send in the drones

It is Good Friday.  That means I will be off to church this afternoon to celebrate one of the central themes of my faith.

Good Friday also means that holy week will be in full swing here on the beach.  So, I decided to take a look at the reclaimed beach where the holiday crowds will spend most of their day in Barra de Navidad.  Before the beach is covered with people.

Apparently, the company heading up the engineering project had the same idea.  This honcho brought his camera-laden drone to the malecon to get a predator's-eye view of the company's work.

It took a bit of fiddling to get it airborne.  But, when it was up, it was a thing of beauty.  And quite swift.  Too swift for the remote control.

Two of the drone's rotors snagged a palm frond.  The frond was far worse for the wear.  It almost looked as if it had been subjected to a impromptu demonstration by recent graduates of the Santa Monica Macrame Society.

The drone went back to the office -- and I strolled out on the jetty to get a better view of the project.

The engineering idea was to create a false reef parallel with the beach to reduce the erosive power of the waves.  Most of those bags of sand and concrete that constitute the reef have been in place for some time.  The project was completed with the addition of two large tubes of sand that run from the beach out into the surf.  Forming a perforated rectangle.

The tubes look like beached whales to me.  But they appear to be working by diverting the power of the waves from the beach.

I do not know if it was an intended consequence, but the water inside of the project's rectangle took on the look of a Maytag washer during our heavy wave activity.

When I headed out on the jetty, I noticed two men standing at the end looking through what I took to be motion picture cameras.  I was wrong.

They were surveyors.  Each was sighting to a man in the water holding a surveyor rod topped by a lollipop reflector.

I am fascinated by this type of work.  So, I sat down, pulled out my binoculars, and followed along with the process.

Of course, I had no idea how the work was going.  But it was an interesting ballet watching the guys in the water trying to find their footing against the waves while the surveyors on shore took their readings.

This may have been the first time I have seen surveying of water projects.

But all seemed to be well when they packed up their equipment.  The beaches are now free of the construction pieces that have been rumbling across the sand for the past few months.

I suspect our guests are going to approve of their handiwork.