Quick Take:
Capitola Village restaurants got by with just minimal impacts from this week’s large swells, and many of them hope to reopen by New Year’s Eve. Some are even shooting for a Saturday dinner opening, while others are already serving customers again.
Restaurants in Capitola Village didn’t come away from this week’s high tides and massive waves unscathed, but they fared much better than they did in January, and are even shooting for a New Year’s Eve reopening.
Early Saturday morning brought more large swells and high tides to Santa Cruz County, with swells reaching up to 15 feet. National Weather Service meteorologist Sarah McCorkle said that breaking waves were likely larger than that.
On Saturday morning, business owners and workers moved as quickly as they could, sweeping up sand and seaweed from their decks and removing plywood from their windows. The tide was still quite high, but not as intense as the huge waves that flooded the Esplanade on Thursday.
“We’re 100% better than last year,” said Zelda’s on the Beach kitchen manager Josh Whitby as he worked to take down the plywood protecting their windows from the waves. “I just need to get my deck cleaned off and build a temporary railing down at the end of the deck.”
Whitby had help from friends and workers — even some Soquel High School football players came to work on clearing the deck.
Local officials lifted evacuation warnings for all areas of Santa Cruz County by late Saturday morning and the Santa Cruz Wharf, which had closed in advance of expected Saturday swells, reopened by 1 p.m.
Staff with the county’s emergency operations center toured the coast Saturday morning and said the effects of overnight storm “appear minimal,” though some beaches had experienced “significant sand loss” the county wrote in a Facebook post.
California State Parks closed the platform parking lot and facilities at Rio Del Mar State Beach, as well as the campground, parking lot and lower day-use parking areas of Seacliff State Beach through Jan. 2. The agency said Saturday that backcountry trails at Wilder Ranch State Park would be closed at least through Tuesday because of poor trail conditions.
But in Capitola Village, which had been closed to public access after Thursday’s damaging ocean swells, My Thai Beach owner Dominick King agreed that things were much better this time around.
“We were a little worried today, so we came out to clean and prep hoping that everything was gonna work out okay, and things did turn out pretty okay,” he said.
King said that the only real damage at My Thai Beach was to a little bit of drywall on its exterior, leaving a small hole in the wall. King said that the restaurant has temporarily blocked the hole, and it should not pose much of an issue. He added that he hopes to open up in time for Saturday dinner service.
“So long as there’s no big wonky wave that pops through at the last minute, I think we’ll be good to go,” he said.
The Sand Bar, which sits a few doors down from My Thai Beach, got hit the hardest on Thursday. Owner Jeff Lantis said that the restaurant’s floor got soaked, requiring them to pull up the flooring to dry it. He wants to open up for New Year’s Eve, but needs all the help he can get in order to make it happen: “luckily, I have a lot of friends.”
Just up the block, El Toro Bravo was already back in business, only needing to stay closed on Thursday.
“No one could get down here, and we spent the day cleaning up gross water anyways,” said owner Kristie Baron. “But we were out of here by 4:00 [on Thursday] and we were open on Friday.”
Again, Baron said that was a huge step up from January, when the restaurant lost power for four days, spoiling their perishable foods. She added that there was much more water in the restaurant, too.
NWS meteorologist McCorkle said that another large swell event is possible midweek this coming week, but it’s not expected to be as impactful because the tides will not be so high. But even though the village weathered the storm better this time, it’s just the latest in an exhausting few years for the beachside businesses.
“Everything from being shut down for months because of the coronavirus to being shut down because of this is just sad,” said Lantis. “It’s really hard to tread water.”
“Everything from being shut down for months because of the coronavirus to being shut down because of this is just sad,” said Lantis. “It’s really hard to tread water.”