Holding Back the Sea

The rise of the Sea of Cortez The Earth's oceans have risen about three inches over the last 20 years. This may not seem like very much, but when a severe storm coincides with an extreme high tide those extra three inches can mean many feet of cliff devoured by the waves.

In 2022 a pair of 75 mile per hour storms swept the beach where the Cube is situated causing damage to many of the houses in the area. One nearby house lost a portion of its roof; another completely collapsed. Almost all of the houses along the beachfront lost parts of their front yards leaving many crumbling patios and dangling decks. The Cube, which was unoccupied at the time, fared better than most. Apart from some damage to the upstairs cork flooring, the buildings were intact. But what used to be a 45 degree slope of sand down the the beach in front of the Cube was now a ten foot vertical cliff that could only be scaled with a sixteen foot ladder.

Fortunately, beach access was still possible to the North where the land slopes gently down to a wash. But if storms like this were to continue (and they certainly will) the building itself would eventually be at risk. Some neighbors have invested in large sea walls made of concrete and blocks, but we noticed that a common solution on to beach erosion used in California is a pile of large boulders—known as rip-rap. It occurred to us that Santos, the local bulldozer operator and cement block supplier, might be able to obtain large boulders from the foothills of the nearby mountains and haul them to the base of the cliff in front of the Cube.

And so it came to be. In all, ten truckloads of large boulders were deposited at the cliff face, forming a barrier that will—if luck permits—keep the Sea of Cortez at bay for the foreseeable future.