Surfing Waves

Just got back from a week freeezing my @rse off in the UK to the slightly warmer canary islands yesterday. Got the flat sorted from a week away, rather than just grabbing the board and heading down to the beach, you know unpacked, got the washing on, cleaned the mould out of the fridge...............
Finally got my board in the van and thought I'd sneak out for a crafty sunset surf about 5 o'clock. Got to the car park, checked the conditions, windy but not too bad, certainly good enough for a splash around after a week away, got changed waxed board, tried to contain my self by walking from carpark and not running, walked over first part of reef to find it all covered, and yes I do mean covered in bog paper, and everything that goes with it. It has rained here over the last 48 hours, and that doesn't happen very often, but when it does no touriists sit on the beach, so the sewage works take the oppourtunity to pump more crap than normal. So I turned around and headed back to my van. But even so, there were still about 10 guys in surfing.
The water must have been filthy, it smelt disgusting.
So it's not all sunshine and smiles here.

Jeez! Thats just plain wrong! any groups who do anything about that sort of sh!t (pun intended) over there? Anyone you can take up the issue with to stop it happening?

Haha, this is normal in socal. Rain after surfing is like surfing in your toilet.

Thats nasty... and breaking EU Bathing water directives (as slack as they are). Report it!

keef,
Exactly where was this? Sounds terrible.
billie

pkbum wrote:Haha, this is normal in socal. Rain after surfing is like surfing in your toilet.

i went surfing in Ocean Beach San Diego about a day or so after a heavy rain, and lets just say i got more sick than I have been in probably 8yrs.
my whole trip was pretty much ruined, and i was sick by the next day. woke up feeling like i had a horrible flu. but none the less i still enjoyed some st. patricks day in the gaslamp district.

im on the south coast in the UK and the water is literally like a muddy puddle, if you cup your hand of water you cant see your hand in like 1inch or brown dirty water that is the south coast, best tip is not to get it in your eyes! wonder if you can actually catch anything from it? herpes?! I was thinking of taking a sample cos its that bad, does anyone know if you can get someone to test it? maybe SAS?

PapaW wrote:Thats nasty... and breaking EU Bathing water directives (as slack as they are). Report it!

and the EU water pollution directive

id get photos and report it

Rain overloads old combined sewage systems, ie where they have a pipe which takes untreated sewage and rain water to a treatment plant. After heavy rainfall there can be too much flow for the treatment plant to cope with so it by passes the plant and straight to the discharge point in the sea or rivers.
I don't know what Spains set up is, but in the UK if it happened the rain and out of date sewage systems would be blamed for breaking the EU Bathing Beach Directive limits, (if it is designated a bathing beach and during the bathing beach season).
It sound as if this is whats happening and I imagine that they'd have no real plans to update the system as it would only happen a few times a year in the Canaries.
Or it could be something broken in the system, either way these pipes are usually shorter than the proper discharge pipe, so you get all the crap in shore if tides are wrong.
My advice, don't surf after very heavy rain. You also get all the nasties off roads and fields etc.
I think I've said it before, waste watter can be treated to drinking water levels, but they only way to do that is to increase tax. Now we might be happy for that to happen, but unfortunately we are a small minority in the vast scheme of things.

Phil wrote:

PapaW wrote:Thats nasty... and breaking EU Bathing water directives (as slack as they are). Report it!

and the EU water pollution directive

id get photos and report it

Ands they'd laugh a you. Canary Islands are not part of the EU.

They are part of spain....