Sandbar Sundays, explained for the uninitiated
Every coastal community develops its own informal Sunday ritual and ours is the Sandbar. If you’ve been on the bay near the Pass on the right tide and the right Sunday — May through September is peak — you’ve seen it. Hundreds of boats anchored in a slow arc. Coolers in the shallows. Speakers. Kids on inflatables. A dog or two. The Sandbar is on the bay-side of Perdido Pass when the tide draws down a wide, flat shoal that’s barely a foot deep — wadeable, but on a boat — and the boats raft up to it. Nobody owns it. Nobody runs it. It just happens.
A few rules that apply, none of which are written down:
Don’t anchor on top of someone. The geometry is rafting, not parking. If your bow is pointing at another boat’s stern at 15 feet, you’re too close. Twenty feet on a slack tide; more if there’s wind.
Pack out everything. The Sandbar has no trash service because the Sandbar does not officially exist. Whatever you bring leaves with you. Empty cans go back in the cooler. Cigarette butts go in your pocket. The first volunteer Sunday cleanup of the season happens in May and is its own social occasion.
The tide turns. That shoal you walked out on at noon is in three feet of water at four. Watch the lines on the boats and watch where the deepest part of the bar is now, not where it was an hour ago. If you don’t know how to read a tide, find someone who does and stand near them.
No glass. Not a state law everywhere but it’s the Sandbar law. Cans, plastic, koozies.
Music is shared, not imposed. The volume is a conversation between boats. If the boat next to you turns theirs up, you’ve got two choices. If your boat is the one everyone else is unhappy with, you’ll know.
The Coast Guard does come through. Wear the kid life jackets. Have the registration. Don’t be the boat that ruins it for everyone.
The Sandbar isn’t on any tourist itinerary because there’s no way to sell tickets to a sandbar. But if you can talk your way onto a friend-of-a-friend’s center console on a Sunday afternoon in July, you’ve found one of the best free experiences on the Gulf Coast.
— Kathy