What an unusual phenomenon greeted us at the beach today. Firstly at 8am when we went for our morning beach walk, and then again at mid-day.

I was disappointed when I hadn’t taken my camera in the morning. There had been several people out walking, but we could only see around 30 metres in front of us. It was weird to see people suddenly appearing out of the dense, thick, pea soup fog. The ocean looked eerie – the type of ocean you see in movies into which ghost ships, or Spanish Galleons suddenly materialise, seemingly out of nowhere.

As we were nearing the end of our walk the fog had lifted from the beach, and could only be seen on the horizon out to sea. We came home to do a few chores before packing up our lunch, chairs, beach umbrella,body boards and camera to return to the beach. As we neared the car park we saw what we thought was dense smoke and became concerned about where the fire was. To our stunned surprise we discovered it wasn’t smoke at all. The wind had changed direction and blown the fog back in. The beach was completely blanketed.

I quizzed the life guards – they had seen similar mists before, but only in the early morning, never in the middle of warm 28° day. I didn’t envy them their job today. The mist was heavier than it had been earlier in the morning, with visibility now barely extending to 10 metres.

We sat and watched the surfers for a short time, then headed down to the water with our own body boards. Usually we try and catch the waves near the outer edge of the life saver’s flags. Today, we headed right to the centre, smack bang in front of the surf life savers hut. Whilst it was still fun, and there were definitely some good waves, it didn’t feel safe. We didn’t stay in long. Anything could have been swimming beneath us, and should we have taken a tumble and come to grief in a strong wave, I wouldn’t have trusted that the life savers would have seen us in time to save us.

We packed up and headed up to the grassed foreshore.

There wasn’t any rain, but the palm trees were thick with fog moisture, and dropping huge droplets of water similar to the drops that fall from the sky just as it’s about to open up with a torrential downpour. It was a bit distressing to see chairs and a podium set up under the palms awaiting a wedding party. What a day for it, what would be the chances eh!

It was after 2pm when we left to come home and the fog was still thick. However, it’s now 3.30pm and it seems to have finally lifted. For the sake of the Bride to be and the wedding party, I do hope it lifted in time.

I’m pleased to have seen it, but I’m no hurry to see another mid-day dense sea fog.