TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Sunset - Beach Sand

Just got back from trip to Jules Bakery. As we've been talking about, big progress over at Maho Beach. There were actually quite a few loungers out by Sunset there today. Saturday it was all rock there. As Louise said in another post, over 15K people on cruise ships on the island. Sunset and the whole beach was wall to wall people. Some of our group wanted to go there for lunch today. I just told them they should consider another day.

Just looked at webcam. Thats more sand than I've seen last 2 months which isn't much. Lots of rocks still showing and people sitting on rocks.

Yeah, definitely not a good day to try to eat there.

In the long term beaches are essentially 'temporary' features that can come and go based on a variety of different things. By far the number one cause of beach erosion is strong waves and storms that wash up and deposit sediment on the shoreline, or take it away out to sea. As climate change progresses, the belief is that tropical and sub-tropical storms will increase in their intensity and the stronger the storms the greater the damage. Where I live on the Great Lakes we have a beautiful peninsula with 11 fresh water beaches. But, when the winter storms are severe the amount of beach erosion is stunning. To combat this, we have sand replenishment programs based on state funding that occurs in May and June and this helps tremendously. One other thing that was added years ago was a series of stone breakwaters several hundred yards off shore. These also help, though they can be perceived as an 'eye sore' to some (especially when watching an evening sunset). Breakwaters could be of some use on St. Maarten, but IMO wouldn't be worth the cost or effort -- especially when a powerful hurricane comes crashing in. Maybe if we can slow climate change in the future we can turn around things like massive beach erosion and unsightly sargassum sea grass outbreaks. Maybe.

First time I noticed lounge chairs on the beach in a long time.

Same here.

They were on the rocks! lol....we drove by after needing some last minute ingredients from the Maho Market. I laughed at chairs on rocks.

Four ships in today WAS CRAZY! It was tough to drive in/out of Beacon Hill.

This morning they had one way traffic directed by police, as they were clearing sand. HUGE pile in front of Driftwood taking up several parking spaces. I believe that people came from Sunset and got some sand from that pile last night.??

Would LOVE to see a time lapse video of all this. It REALLY has changed from even just a few days ago. I look at it daily to get my "SXM fix". LOL

go to the Driftwood !!!!

I merged the two topics as it was getting repetitive and both pretty much saying the same thing.

I have the last 9 days saved and wanted to wait a little longer to put it together. I also have to figure out how to do it. LOL!’

Try this. 1st attempt at a time lapse video. It doesn’t show the actual dates so I need to fix that.

https://youtu.be/pcJoHu-Bcdg

That's kind cool....

And it looks like even more sand back today.
And now about an hour later there are workers there with shovels moving sand OFF the road where there are rocks. Looks like it is coming back for now.

Beach is coming back real fast today!! Probably the owner of the chairs is paying for it.

Yes, we've been here since the 27th and every day a very noticeable difference with the beach coming back. It's been terrible driving through there though, between the people and the daily deposits of sand in the road it's been a challenge getting in and out. Every day since we've been here, they've had to clear the roads with the loader. Finally as we went out last night, they are just parking the loader over by Driftwood.

As Wingman says...this has been everyday. Yesterday was a nightmare, with 4 ships and cruisers milling about in the dang road as well. sitting on the ledge with their legs dangling into the road. Impossible to navigate along with BUSES!

Beach Kitten--Wow, that's some big piles of sand!

Wow, huge difference between before that, and Sunday and Monday! Cool.

Looks like they are trucking it in as they have at other beaches in the past. Lots of sand was trucked in to Royal Palm years back when they dredged Big Bay.

Correct and it was some pretty crappy sand until nature cleaned it up. If anything, I would guess they are trucking away from Maho if it is going onto the road.
BTW, 3 rows of chairs by Sunset right now.

Good to see.

Amazing amount of sand now, versus what it was, at the beginning of this week!

Yep and the usual morons walking 3-4 abreast in the lane of traffic.

And texting same time.

Also any status on sand at Coupecoy?

I would suggest starting a new topic for that.

I was watching the webcam very early this morning and there was a front loader moving sand from the Driftwood side to Sunset.
At times the road was blocked and one lane for both directions.
There was already some chairs out at Sunset and the front loader was trying to create a level area by the road for the chairs.