Wild Seas

One of my favourite photos taken the morning after the storm, shown in yesterday's movie post, is this one of the waves pounding the beach. It was September 2006.

Anyone care to go to the movies?

Today, instead of a photo, we are posting a movie that we put together. It is a combination of video and stills captured on the beach at sunrise after a big storm and Spring Tide. It was wild and windy, so there are times when the image stabilizer couldn't cope, but we hope the movie can convey to you how invigorating and stunning it was on the beach that morning. The background music is 'why worry' by Dire Straits.... which pretty much sums up St Francis, who can worry for long in such surroundings?!!

spring tide #5 After the storm

The sun rises on a beautiful new day. The swells are high but the storm has passed.

spring tide # 4

Riding out the storm

The day before the spring high, a storm came through, and the bay was just crammed with fishing boats who had come into the relatively sheltered spot to ride out the storm. If you look at the big map on the sidebar, the westerly winds go tearing past shark point and across the bay, leaving a sheltered spot near the harbour mouth. Beyond the point there was a visible difference in the sea and the swells were huge.

Spring Tide #3 Pounding the Breakwater

on a normal day

spring high

Here you see the harbour wall that we posted 2 days ago, being pounded by waves at Spring High, this time from the outside of the wall.

By the way, if you followed the drive we did down the Elands River Valley last week on the Port Elizabeth Daily Photo, and on our personal blogs, the mountains in the background that you see here are part of the Winterhoek Mountain Range that we were travelling through on that trip.

And if you are interested in how this breakwater is constructed to withstand these assaults from the sea, I did a post on the dolosse here.

Spring Tide #2

Yesterday we spoke about the effect of spring tides at the Port. Here is a series taken the day before the spring tide. It was not at the extreme high and low because low was about 2 hours after the first set was taken, but even so you can see how much the water level changed in the yacht basin.

Spring Tide #1

Last March, St Francis experienced a combination of Spring Tide and a severe storm. It was great watching the wild seas. It is the fullest we have ever seen the port, as all the fishing boats huddled together for shelter. The following morning was misty and an eerie post-storm calm settled over the bay. In the next few days we'll show you some of the pictures from that weekend.

The waves were so huge that they were breaking right over the harbour wall, too forcefully to walk there. It is hard to give you a idea of how large they were, but the wall on the right is too high for even a tall person to look over, and normally there is still about the equivalent of 3 stories of breakwater below the wall on the outside.