The Tide is High….

…but we’re holding on…!!

A call from Patricia to tell me to get my camera and go take a look at the main beach, piqued my interest enough to get me off my backside and onto a bicycle to go and see what she was on about…

The tides here on Parrot Cay have been unusually high for the past week, and none of the locals could explain why there seemed to be very little difference between high and low tide…

As I cycled past Lake Shambhala which is just a 100 metres from our apartment, I quickly realised that something BIG had occurred during the previous night’s high tide…

The track skirts the lake was completely underwater…!! I wondered where the sharks that inhabit this lake had got to….!!

I cycled around to Guest Dock and was amazed to see that the concrete road leading to it was underwater as well… I sloshed my way through several inches of water, and was stopped in my tracks by my first view of the dock…

Guest Dock was completely underwater…!! And the tide had been going out for a few hours at this point…!!

At high tide, these boats had been floating above the decking… The tide had dropped at least 2 feet by the time I took this photo…

The Activities Dock had not fared any better…!!

I cycled to the other side of the island to see what the effect of this extraordinary high tide had on the main beach…

I was gob-smacked at the sight that greeted me once I got there…

The main beach at Parrot Cay was all but gone…!!

Where once more than 60 beach loungers and 30 beach umbrellas had stood, now all that remained was the wreckage of what had once been a pristine beach scene….!!

The wooden walkway leading onto the beach had been washed away entirely…!!

And while I stood there in awe of the changes that had taken place around me, the occasional big wave still rushed in to batter the beach some more…!! This was a few hours AFTER high tide…!!

Judging by the seaweed left up on the deck, I estimate that the tide must have been at least 8 to 10 feet higher than normal….!!

None of the locals I spoke to had ever seen tides this high and one of the security guards who had been living in the area for over 30 years, had ever experienced anything like it…

It seems as though a combination of the after effects of Tropical Storm Sandy, which had passed to the east of us just a few days ago, combined with the full moon and unusually high spring tides, had made for the massive tides we were experiencing…

I stood watching huge waves pounding the outer reef half a mile away, and was thankful that the reef was bearing the full force of the waves… Had those waves come marching onto the shore at Parrot Cay, I have no doubt that the damage here would have been far greater…

All things considered, the island got off lightly…!!