Dredging and Nourishment (Part III)

We have been wondering about the wall of dark dredged material slowly advancing toward us on the beach.  You can stand out on the beach and see the dark mounds and hear the bulldozers spreading it out.  Last week, we walked down to the Fort Macon Picnic Area on the beach to investigate, and although the area was closed off with webbed orange construction fencing, I was able take this video of the dredged sand mushrooming upward from the end of the pipeline.

We noticed yesterday that there was a new ship on the horizon, and through our binoculars it appeared to be the J. S. Chatrey, no longer in Beaufort Inlet but out on the open ocean.  The Carteret County Shore Protection Office’s website was illuminating.  After taking safe refuge in the harbor due to the weather (i.e., the near-gale force winds I had run in on Monday and Wednesday, when a practical runner would have been in his own safe refuge), the dredge had indeed been moved to what looks like the open ocean but is still the outer part of the inlet.  The wind had died down and the sun was out, so we drove down to the Fort yesterday and approached the Picnic Area from the other end.

The pipeline was still stretched out on that part of the beach much to the curiosity of beach-goers. 

Sand bridges had been created all along it so that fishermen and shell-gatherers could climb over the pipe, which would otherwise have been a formidable barrier.

We saw that a new pipeline had been extended underwater from the J. S. Chatrey to the beach, its location marked with buoys.  Where it came onto the beach, it turned at a sharp 90-degree angle and continued down toward the Picnic Area, where we could see bulldozers at work on this Sunday afternoon.  I wondered what would happen if the pipeline became disconnected underwater.  And I wondered again how sand could be pumped through such a pipeline, then make such a sharply-angled turn.  

When I went to take these close-up photos, I realized that I could hear the dredged sand moving through the pipeline.  I had expected it to sound sort of like concrete coming down a discharge chute, but instead I could hear a steady pinging sound, like rain on a tin roof.  I took this video to record the sound, which readers of this blog who are not yet completely bored with this subject might be able to hear.

At the Picnic Area, we stopped to use the restrooms, and outside on the platform a man approached me and asked, “Do you know what’s going on?  With that pipe on the beach?”  Ha!  He had asked the right person!  I then proceeded to enthusiastically explain the details of the $18 million Morehead City Harbor Dredging & Concurrent Beach Nourishment Project, and he seemed to be reasonably interested.  It reminded me a little of what someone had once said about Ronald Reagan:  if you asked him the time, he would tell you how to make a watch.  “You can hear it being pumped through the pipe,” I said, and it looked like he was going to go down on the beach and investigate.

From the Picnic Area, we walked back on the beach-side portion of the Elliott Coues nature trail.  Christmas trees which had been placed at the Fort in a big pile (which we always stop beside so we can breathe deeply that fragrance of Frasier Fir) had been moved back to the parking lot here so they could be placed along the trail, where you can see them in various states of decomposition all along the way, some still bright green and some bare, but all of them keeping the sand from blowing away in these strong winds out here.

Earlier, when we had been walking on the beach near Fort Macon, we found this bare Christmas tree which had apparently become dislodged from the sand somewhere and which someone had planted down by the edge of the surf and decorated with shells.

Toward the end of the trail, we went to look at the newest installation at Fort Macon, acquired last year and an object of great pride for all of the historians out here.  It is a Model 1917 155 mm GPF Cannon, according to an informative and greatly detailed sign mounted alongside it, which was used throughout WWII.  One like this had likely been used during the war by mobile Coast Artillery battalions at small harbors and strategic points like Beaufort Inlet to defend against enemy naval vessels, mostly German submarines. 

The gun weights 26,000 pounds and used high explosive armor-piercing shells, with a range of 11 miles, at four rounds per minute.  Quite an improvement over the "32-pounder" Civil War-era cannons up on the ramparts, although even they had a range of five miles.

Like the old cannons facing Beaufort Inlet, and the Coast Guard station that backs up to it on the other side, it was a reminder that this beautiful State Park, with its well-maintained trails teeming with marsh rabbits and ibises and herons, its beaches dotted with shells (not the armor-piercing kind) which we enjoy nearly every day when we go running or hiking, would not be here but for warfare.