A female surfer places her surfboard on the beach, moments after emerging from the challenging waves at Cable Hut Beach. -Ian AllenTHE KHAKI sand of this South Coast beach, east of Kingston, stretches out like dunes of a wretched desert in some exotic locale. The untidy dunes dot the shore's skin like dark acne. No coconut trees bow their heads in homage to the beautiful coastline. A few persons paddle half-heartedly in the bluish-grey water as big waves growl against the shore.
Even the incoming sea breeze is harsh. It doesn't caress, it blasts your face with its hot sandpapery breath.
Welcome to Cable Hut Beach.
"It can gwaan still," one gap-toothed rastafarian told The Gleaner news team. "Is not the best beach in the world, but it is ours."
Body surfing and belly boarding has become a popular past time at Cable Hut .
"I like the waves here, they are excellent for belly boarding, and the surf is pretty powerful," one 'surfer' said.
A few feet away, some men are involved in a spirited game of 'keep-up' football. A few couples were seen lounging on towels and cuddling up.
However, one woman, a first-time visitor of the beach, complained of being 'bored'.
"This is one of the worst beaches I have ever experienced. The sand is black and coarse, the waves are too big, there is a whole section of the beach where you can't even swim, and I don't even see any lifeguards on duty," she complained.
The beach has a hard history. In 1996, tragedy struck at the Cable Hut beach in Bull Bay, St. Andrew when three teenagers from a group of five drowned at a restricted area of the beach. A few minutes before the news team arrived at the beach on Ash Wednesday, a white Toyota Corolla car smashed into a retaining wall outside the beach, killing a vendor.
The beach got its name from a hut. In the 1920s when Kingstonians started using Cable Hut as the only bathing area outside Kingston Harbour and close to the Corporate Area, a small hut made of wood about eight feet by twelve feet, with a concrete foundation and a rusty cable leading into the sea stood unused on the beach.
After the Palisadoes Road to Port Royal was built in the 1940s, there was bathing on the seaward beaches of the Palisadoes. Although the raw sewage from Kingston was dumped into the sea at Harbour Head, people in those days did not care or know about polluted waters.
"The beach relatively clean now, and business not too bad. But I believe it could be better. When you go east in the direction of St. Thomas, there really aren't any great beaches, so maybe more could be done to make this beach safer, and create bigger water recreation spaces where families can come and enjoy a good swim," one vendor said.
The Cable Hut beach is next door to the Brooks Pen Beach, which caters to weddings, church groups, and parties.
