Beaches
____________________________________

What type of beach is best for line control model sailing?

For our purposes the ideal beach has shallow water that is good for wading in, safe for swimming and that are clean, and with clean water. The sea or lake bed should be stable enough to stand in. An all sand or a sand gravel mix is good, although a bit of plant life can make it interesting.

Note: you should always wear water shoes, even when you think it isn’t necessary. You will be doing a lot of wading, more so than someone going in for a quick dip.

Sheltered water, such as a cove, bay or the lee side of islands where there is protection from high winds and big waves common to its area.

Sailing conditions can vary with the weather, normally calm protected areas can turn impossible to sail in when a weather front moves in, likewise, beaches that face the open ocean with normal high waves can turn calm.

Needless to say, small craft warnings broadcast over the radio should be heeded when sailing boats of any size....including one only 16inches long.

I seek out tidal sand flats, like the one shown here. During low tide, I can assess the terrain that will be submerged once the tide rolls in. And as you can see, if the beach face is too rough to sail in, there are always the tidal pools. Off in the distance you can see a land mass that helps keep high waves from generating. Also, tidal flats can produce warm water, once the incoming tide sets on the warm sand.

Most beaches that are ideal have a reputation as family beaches, but you should avoid crowded areas. Keep in mind the water always seems to be the most crowded at the wrong time to sail anyway. You should avoid the summer sun during the hours of 11 to 2pm. In the morning and later afternoon, can often be the best time to sail. I am always amazed how the crowds don’t come until noon and disappear just around 4pm. I guess they love traffic jams.

If you are planning a beach vacation, it can be annoying when beach resorts and hotels offer very little information about the beach itself. If they focus on luxury, shopping and dinning, it’s a good indication that those ‘miles of beautiful sandy beaches’ may be nice to look at, but useless if you want to go in the water.
Travel blogs can be very useful, but as with most blogs some entries can be opinionated if not bogus.

Learning about beaches is part of model sailing, obviously that’s where its done. But beyond that, increasing your awareness of this special environment, enriches the experience, and (hopefully) inspires a sense of responsibility in its stewardship.

____________________________________

To define some areas of a beach, lets start with what defines a beach. Note: shore and beach are by common definition, the same thing.

A beach is the area along a coast where unconsolidated (loose) sediments have built-up due to water movement, everything from boulders, pebbles, sand and silt.

From the hinterland we go to the coast, where land features related to beach environments appear, the beach itself starts at the coastline.

Staring from the coast line is the most familiar part of the beach, the back-shore, also called the back-beach. Water will only reach the higher levels here in extreme weather conditions.

At the waters edge is the ‘shoreline’. The shore line moves with the water level, as water levels change with tides. (In lakes they may change with seasons.)

Mean High Water (MHW) is the average height of the waterline at its high stages.
Mean Sea Level (MSL) is the average height overall.
Mean Low Water (MLW) is the average height of the waterline at its low stages.

The foreshore or beach face is seaward from the shoreline, from its highest waterline to the lowest, this is where sediments are churned by the waves as they reach the shoreline. A process that creates sand.

The littoral zone or shore-face, extends from the lowest shoreline seaward to a point called the closure depth. Our sailing area ranges from the beach face into the littoral as far as you can comfortably wade, or until you run out of control line.

Note: ‘littoral zone’ has a variety of definitions from different authorities, derived from the Latin litus, litoris, meaning ‘shore’, to some it means the entire coastal area. others may be a bit more specific, and divide the littoral zone into sub zones such as;

The supra-littoral- is the same as the back beach.
The intertidal zone - is between the high and low tide marks - same as the beach face
The sublittoral zone - from the beach face to the closure depth

The littoral zone shown here is effected by near-shore currents, tides and breaking waves. It is where beach sediments are shifted by currents and water motion as well as having more oxygen, nutrients and light than the deep water offshore.

Littoral transport is a term used for the movement of unconsolidated sediments such as sand, in the littoral zone. Also called the littoral drift.

Beaches are constantly moving, building up and tearing itself down through the movement of wind and water. Because of its depth, waves are augmented on the surface. The closure depth is the off shore boundary where these effects no longer take place. It is the end of the beach.

The breaker zone is where waves approaching the coastline start breaking. A wave breaks when it has becomes steep enough that its crest topples forward, as it moves faster than the rest of the wave. The wave generating effects of the shallow littoral zone take a bit of space to develop, and so the breaker zone is not as far seaward as the littoral zone.

In the next update we will take a closer look at wind, waves, and tides, and their influence on the beach enviroment.

_______________________________________________

View beach art posters and prints here!

 home | Fairlead | sailing glossary | buy a kit here |