I almost didn’t notice the break except the huge logs started moving a lot and rapidly. Soon the log was sucked back out to sea and the entire wall protection system was exposed to the force of the storm. For the next hour I watched helplessly as the waves obliterated so much of my work. Huge logs that have been a fixture at our place for more than a decade would eventually wash away. At one point the walkway was washing away and I had to back the UTV further up the hill towards the house. The boat on the boat raft started to get buffeted buy huge waves and I could only watch and hope. In the midst of the waves with logs weighing several thousand pounds lifting and smashing everywhere there is little to do but watch and wait for the tide to recede. By 10:30 the waves were dying down and the tide was receding. The beach was strewn with log carnage. My log wall was obliterated though a few new logs have moved into place to offer some manner of buffer for tomorrow. I’m going to have to come up with a new plan. So far it’s Murray zero and relentless tides way too many. The neighbours either have Gabions (wire baskets filled with rock) or huge boulder walls installed. We might have to join them. In some ways the huge logs protect the shore from the impact of the waves but in other ways… they are hugely damaging and the momentum of a few thousand pounds moving up and down as fast as a heartbeat is incredible. Our house literally shakes. Tides in the morning remain high the next few days but the wave forecasts are less foreboding though still likely to create more erosion. Wish me luck!