Surfing At Bellochantuy And Machrihanish

Surfing Bellochantuy and Machrihanish Though there is hardly a day in the year when one will not see someone heading in or out of Kintyre with a surfboard on their roof-rack, the local agencies and authorities have yet to 'take on board' the need to provide and/or develop proper facilities for local and visiting surfers. Perhaps largely unknown, rather than forgotten, is the fact that at one time a branch of The Scottish Surf Club was based at Machrihanish and, in the days before mobile telephones, when 'CB' radios were popular, Bellochantuy, with its disused church, its old school and its hotel, was known to one and all as 'Surf City' ! Bellochantuy's surfing beach, almost half-way along the shore, between the hotel and the caravan site at the north end of Bellochantuy Bay and referred to by some as 'the graveyard', as it lies beside the cemetery at Patchan, is reputedly much safer than that at Machrihanish, as it reportedly has very little 'under-tow', the better surf to be found on a rising tide, as the surf breaks on to the area's constantly shifting sandbars and the swells lessening in intensity as the coast runs north, progressively sheltered from The Atlantic by Islay and Jura. A couple of miles or so the south, opposite Dun Aluinn, there is another good and relatively safe little surfing beach, parking near it difficult and therefore, like 'the graveyard' beach at Patchan, little used. The Westport beach, well known to most surfers, is best on the upper half of the tide provided the swell is not over 2 metres and, with the larger swells, the surf breaks on the hidden reefs further out. In an age and an area where there has been great interest in harnessing the power of the wind and ‘air waves’ and now new interest in harnessing the power of the tides to produce electricity, there is no reason why the power of the waves should not too be harnessed for the profit of surfers and the profit of Kintyre's fragile economy. In 2002, though the project has yet to come to fruition, proposals were put in hand to explore the building of a set of artificial underwater reefs, Fistral Bay, beside the Cornish resort of Newquay, three other sets of artificial reefs on The Pacific Rim - at Narrowneck, in Queensland; at Cables, in Western Australia and Mount Maunganui, in New Zealand - having proven successful and encouraged all-year-round 'water tourism' and international competitions. A cursory comparison of the seabed at Fistral Bay, beside Newquay, with that of Machrihanish Bay, at least to the 50foot seabed contours, suggests that both beaches share general similarities and that the bottom at Machrihanish might not only be well suited to the positioning of artificial reefs and custom-designed reefs but too might be suitable for some types of tidal/wave electricity-generating sites. As has been found the case with the artificial reef built in Loch Linne, off Lismore Island, artificial reefs are not only environmentally friendly but also encourage new and thriving populations of lobsters and crustaceans. Also to the advantage of developing Kintyre's surfing opportunities is the fact that Machrihanish's huge airport runway is capable of landing the largest passenger planes in The World, a problem in the case of Newquay's airport being that it could handle nothing bigger than Boeing 707's and that these aircraft could not accommodate anything so big as a surf board in their luggage compartments ! Too to the advantage of Kintyre is the area's very nearness to Ryanair's base at Prestwick, aircraft from all over The World flying in there, generally with few passengers, for routine maintenance checks and any 'diversion' to Machrihanish's airport en route not beyond the bounds of acceptability. To better understand the general principles of artificial reefs, one might begin with the ‘short wave guide’ here. A knowledge of the moving wave surface allows the probability of different wave heights and slopes to be decided from relatively few measurements on a wave record. For example, one wave in 23 is likely to be twice the mean wave height and one in 1,175 likely to be three times the mean. The speed of a wave depends on the depth of water and, as soon as a swell approaching the coast enters soundings less than a quarter of its wavelength, its speed is noticeably reduced. When it approaches the coast at an angle, the slowing of the inner edge, before the outer, makes it turn more or less parallel to the coast and it becomes bent round headlands and too is focused or dispersed by convex and concave bottom contours, like the refraction of light rays in a medium of varying density. 1

The height of a swell is affected by the decreasing depths and, after a small decrease in height, the waves begin steepening till the crests rise and break. In the last part of their travel, the waves appear to travel as solitary waves, the movements in one crest having little or no influence on the next. The increase in wave height, before breaking, depends on wavelength and while a low long swell will rise to about twice its deep water height (hence the name ‘ground swell’) a short wave may not increase perceptibly - The depth of water in which a wave breaks is generally between one-and-a-half and two-thirds that of the wave’s own height. The study of movements in the breaker zone indicates that water accumulating inside the breakers tends to find its way out as ‘rip currents’ which persist where (even a stream) rocks or some artificial obstruction breaks the line of the beach. The strength of ‘rip currents’ depends on wave height and they are ‘contributory’ to the effect known as ‘undertow’. If a swimmer finds himself being carried out through breakers, he may find it easier to get ashore farther up or a beach and, since the branches which feed the current are not symmetrical, it may be easier on one side of a beach than another. The ‘ideal surfers’ wave’ is a large, barrel-shaped, wave, anything up to 30-feet in height. All-important is the way in which waves line up as they approach the shore and, as investigations have found, the ideal ‘breaking angle’, the angle at which the waves encounter the ‘bottom obstructions’, is best between some 40 and 70 degrees, an angle which he lays into the design and positioning of the artificial reefs, an example of which are already in use on Australia’s Gold Coast where their positioning was also helpful to reduce the effect of coastal erosion. It is important to remember that an artificial surf reef does not create waves, it simply 'amplifies' the surf that is already there. An artificial reef will therefore act as a ramp, pushing waves upwards, doubling the waves in size and shaping them into good-quality surfing waves and doubling the height of the surf should also mean that the number of good surfing days will also double. The scheme for the artificial reef at Newquay's Fistral Bay had a pair of reefs, angling seawards from the shore, a ‘safe zone’, between the two reefs, allows the swimming surfers to get out to deep water without fear of being hit and, once out, the surfers are able to choose to surf shorewards on right or left veering surf, away from the swimmers’ ‘safe’ channel. The designers of Newquay's Fistral Bay's artificial reef, using an already available and complete database of all The World’s surfing beaches’ features, their underwater contours and floors etc., could design a layout of reefs to create any desired size/type of waves up to some 30-feet high and designed to match anything that might naturally occur in even the greatest of The World’s surfing beaches. At this point, though they were designed and built for a different purpose, it may be of value to consider that the 42,000 tonne weight artificial reefs off Lismore, where there are 24 small reefs - 12 square and 12 hexagonally-shaped reefs - were constructed from some 1.25 million 40 kg blocks, made from Glensanda Quarry aggregate by-products and of cement and fly ash and that the complete set of reefs cost but £1.2 million, 80% of the reefs' costs coming from Foster Yeoman at Glensanda, 15% from European funding sources and 5% from the local enterprise company. Though Newquay's Fistral Bay's artificial reef has yet to come to fruition, an artificial reef is currently (2008) under construction at Bournemouth's Boscombe Bay and, in view of the foregoing, about the Lismore reef, the details may be of some interest. The designer of the Boscombe surf reef is Dr Kerry Black, managing director of a company called ASR Ltd. and Dr Black is also director of an Australian research institute and a top research scientist in the esteemed National Institute of Water and Atmosphere in New Zealand. He has published over 400 scientific documents and written or been the subject of hundreds of popular articles, television interviews and newspaper articles and he edited The World’s first scientific journal issue on offshore reefs for coastal protection and reefs for recreation, surf reefs. Following a bathymetric survey, to re-measure the seabed floor and determine the final position of the reef, it was decided that the reef in Bournemouth would be located to the east of Boscombe Pier, about 2.5 kilometres from Bournemouth Pier and that the submerged reef would take up an area of approximately one hectare, about the size of a football pitch, which will be 225 metres from the shoreline. 2

The reef is being built from large, specialist, geo-textile, ecologically inert, bags, ordered from Queensland, Australia, along with webbing material, will be pumped hard with sand, the sandbags, weighing up to 2,500 tonnes each and the biggest being up to 70 metres long, 2 metres high and 6 metres wide. The reef is being built in two layers, the bottom layer, sitting on the sea bed, consisting of three elements, followed by a second layer of two elements that lies on top of the bottom bags. The bottom layer elements consist of three individual sections, a geo-mat, to minimise the structure sinking into the sea, it then overlain by a huge web of specially sewn material, that looks like large seat belts, on top of which are placed the sandbags. They are then tied together so that they can be lifted and placed on the seabed as one large element, a crane folding this parcel into a 'concertina' and loading it onto a barge to be transported to the reef site. Prior to the placing of the first set of bags, temporary anchors have to be set around the perimeter of the surf reef site, these anchors then used for locating and securing the five bag elements during the fill process. Once each reef element has been attached to the anchors by divers, the positioning webbing is tensioned from the barge, to ensure the reef sits uniformly and in the right position and the bags are then pumped in strict sequence with sand fed from a sand pump located on the beach, taking sand stockpiled previously. The sequence is repeated twice more for the bottom layer of the reef. The top layer of the reef consists of two larger sets of bags secured to locating webbing but without the geo-mat layer, these larger bags sitting firmly on top of the earlier-positioned sand bags. The sequence previously described is followed again and, when the filling phase has been completed, divers will remove the location straps attached to the anchors and the temporary anchors will be removed. Bournemouth's reef at Boscombe has been designed to provide a grade 5 wave on a day with good swell, which is in the challenging range, a 'Hawaii Pipeline' is a grade 8 wave and the reef will in fact make three sets of waves, first the waves on the reef itself and then two more good sets of waves on the banks inshore, towards the beach - In calm weather, the reef will create a 'lagoon' along the shoreline. In its wisdom, Bournemouth Borough Council advises that the new reef will not be suitable for everyone, 'the reef being 225 metres out to sea from the promenade, surfers will need to be physically fit and competent to even ride out to the reef and some surfers will undoubtedly be out of their depth and the waves may be quite challenging. Beginners will be recommended to take the advice of regulated surf schools to find out the best places to surf along Bournemouth coast but, the RNLI will provide safety cover on the reef 364 days of the year and, it will be free to surf the reef'. Interestingly, having previously noted that the cost of the Lismore reef was about £1.2m, the final, 2008-projected, cost of Bournemouth's Boscombe reef is given as £1.4m, just £200,000 more ! According to Bournemouth Borough Council, a 'Council Economic Impact Assessment' has suggested that "the reef will create an image value of £10 million per annum resulting from a variety of publications and media interest on a national scale. It would generate a huge stimulus for equipment retailing, surf-training schools, accommodation, drink and food and would create an estimated 60 full-time and 30 part-time jobs, a recent survey in Cornwall revealing that surfers spend 8% more than other holidaymakers' ! Whereas Bournemouth's expectations are almost certainly 'high', if one supposes that given just 30 surfers/supporters each day, an extra 10,000 people a year, might be drawn into Kintyre over the course of any year and if each of these surfers/supporters spent just £10 a day in and around Kintyre, then some £100,000 a year would be added to Kintyre's revenues and the reef’s cost could be 'nominally' written off in around 15 years. Anyone with a serious interest in the concept and design of 'artificial reefs' should look at http://www.asrltd.co.nz/downloads_reef.htm and might browse through the 'Google Search' list at http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=ASR+Bournemouth+Artificial+Surf+Reef&meta=

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