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Beach is city's sliver of hope after storms
By STEPHEN RAYMOND Tampa Tribune correspondent
PANAMA CITY BEACH - A dozen oysters on the half shell are 99 cents in one place, $1.95 in another during cocktail hour.These are not the huge, $5 variety in fancy restaurants, but the kind with a sweet, slightly salty Apalachicola taste that doesn't need cocktail sauce or horseradish.
Beach bars and restaurants don't have shills on street corners here, but loudly advertise their oysters on signs in windows.
Panama City Beach businesses are scratching for customers because the beaches here - and businesses near water - took a pummeling last summer. Just the same, business and homeowners are offering up thanks that they still own a sliver of beach front and some are rebuilding feverishly.
Some 600,000 spring breakers didn't seem to know, or care, that Panama City Beach was still bleeding from Hurricanes Erin and Opal when they began their invasion in February, although evidence was everywhere.
The white sand beach squeaking under their bare feet drew these campus lemmings. Warm sun burned their white shoulders, while friends back home struggled in snow and ice to get to classrooms.
From Pensacola to Apalachicola, the picture of destruction is uniform; only the severity varies. Now, in late summer, about 70 percent of accommodations in some areas are habitable.
Up and down the beach, tips of buried palm fronds - tiki hut roofs last year - wave weakly from the sand. They are today's archaeological dig.
Last summer's storms reached out with vicious winds but only raked Panama City Beach with a glancing blow. Residents remember the storm surge. Half of the 18,000 hotel, condo and apartment rooms for tourists were damaged.
The most vibrant industry along the 18 miles of Panama City Beach today is construction, most of it repair. The noise of hammers, saws and backhoes is constant. Out-of-state license plates show the demand for construction workers far exceeds the Panhandle's ability to provide them.
It's strange to look at the ground floor of a condominium or high-rise hotel and see placid Gulf waves lap the shore through glassless doors and windows.
Any buildings reachable by the storm surge is always fair game for destruction. The surge, which in Panama City was about 15 feet above normal, is like a high tide, blown higher as the wind piles water up on shore. When waves break and water recedes something has to give. It's the wave action that destroys slabs in homes, apartments, condominiums; those on pilings driven deep into the ground lose windows, pieces of roof but usually remain standing.
That's what happened to Magnolia RV Park on a partly protected arm of St. Andrews Bay. Storm surge undermined half of its pool, consumed three waterfront sites, and twisted off more than 40 trees.
Aaron Bessant Park, a Panama City Beach public swimming and fishing area, was pummeled but the concrete pier stood. The beach was littered in all directions, a piece of a boat half buried on the shore.
The drive from Grayton Beach south of Fort Walton Beach to Mexico Beach northwest of Apalachicola is one of contrasts. This was the projected landfall for Hurricane Opal before it veered off to slam Navarre Beach.
Grayton Beach, just last year named the most beautiful beach in the world, lost dozens of feet of Gulf frontage and dropped from the social register of pristine beaches as judged by a University of Maryland professor.
Grayton's loss was Central Florida's gain. This year's top 10 beaches included Caladesi Island State Park near Dunedin, which ranked third; and ; Fort DeSoto Park in Pinellas County, which came in eighth.
What were wide Panhandle beaches with soft squeaky sand are now narrow-lipped with little sand between water and dunes. The public dressing room at Grayton is being rebuilt; walkways over the dunes to the beach were washed out and new ones are almost finished. Dunes that nature worked decades to build and top with sea oats were washed away completely in some areas.
The last 450 feet of the fishing pier at St. Andrews State Park was washed away. It was here in a little tide pool above the outgoing tide that thousands of small coquinas sat on top of the sand in 3 inches of water filtering food from the sea that had deserted them.
Some visitors can't resist scooping up the little bivalves with a delicate oysterlike flavor for a delightful broth to go with shrimp cocktail or maybe grilled fish.
U.S. 98 hugs the shoreline to Port St. Joe with parking for bathers and swimmers on the shoulders of the highway. From this narrow parking lot trails lead down to the water or over the dunes.
Dozens of anglers stand in the surf or anchor their rods in plastic hollow pipes driven into the ground at the edge of the surf.
Mexico Beach was selectively spared from major water damage, but the multistory El Governor Motel's first floor was gutted, as were a number of homes too close to the surging sea. The municipal wood pier stood firm.
``The fishing here is great,'' said a bare-headed man in shorts and thongs with white feet and red shoulders. ``The catching, hey, it stinks. Got one cat.''
Presnell's Bayside Marina and RV Resort near Port St. Joe suffered considerable storm damage.
``We lost water and electric to half our sites,'' Barbara Presnell said. ``But we'll have most of them back in service by midsummer.''
Only a few of the 42 sites have shade, ``but that's a blessing,'' she said. ``Mosquitoes are not much problem in the middle of the day and in the afternoon we have a good breeze off the water. Shade encourages the bugs,'' she continued, ``including yellow (horse) and deer flies.''
So those looking for superb fishing camps win a few and lose a few, but a tarp might provide needed shade without slowing down the breeze.
Presnell's is in the midst of Florida's Big Bend bay scallop area. In July and August it is possible to walk out into St. Joseph's Bay at low tide to pick up scallops or to rent a boat and motor for half a day for $50.
There's a catch: a limit of a pint of scallop meat or 2 gallons of unopened scallops per person. Those who like to put meat on the table don't let this stop them.
Anglers wade the flats here, particularly on an incoming tide, to fish for speckled trout and redfish.
St. Joseph Peninsula looks like a barrier island but is a hook into the Gulf from the mainland. It was pummeled.
Single-family homes and condominiums in the Cape San Blasarea were generally built far enough back from the water to escape major damage. Asphalt shingles on some roofs - sheet aluminum seems to be the roof of preference - flew off or folded back, broke and waved listlessly in the breeze.
This is a sparsely developed area. Numerous summer homes were wrecked. In one instance, what looked to be a two- or three- bedroom home was carried by the waves from the Gulf side of what had been a road to 100 yards east of the road.
A football field away to the west half a dozen men stood in the surf fishing while their families poured on suntan lotion. More than a mile of highway was washed out here and cars now drive on what is left of the roadbed.
The popular St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, with 119 sites, shows little damage. It snuggles behind 20-foot dunes under stands of longleaf pine and sand oaks.
