out and about - 2017
15 November 2017 .............. Totally terminal stopper
Cycling across the Stanley Embankment this afternoon, and there was the most amazing stopper on the outflow from the Inland Sea - it was just about low tide in Holyhead Bay, and the Inland Sea would have been quite a bit higher, so there was a strong outward current, flowing over the end of the ramp and dropping down.
The drop down into the stopper would have been about 600 - 800 mm`s, and it would be well into the top ten of totally terminal stoppers I have ever seen.
Most of the width was a classic quite rough tapered backflow into the V, over on the right there was quite a significant pillow, which was flowing sideways down into the backflow.
If you got stuck in it - you weren`t going anywhere !
I came back across Stanley Embankment maybe an hour or so later, and it was still there, just as pronounced.
I don`t know much about it, maybe paddling through the tunnel at any level is a no no - I know that a seriously vicious life threatening wave forms inside the tunnel during the flood tide, and as well as that, it is quite clear that paddling through the tunnel at lower tide levels is a big no - no - no - no !
Maybe not the best of photographs, but it was quite a sight in real life.
PS - I was back over the Stanley Embankment the following afternoon, and mid afternoon just on low tide it was the same magnificent stopper.
A couple of hours later, when the tide level in Holyhead was starting to cover all the sand, and EasyTide suggested it would be a tide height of around 2.1 metres, the stopper was away, and it was turning into a wave.
The sides of the wave were green, the middle section had a pile down to the bottom of the wave - not being a playboaty person, I have no idea if it would have been playable.
The flow was very fast, I don`t think you could have caught the green wave bits.
It was a couple of days before Springs.
It was by now pretty dark, I took this picture, and had do a heap of digital processing on it to make it viewable, but it gives the general idea.
Just for interest, I have now found out the the bay immediately to the north of Stanley Embankment is called Beddmanarch Bay - it is the inner part of, or a continuation of, Holyhead Bay, but has its own name - I think that it is the headland Gorsedd y Penrhyn that separates the two.
Maybe worth adding that because of the restrictions to the tidal flow at both ends of the Inland Sea, high and low water in the Inland Sea lags high and low water in the outside world by an hour or two or three, and both slackwater and the maximum flow rate throught the tunnel will have different timings again.
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