I think it's time we take back the inlet. It's been 25 years of wreckage for first peak. I started a petition as such that will accommodate the fishermen as well. Part of this will be crowd funded by surfers, and part by the counties.

https://www.change.org/p/flori...-inlet-jetty-extension

Let's convince the counties that it's in the best interest for the local economy by convincing the WSL to bring back a WCT event to first peak every few years or so. The idea would be that one every 3 years, either Trestles or Hossegor will be substituted with a Sebastian Inlet slot.

This is something that would need to be a community effort, so please sign this petition, and spread the word. I'm certain that we can do this.

The inlet used to be the heart and soul of surfing in Brevard County.

Email the county commissioners and the WSL and let them know we are serious.

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 11:20 AM by TunnelVision

I'd be down to have KOP back

The jetty is for navigational safety, fishing is a byproduct.



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I was right.

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 05:50 AM by Cole

Are you an extension of this?

http://www.firstpeak.org/

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I was right.

Well, I didn't know about that, but how far has it gotten? Not suggesting it's not valid, just saying, we gotta really get a petition going so we can show the counties how much interest there is in this, and that surfers themselves would go a long ways to get the prior First Peak back. Gotta have a very specific plan. Determine funding needed. Determine how much counties will pay for. Get a crowdfund amount to accomplish, and if that portion is funded, county funding kicks in. Get volunteers to help with pier construction. I'm certain thousands of surfers would be willing to volunteer on that project, as well as donate. $500 for pass into demolition day party. 2000 allowed into party. That's a 1M right there. If we could keep destruction / construction costs under $2M, then that party alone could crowdfund half of the project. I believe quite strongly that 2000 people from the area would donate $500 or more to get into party. Maybe we can convince Kelly to come and hang, and get Jack Johnson to play. We'll fly him and in pay him something as well. You know, put out flyers all over the place at common beaches for petition to start with, as well as surf shops and surf web sites. Very easy to spread this in surfing community. You know, when you just donate to a project you don't know if it will happen, then your money may be gone with no action, but if county says OK *IFF* crowdfunding happens for 50% of the budget, else crowdfunding money is returned to donators if crowdfunding goal is not met, therefore, it's easier to make a commitment because you know if your money is taken, that means the deal is going through. We'll give Kelly first wave at revived first peak (tip of the hat to the true king of the peak). We can have surfboard manufacturers each provide a surfboard for giveaway which promotes them and incentives people to spend the 500. Other giveaways as well.

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 11:16 AM by TunnelVision

Deja vu thread.

Perhaps, but I'm motivated. It takes a lot to accomplish this, but only if you get people really truly psyched on it, and not just, "someone's trying to bring back first peak" - we literally all have to get involved. Talking to people at surfing beaches, shops, etc, etc. Even other counties.

Get the WSL involved. Get Surfline involved. Get Chuck to put up something on main page. Wavecaster too. Local surf shops - quiet flight, ron jon, catalyst, longboard house, etc. reach out to other counties. Get Red Dog involved. Get Surf Station involved. Have surfer magazine and surfing magazine write up articles about the project. They are always looking for good content.

Biggest point is it can not be a one man effort. It has to involve thousands to say, we've had it. We need this back. Let's push forward every day in some manner.

Could have an app where we coordinate on tasks. Little tasks. One at a time. No big thing, but a checklist and assignment. Such as reach out to 10 demolition companies to get estimates. Reach out to 10 pier construction companies to get estimate on partial construction (driving the pilings in) to be finished by community volunteers - sides of pier / walking planks, etc. Print up flyers, bring to local shops to ask to put on window. Lots of little tasks. Go out to local bars and talk to people about the project. If we get 50 people involved handling tasks, we can make some real progress.

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 10:42 AM by TunnelVision

never realized or heard anything about navigational safety. what were the issues before hand? currents, or is there a big light at end. If light needed, just put an light up? Were there a lot of accidents beforehand that were corrected? I personally wonder if that was just a ploy by fishermen. I personally don't buy that it fixed navigational safety, but perhaps I don't know the full story either. Do you have any links to any info on that? Would be interesting to do a comparison of accidents beforehand and afterwards to see if it really made any difference.

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 09:27 AM by TunnelVision

I'm sure there are articles and experts who've covered this point, but I'm still baffled as to why the county would willingly just basically throw away so much revenue by not trying to redesign the peak. Remember how much revenue in entry, beachgoing, contests, and camping were due to the peak's draw? I cannot believe that's not an incentive to contract an engineering firm to bring FL's most famous wedge.

Piss up a rope. Shout at the wind.

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Dora Hates You

It's not the extension itself that dissipated the wave energy.

It's the slope of the new wall, which doesn't reflect waves like the old one did.

So, are you just saying a correcting needs to be made with slope? I think the whole thing causes issues. The jetty was short enough beforehand that the main "wedging" happened right before the sandbar. If you wedge too early, it just sends waves too far away from jetty, kinda like Ponce Inlet jetty, which pretty much doesn't work anything like Sebastian as far as waves (tho it has it's day for sure). To be guaranteed that same wave, gotta return the jetty to the way it was (as close as possible)

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 09:43 AM by TunnelVision

SPOT ON! I believe it's the new slope. Nothing for the wave to rebound/refract offf!

Edited: 01/15/2021 at 05:16 PM by Cloudsurfer

done (both)

me also thinks there is too much sand in the general area since the started all the beach nourishments to the north.. about the same time they rebuilt the jetty.

Perhaps, but mostly just where the wedging off the jetty happens. Current jetty extension messes it all up. The short jetty wedged right before sandbar in such a perfect way

We would have thought that this horse was sufficiently beaten in years past.

Sebastian Inlet State Park is controlled by the State of Florida; not so much by the associated counties.

The jetty is there for "Navigation", really nothing more. The walkway portions were enhanced for fishing, etc., but, were not put there for any specific purposes.

In the Big Scheme of Things, surfers and surfing there rank well below such things such as "tick removal".

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Dora Hates You

Very likely too much sand. It is of course a valuable resource to the south.

The tip of the north jetty is an established habitat for Goliath Grouper and I'm pretty sure they are still considered a threatened species.

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I was right.

I was wrong, they are considered a Critically Endangered species. The tip of that jetty isn't going anywhere. I'd look into plan B.

Perhaps get with the First Peak people.

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I was right.

I had nothing to do with this

5/5. Well played, Sir.

It's gone, and never coming back. If you missed it, sorry, cause it was epic.

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"If I say it's safe to surf this beach, captain, then it's safe to surf this beach!"

Sounds like you really don't want this. Too much of a fisherman to want this.

Thanks for the morning laugh, I really needed it!

Here's a Surfer Mag story from a few years ago, with a Q&A with the First Peak Project guy:

https://www.surfer.com/features/the-first-peak-project/

True, I love to fish the Inlet, butt I'm a south side dude. The tip of the north jetty is a cluster f@#k when the bite is on.

I said I was playing the Devil's advocate, so I'll continue: The WSL. They have never bothered with contests at the Inlet before, so why start now? Well, there was the Stubbies in the early 80's that had some big names, but unless you are taking about entry level/qualifying contests, there has been nothing. Not to mention that surf contests have never brought much of a crowd to Sebastian.



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I was right.

Edited: 12/31/2020 at 06:35 AM by Cole

It would take convincing them, but I don't think too hard. The inlet is the perfect spot for a competition because it's so close to beach, and the waves are great aground september and october. So, just give the locals at Hossegor their wave back 1 out of every 3 years, and bring the comp to SI. With so many surfers in Florida, I think it's actually quite an easy sell to get them back here. We're their audience.

I think it would be quite easy to get 2000 people to donate 500 and get passes to "blast it back" party, and their names would be forever inscribed on the rocks

Edited: 12/31/2020 at 02:08 PM by TunnelVision

You underestimate what a group of people can accomplish

matt_t hit the nail on the head. There is more to first peak than just the jetty configuration. Over the years , no make that decades sand has accumulated on both the north and south sides which has been detrimental to the surf on both sides. To much sand on the north side generally causes a "overwedge" condition for First Pieak (bad). Further aggravating the situation is the sand at Monster Hole has moved so far out that it causes the swell to refract at to steep of an angle into the jetty on the north side which again results in the dreaded "overwedge effect". In addition to the unfavorable refraction it also sucks swell energy away from the north side, and creates to some extent a "wave void". It's a bummer such a great wave is gone, little did we know when we were kids surfing there how lucky we were. Oh, Monster Hole was way better back then as well, it was "X" mark the spot take off on every set, and had more wave speed since deep water was feeding the shoulders. There was even a really good right off the tip of the south jetty that broke sometimes on a big north swell. I remember a article in Surfing Magazine titled something like "Florida in 250 words or less", I think GP might have penned it. It had some insane pics of the north side and Monster Hole. One of the best pictures was of Dick Catri on a large right at Monster Hole, just perfect, also a really good shot of Buzzy Fouyeh(last name spelling is wrong) on a classic first peak wedge. There was another pulled back shot take from the bridge that shows a insane thick single wedge with an empty lineup. It was really good early on even before they "capped" the jetty. This would have been about 1972 I think, (a little before my time there). There was another pictorial in one of the magazines of "Morning Side Drive" by Allen Margolis(RIP) with great pics of Greg Loehr, Jeff Crawford(switch foot) and Doug Wright(probably mid Seventies). I might be getting a little carried away here...but I remember the first time I surfed it at age 13 or so, my friends dad drove us down from Cocoa Beach and it was so different ....really deep breaking almost on the sand compared to CB. It must have been high tide went we got there...but I'll never forget the first "First Peak" wave I saw after the tide had dropped some (it wouldn't even break at all on high tide it was so deep). Seemingly out of no where this peak jacks up like nothing my crumb snatching eyes had ever seen before and Dennis Bub drops in back side cranks a hard bottom turn and then crushes the lip so fast that I was completely blow away....

Edited: 12/30/2020 at 05:58 PM by grdsurf

thanks for the details! My most vivid memory is from the mid 90s in late fall. It was overhead and only myself and Bill Hartley were out. He was sitting 50ft off the tip of the jetty.. almost in the channel.. He was back-dooring the tube in front of the boulders and then into a couple few mega power snaps. I've never seen it break like that since. And I've never seen anyone surf that wave the way Hartley did that night! Some old schoolers told me it would happen occasionally.. and Hurricane Hugo in '89 broke that way.

Maybe a sharper edge on the jetty would help. Maybe overtime worm rock will fill in and help.
One reason I think the sand is the main culprit.. First peak still broke correctly during the extension and for a time afterwards.
If you go back and look a the mamma G (RIP) pics from early/mid 2000's... it was still a classic wedge.

TunnelVision, stoked on your enthusiasm but I think you're barking up the wrong tree. The additional platform that was added to the jetty during the rebuilding of the jetty's crib structure during the 2000 - 2002 project was built on top of an already exposed rock pile which was there since the previous structure was completed around 1970.

The Sebastian Inlet Tax District's website has a great gallery on their site (SITD.us) under the "History" section. You'll see a photo from 1970 showing the rock pile that I'm referencing and then another direct overhead shot from 1998 showing the same configuration just prior to the rebuild project. You can take that shot from 1998 and then lay a more recent shot from Google Earth over top of it with some transparency to see what I mean.

Well, however the specific change happened, it did mess it up. I would have to see aerial photo comparison, but from what I remember, it's much longer now, and even if there were rocks there, there weren't all the extra cement pilings.

been stated before...raise right hand...repeat "The inlet is for navigational purposes, it does not matter to the tax district if the surfers' lost the wave next to the Jetty, they still show up and pay to enter regardless"...

Edited: 12/31/2020 at 04:42 AM by SurferMic

haha. it's true. they don't give a shit about surfers much, but ...

When the WSL comes to town, they do care about that.
It has quite an impact on local economy.
In order to make this move forward, gotta convince them it's in state's and county's best interest, which of course, in the end is just the people of the county and state, so could be restated as being in the people's best interest regardless of whether they surf or not. We need reasons for people to come here and visit.

It's also why I'm proposing 50% crowdfunded, and the govt pays rest whether it be state or county/counties. I think we can get most of that crowdfunding via the demolition party entry fee.

Edited: 12/31/2020 at 05:44 AM by TunnelVision

Here's the comparison. First image is from 1998. I've added a red outline of the current jetty crib structure for reference. The image then transitions to a Google Earth image which I believe is from January 2019. As you'll see, the additional platform that was added to the end was over the existing rock pile I had previously mentioned.

Wow, how's this for interesting. In 1999 there was a 1-to-35 scale replica of First Peak constructed to study how the new jetty work would affect wave refraction. They predicted no major changes. Oops!

https://www.researchgate.net/f...eft-and_fig7_228500304

As far as getting surfers to the inlet? It is as, if not more, crowded than ever.

http://2ndlight.com/fusetalk/f...d=197462&enterthread=y

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I was right.

Interesting timing. There looks to be a contest in the overlay image with a crowd of about ten.



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I was right.

Wow, didn't realize extension was that much of it. easy to see how it messed up things. Waves rebound way too early. Wonder how much it would cost to blast all that? Like to smitherenes so nothing to clean up except pull some rebar out afterwards.

Edited: 01/01/2021 at 05:45 PM by TunnelVision

Love the enthusiasm TV, but there will never be a WCT event at SI and that's for the best for a litany of reasons

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"Grip it and rip it"

To be clear, the point of sharing that imagery/analysis was to show that the new platform was built over top of a rock pile that had already been in the water for 30 years. It demonstrates that the addition of this structure on top of that rock pile did not materially impacted swell coming into the First Peak zone. I guess that's water under the bridge at this point though as I see you've already discussed the idea with Dr. Gray.

I thought the main issue was the "Cap" stopped sand transport by stopping the amount of water/sand that gets pushed through the structure and continues south? There used to be a "boom", "boom", "boom" sound you would hear as a set wave was approaching first peak from the tip of the old jetty (indicator that a wave was about to unload)...that sound is gone and it appears like sand is being trapped in the kiddie pool and out to 1st peak. If this is true you would have to dredge out first peak to the kiddie pool? (that will never happen)...I could be very wrong on all of the above

Yeah, for a time afterwards ... because the sand takes time to shift (due to new extension) it didn't occur overnight, but once it got messed up, it doesn't return. Return the jetty to prior dimensions, and the sand will be the way it was. But really, it's where the bounce happens, and will never happen with new jetty

Instead of wasting time in a 2ndlight thread, you would be better off kayaking cinderblocks a bit offshore of your local break. Line up with a marker on the dune and drop them.

After your 80,000th cinderblock drop, you should have a nice artificial reef producing an Aframe on the right swell.

This will take less time than waiting for any changes at 1st Peak (or a decent skatepark to be built beachside)

remember, we are in Brevard County.. the place that thought it would be a good idea to put bowling pins in the middle of the road up and down A1A



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Zzzzzzz.. Zzzzzzz.. Braaaaaapp!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

So true.

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Waiting for waves is ok......most people spend their lives waiting for nothing.

I think we'd all like to see the peak back in action, but I think you might be underestimating the size and scope of the project, and the bureaucracy.

Here's the annual report of the inlet from 2019. Any proposed changes would probably take hundreds of thousands of dollars and years, just in the studies. But, since you've got so much energy for the idea, you should try getting in contact with any of these report writers. They could probably point you in the right direction. They're all at FIT.

STATE OF THE INLET REPORT 2019: An Assessment of Inlet Morphologic Processes,
Shoreline Changes, Sediment Budget, and Beach Fill Performance

Thanks, will do. Great resource

LOL no kidding.. TunnelV, be careful getting the county folks involved.. we may end up with bowling pins sticking out of the inside at the inlet

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Zzzzzzz.. Zzzzzzz.. Braaaaaapp!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

It would be easier to get Kelly just to build a pool with a first peak type wave. Many LARGER problems in our county to put effort into than this!!!

Talked to James at sitd. nice guy.
Kinda didn't think this would be likely ...
Studies needed.
Issues with sand changes, and sand in the river ...
idk, I don't think I'm gonna be able to make it happen
he didn't stop me from pushing forward, but didn't
think a study would likely get approved.
project halted for me.

Edited: 01/04/2021 at 12:00 PM by TunnelVision

It's all the sand re-nourishment projects not the jetty project that ruined 1st Peak. There was a study done about the bathy changes around Sebastian Inlet during the same time 1st Peak died. Sand left the 1st Peak zone and re-located to Monster Hole. Now Monster Hole pulls all of any strong swell away from 1st Peak. The new jetty wedged/broke fine for a couple years. It's not a wedge timing or wedge creation issue; it's a no swell or sandbar for it to focus on issue. Massive/catastrophic issue. If they don't do any beach re-nourishment for a long time it could come back though.

Hello!!!!

No, Monster Hole Does Not "pull" any swell from anywhere.

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Dora Hates You