Concrete Ship
Started: 2024-10-28 20:49:32
Submitted: 2024-10-28 23:06:21
Visibility: World-readable
SS Palo Alto at Seacliff State Beach
At the beginning of October I went to visit the concrete ship slowly disintegrating in Monterey Bay.
The first week of October was hot and dry in Santa Cruz, with daily high temperatures hitting 90 degrees in the middle of the afternoon, then cooling down to somewhat-more-reasonable overnight lows. (Some nights it only got as low as 65 degrees, which meant we left our whole-house fan on all night to try to get the house as cool as we could before the next day.) By Saturday I was ready to go to the beach; but rather than hit one of our many local beaches I biked to Seacliff State Beach in Aptos. The beach is 12 minutes away by car; or 45 minutes by bike. I biked through Capitola and along the eucalyptus-lined bluffs above the ocean, past New Brighton State Beach, past the entrance station and up to the edge of the cliff overlooking the concrete ship.
For a hundred years when the concrete ship was parked in the shallow water of Monterey Bay, until the winter storms in early 2023, there was a pier leading out from the shore to the ship. That pier had been slowly collapsing into the water, until a huge wave destroyed the end of the pier and left the rest of the pier in a precarious state, forcing the state park to demolish what was left.
I biked down the road leading to the beach, past the visitor's center at the bottom of the cliff, and along the edge of the beach towards Rio del Mar. A thin marine layer clung to the ocean, bringing down the temperature and shrouding the disintegrating remains of the concrete ship in fog.
The last time I visited Seacliff State Beach was a year ago; since then the visitor's facilities had been substantially repaired; the wall at the edge of the parking lot lined with picnic tables was in better shape, and the restrooms had been repaired. (Here's the same view a year earlier, after pier had been demolished and its debris removed.)
With the pier removed, I could get a straight view of the remains of SS Palo Alto, now breaking into pieces with rebar sticking out of the hull, providing a perch for pelicans and cormorants as they fish for their dinner in Monterey Bay.
The pier is gone but the concrete ship remains for now, until one day when it too slips beneath the waves and the century-old relic is lost forever.
