Mr Price Pro brings hope of Resurrecting Bog Bay

[Coatesman]

Gee whiz,

Who would ever have thought that the Mr Price Pro .. the old Gunston 500 would ever be held in Ballito!! It is almost unbelievable!

Anyway the deal is signed and sealed and its going to happen. The up side is that all eyes are going to be on surfing and the beach front. I am hoping that the municipality will recognize the value of better surf ...which will see the Mr Price return and not look else were for better surf.

The upside for them is wider less rocky beaches ...hey maybe there is a blue flag in here aswell!!

Lets cut to the chase ... we have a small wind of opportunity to get this motivated and a reality. Soon the hype will wear off and all the people with the say will forget about our rocks. So we need to get as much info as possible, spread the word and make this thing work.

I have been chatting to a number of people involved in the municipality and consultants. They all agree in principal that the rocks being moved could help. But no one is willing to stick their necks out.Because if it had to be a wrong move who gets mud on their faces?

So what can we do, we need to show them that when the rocks wernt there ...for 100s of years there was no erosion (well there was not it only got worse in recent years since the rocks) and that beaches were better off before the rocks.

Thats the one thing, other is going to be using the leverage of the Mr Price Pro. We all know that if the surf sucks they wont be back. We can have the nicest walk way and restaurants...but thats not what makes a surfing contest work! We need CONSISTENT contestable waves. Which if I had to be honest ...we dont have and have not for many many years!

So if we want to keep the Mr Price Pro some thing has to happen and fast!!!

It was a crime that the surf was stolen from us ..... lets take it back!!

Coatesman

[Brian Dougherty]

Valid points from Rat. we all know that the rocks were put in place "without environmental approval" and getting them removed may be one small part of the solution.

In terms of the Mr Price Pro I believe that it is going to be a DISASTER surfwise due to the lack of sandbanks along our piece of coastline. The contest format is such that it needs to run basically all day every day to complete on time and with the current state of the sandbanks there will be times especially from mid to high tide when conditions will be awful and unconstestable and for a six star prime event that is not on.

I lay the blame for the ongoing state of our beaches and sandbanks squarely with the task team assigned to handle the rehabilitation of our beachfront and by virtue therefore with the municipality. They have chosen to ignore the most fundamental and worst aspect of the damage and that is the massive loss of sand from the beaches and bays. I was involved in the early stages of the beach restoration project and myself and a number of other concerned residents made the point that the restoration of beach sand was the most important aspect. The biggest attraction of the beachfront is to have a nice big sandy beach to sit and play on regardless of the tide and bathing areas with sandbanks for safe and enjoyable bathing, not an ordeal to clamber across rocks with a great likelihood of injury to get wet. The vast majority of people do not visit the Dolphin Coast because we have a boardwalk or make a decision to visit based on whether we have little parking lots in some proximity to the various beaches. Two options were VERY briefly considered and very quickly ignored for restoring sand to the beaches. One was to dredge sand and one to pump sand from deeper water and deposit inshore or on the beaches. This was promptly dismissed by the "experts" as too costly, impractical, environmentally sensitive etc etc blah blah without proper investigation and quantification. Are you aware that at least R 2 MILLION of the BEACH restoration money has been spent (read wasted) on the pathetic, unsightly and unnecessary concrete parking lots along our beachfront? That has NOTHING to do with restoring the storm surf damage to our beaches - NOTHING !!! In 1987 the cyclone storm surf that accompanied the floods stripped our beaches of sand and over the 20 years to March 2007 the sand levels had slowly recovered but never quite to the pre 1987 levels. Can this area afford to wait 10 to 20 years while the beaches are naturally restored?? NO !!! One of the experts tried to tell me that our beachfront had been losing sand over the years... it is actually the opposite but all too slowly. Durban recognised and dealt with the drastic loss of sand on their beaches around the time that all the new piers were built which is quite obviously on a far larger scale than our area requires because Durban has a constant scouring problem whereas we don't.

Our opportunity therefore may be far larger than the rocks blocking sand flow from Boulder Bay into Bog Bay. Mr Price and the Association of Surfing Professionals are who we should turn to to help put pressure on the municipality and assist in restoring the SAND to our once beautiful beachfront.

[rat]

cool...some thoughts.
1) is there anybody at the Mr Price who could fight our corner? That would help loads...millions to Ballito...so take the rocks away
2) have been thinking..anyway to move rocks so that the beach is still save for kids? or does it means families have to go bathers? How about moving them parallel to beach creating a throughfare for water and sand but a beach for families..just a thought to bring compromise on both sides..

3) Who do we actually need to win to make this happen...somebody has to address somebody who will give us the go ahead (excavators are still on the beach!!)

4) we need to be sure this is the right thing for the environment. We dont want to be selfish and just want so surf!! If thats he case I have loads of plans for rocks everywhere!!