Although the county was able to quickly reopen Cape San Blas Road to traffic again by late Monday afternoon after closing it at 10 a.m., the rocks at Stumphole took quite a thumping and FDOT will hopefully make repairs quickly. I saw three of their crew members out yesterday with measuring equipment so hopefully that will be the case.
I can’t stress enough how well the beach restoration did its job. I only wish the storms could have held off just a few weeks longer to allow the entire project to have been completed in front of everyone’s homes. Paula Pickett, Executive Director of the Tourist Development Council, echoed this sentiment:
” . . . we are very pleased with the performance of the beach. There was certainly some loss, though we do expect the majority of sand to be in the system still and come back on shore within the next week or so. This is assuming that there are no further storms to take it away. The escarpments (clifting) of the sand was minimum and the waves’ impact was held to a minimum due to the gradual sloping of the shoreline, as opposed to the previous flat beach that allowed the waves to basically cut into the duneline”.
“I personally feel great losses were avoided by having the beach in place and can’t wait for that level of protection to be along the entire coastline”.