Dog Days of Summer Best Spent at the Beach!

 

When it’s the dog days of summer, the beach is the place to be!  This pair of pooches would probably agree. 

Heat indexes have been in the triple digits for several weeks now. Relief and relaxation can be found at the beach.  

Sullivan’s Island at around noon on Sunday, Aug. 9 had lots of beach for visitors. It was low tide and just perfect conditions, not too crowded, warm, or windy. 

We kept our eye on these dark clouds to the southeast. Fortunately, the rain stayed away. Partly cloudy skies were fine during the three hours we spent in the sand near the old Sand Dunes Beach Club. 

Traffic on the water was on the quiet side until the end of our stay when this long red ship steamed out of Charleston Harbor.

Sometimes these ships look so close to shore that swimmers could 
reach them. But that’s not advisable since the distance is much greater than it looks. 

I was able to get this clear shot of the vessel’s name. Amelia Island is a real place in Florida. It's a barrier island off the Atlantic coast north of Jacksonville, not far from the Georgia border.

According to the interweb, the Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company chose this name to tie its identity to the coastal region where it helps restore and rebuild beaches. Amelia Island’s port of registry is New York, N.Y., as is written on the stern. 

The ship is 346 feet in length, which is a football field plus 15 yards. It is a “trailing suction hopper dredge” designed for beach restoration and renourishment projects. 

 Click to see a video of the ship in action recently near Surfside Beach, S.C.

Amelia Island is just one year old. It was built by Conrad Shipyard in Morgan City, La. Last August it was delivered to Great Lakes Dredge & Dock, which is headquartered in Houston. This summer the nearby Isle of Palms has been undergoing a $30 million beach renourishment project. This ship is likely involved in that. More on the Amelia Island ship here. 

I took these pictures from the comfort of my beach chair with lovely Alesia at my side. My camera is the Canon SX70. A feature of it I love is the superzoom fixed lens allowing me to get tight on faraway subjects. I certainly didn't pay the amount for the camera on the Amazon link just shared. I have had it several years. I think Alesia gave it me as a Christmas or birthday gift, paying maybe a third of the price for the one on Amazon. 

This was the star ship during our previous visit to Sullivan’s Island on July 19. 

Another seafaring vessel with an interesting name. What is the Poland Pearl’s origin story, he wonders? 

The Poland Pearl is part of the 60 ship fleet owned by SMT Shipping, a global maritime transport and logistics group founded in 1990. It is a Dutch company operated by the Voorham family with its world headquarters in Cyprus. 

SMT stands for Ship Management & Transport. All but one of SMT’s 14 general cargo carriers have Pearl in their names: Holland Pearl, Norway Pearl, Canada Pearl, America Pearl, and others. The Poland Pearl name reflects the company’s global reach.

The Poland Pearl, approximately 600 feet in length, is registered in Nassau, Bahamas. It was built in 2015 by Tsuneishi Group Shipbuilding in Zhoushan, China. Tsuneishi Shipbuilding is a Japanese company founded in 1917. 

The ship’s five huge holds carry cargo such as steel beams, logs, lumber, heavy equipment, tractors, sacks of cement, grains, chemicals, etc. General cargo covers a slew of products and equipment.

Late summer like this the area beaches aren’t as crowded with schools soon to reopen and many vacationers already come and done. Parking can be closer and easier too. Unlike other Charleston beaches, Sullivan’s offers free parking, so long as you follow the very specific rules you won't get a ticket. 

The tide was higher during our  July visit but there was still room for our chairs. 

To follow are more boat and beach captures. I like to show compositions with watercraft in the background and people enjoying the water and sand in the foreground. 

The pilot boat Fort Ripley can often be seen plying the harbor waters. Pilot boats are essential to safe navigation of container, chemical and other large cargo ships that go to and from ports. Maritime experts will board ships to guide them safely in waters that can be dangerous, shallow or busy with nautical traffic. Check out this video of a pilot boarding a container ship. It gave me the heebie-jeebies! 

Birds are also something I try to photograph at the beach. A pair of Laughing Gulls came fairly close to our chairs. I liked getting an image with the female (left) and male in the same shot. A Laughing Gull snatched a snack from a woman in the group next to us on the beach. They laughed and were shocked how quickly it happened. Who got the last laugh? The gull, I guess. 

Here we have a Sanderling, a small member of the Sandpiper species. They are also called Sandy Plovers. Quite well-travelled is this bird, breeding in the Arctic regions of North America, then flying all this way to South Carolina for the summer. Amazing range! 

All sorts of things wash ashore on ocean beaches around the world. This is the second time at Sullivan’s Island that we’ve come across something like this. The first time was in February 2022. Here's the link to the Facebook post. 

Is it from a ship? Is it from a dock? It looks 19th century to me. But my query in 2022 on the local Facebook site “Charleston History Before 1945” produced a variety of answers and comments. See one below, perhaps the most plausible one. 

 These rings, iron presumably- what did they hold or tie? 

“The wooden structures you found are known as ship camels, used to breast ship and submarines away from the pier so the piling do not get damaged. They were also used by shipyard workers and ship maintenance folks as a stable platform from which to paint the hull of a ship from the waterline area upwards.” —Jack Harrelson comment “Charleston History Before 1945” Facebook site, Feb. 23, 2022. 

Sullivan’s Island has its mysteries!