VOLUSIA

Inlet dredging gives surfers new break as Florence stokes NSB waves

Casmira Harrison
casmira.harrison@news-jrnl.com
Ian Cole Phillips, 22, surfs just before a new surf break created by dredging from the inlet. Surfers are enjoying the increased wave breaks at the beach near Sapphire Road in New Smyrna Beach, even if Hurricane Florence has made things a bit more choppy lately. [News-Journal/Casmira Harrison]

NEW SMYRNA BEACH — There's something new and challenging for the surfing crowd in the Atlantic waters. 

About five football-field lengths from the New Smyrna shoreline and about a mile south of Ponce de Leon Inlet, a unique and new set of waves can be seen in the distance, luring the more daring surfers to its lips and hurtling them quickly toward the shore.

[READ MORE: Dredging begins in Ponce Inlet]

Longtime local surfers like Kem McNair are raving about the new wave break at the Sapphire Road park, which have been packing a punch — with an extra boost in recent days from Hurricane Florence.

"You've got to be in really good shape to stay on that wave," said McNair, who's been riding boards for 54 years and grew up near Flagler Avenue. Recent wave riding has been superb, he said, predicting more good surfing to come. "The last couple of days have been unbelievable how good that wave is."

The bonus wave break — product of an $8.5 million dredging project conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — is the result of a new layer of sand piling up under the water.

More like the Pacific

Since the new sand bar creates an obstruction for the Atlantic Ocean's force, surfers riding near the park at Sapphire Road, Grayce K. Barck North Beach Community Park, are taking advantage of the deeper stretch of action on the water. Regardless of the "no surfing" signs, a lifeguard kept watch over the area one day last week.

McNair said the new sandbar seems to be shaped like a "big, giant, wide horseshoe," and since the wave is coming out of deep water, it has some hefty power behind it.

"It doesn't even feel like a Florida wave," McNair said. "It's more like a Pacific wave. ... It's very unique. I just got back from Mexico last Sunday, and it has more energy than the waves I had down there."

The music of the dredge pipe seems to be luring some other visitors, too.

McNair said the pipe sucking sand from the inlet and Intracoastal Waterway and depositing it in near-shore ocean water makes a low frequency hum, which seems to have attracted "all kinds of creatures" to the spot.

"I saw a little baby 3-foot bull shark swimmin' it out of the lip of the wave when I went by," McNair said with a chuckle. "I went, 'Wow, look at that. How cool is that?'"

Project's purpose

Under the surfboards, where the sand and water mixture pour out, the pipeline leads over, under and through the dunes of the peninsula. While the only signs of the pipe are the billboard and posted warnings to beachgoers, up by the dunes, bright orange netting marks the work being done. Denoting the pipeline's path west along Sapphire Road and out to the Intracoastal Waterway, large orange collars announce its position to boaters navigating Ponce Inlet.

The Corps' work began back in August and, over the course of eight months, the pipe under Sapphire Road will have spat out around 500,000 cubic yards of sand into the Atlantic Ocean. By completion, it will be the largest inlet channel maintenance dredging effort in Ponce Inlet since 2008, according to Volusia County officials, and is designed to provide long-term relief for deep vessels that use the inlet, following a short-term emergency dredging project that took place earlier this year.

[READ MORE: Corps completes emergency dredging of Ponce Inlet]

According to the Corps, the sand placed in the nearshore off New Smyrna Beach is also expected to migrate westward and eventually help reinforce the beach.

"Although the sand is not going directly onto the dry beach, the operation is expected to maximize benefits to the environment and minimize negative impacts from finer material by placing sediments in such a way that natural processes selectively sort fines from coarser sediments, and move beach-quality sand onshore and finer factions offshore," according to a Corps fact sheet.

But in the meantime, the placement process is giving wave riders like McNair a new challenge.

"I was out there for 15 minutes (Tuesday) and I was spent," McNair said. "It's kind of like riding Motocross on a surfboard."