Written by Michele Roldán-Shaw
Photography by Will Guscio and Ted Huffman
ell, the weekend is finally here and you’re ready for some serious R&R. You grab the current issue of the Bluffton Breeze Magazine and flip to the tide chart... let’s see, dead low tide at 3:23 PM.
Oh yeah, you’ve got yourself a Sandbar Sunday!
If you’ve never been to THE Sandbar, or the “Redneck Riviera,” as it is fondly called by many local revelers, it might be difficult to understand the draw. What could be so special about a little strip of sand that disappears every time the tide comes in?
The answer is something you just have to experience for yourself. Imagine being in the middle of a deep river, surrounded by flowing current, yet having your feet planted firmly on the ground. As the tide moves in and starts to cover the sandbar, it can even create the optical illusion of people walking on water. It’s sort of magical, really. Look in any direction and you’ll see the wondrous natural beauty that the Carolina Lowcountry is famous for: low islands lush with pine, oak and palmetto, marsh grass all lit up in the late evening sun, deep blue sky overhead and pristine saltwater that’s as comfortable as a baby’s bath. To top it all off, you’re holding an ice-cold beverage and hanging out with some of your best friends in the whole world. When the day is through you’ll pile back into the boat and head to dry land for a shower and an evening meal, your body and soul completely refreshed by a healthy dose of “river time.”
“The May River is what Bluffton thrives on,” said Carolyn Smith, who has been going to the sandbar since the early 1960’s. “My whole life I’ve been told that a true Blufftonian doesn’t care what time it is, they only care if it’s high tide or low tide.”
Indeed, to hang out at the sandbar one must be aware of the fact that it’s only accessible for about 4 hours, 2 times a day. As the tide recedes, it exposes a buildup of sand that some people believe may have formed over the shipwrecked hulk of an old molasses barge that ran aground there. (This theory is unconfirmed; it’s also possible that the large size of this particular bar is just a result of a curve in the river and a pattern of eddies and swirls that have caused a substantial amount of sand to settle there from upriver). When the sandbar starts to show, boats anchor up a little ways off and people of all ages clamor to the area to swim, play, drink, eat, sunbathe, waterski, and go tubing. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see upwards of a hundred boats lining the sandbar on a busy weekend. But it didn’t used to be like that.
“When I was growing up in the Brighton Beach area, there were very few children,” recalls Carolyn. “Matter of fact, there might have only been five of us. So we made friends with the kids whose families came to town from other places, like Estill, Allendale or Savannah. When we went to the sandbar, we were a family and everyone watched out for each other.” Carolyn remembers the grown-ups teaching her and her playmates some of their most valuable life lessons on the sandbar, pure Bluffton wisdom that encompassed skills like fishing, crabbing, driving a boat, and keeping the river clean. If they ever had any cuts, blisters, infected mosquito bites or ringworm (which Carolyn said was much more common amongst kids back then) they were told to “go get in the river.” “It worked,” she insists. “I don’t know if it’s the salt or what, but something’s in there that cures it.”
A favorite pastime was to catch the outgoing tide and float to the sandbar from a private dock upriver. People have made the trip on inner tubes, pool floats, and even beer coolers or boat cushions. But in Carolyn’s day, the transport of choice was a homemade raft. Whenever there was a particularly high tide, called a spring tide, she and her friends collected the washed-up stalks of dead marsh grass and used them to build floating beds worthy of baby Moses himself. “We’d spend all day packing it tight,” said Carolyn. “The grass would stick together by itself, and you could float for days on those rafts. Well, you could at least get two good trips to the sandbar and back.”
Another thing she says she doesn’t see the kids doing anymore is swimming at night, especially when there’s a full moon and a high tide. That’s when the phosphorescence is at its ghostly green finest. This stunning effect is created when bioluminescent plankton in the river convert chemical energy into light energy; any stir in the water cause them to emit tiny points of glow-in-the-dark light, sort of like thousands of miniature lightning bugs.
June Simoneaux, also a long-time Bluffton resident, fondly recalls her days of hand lining for crab off the back side of the sandbar. “You take a chicken neck with a weight and tie a string to it, then you just throw it out into the water and scoop ‘em up with a dip net,” said June. “We used to catch buckets of crabs like that.”
The back side, or in other words, the water between the sandbar and Myrtle Island, was generally off limits for the kids to swim in on account of the high concentration of stingrays. However, the thick pluff mud on that side of the bar inspired June and her contemporaries to call it Chocolate Island.“ The kids used to just wallow in that mud,” June said. “Then you did your swimming on the other side where all the boats were. Back then, everyone had small boats and bateauxs.”
June’s brother, Jeff Scott, is another sandbar veteran who recalls the good old days when he would haul his little wooden bateaux to the oyster factory in the back of his dad’s pick-up (he didn’t have a trailer) and strike out for the ultimate low-tide destination. When asked what memories he has of the sandbar over the years, Jeff tantalizingly stated that “there are a lot of things I remember that you can’t write.” But he did divulge the tale of one Mark Wise, whose daring river exploits live on in memory and photos. “He used to bring his big shrimp boat and anchor it out swimming distance from the sandbar,” said Jeff. “One 4th of July weekend, they all got “happy” and somebody must have dared him he couldn’t ski off the back of that boat. It had to have been 50 foot long, and you know shrimp boats don’t go very fast. We didn’t think he could do it, but I’ll be dag-gonned if he didn’t get up and ski off the back of that shrimp boat. There were tons of witnesses, and I think I even have a photograph of it somewhere.”
Despite all the rowdy fun that’s sure to go on in the river, it has always been considered a safe family environment. No one can remember any serious injuries, beyond just the occasional waterski mishap or unpleasant encounter with a stingray or jellyfish. Forrest Baughman, sandbar regular since 1972, was kind enough to offer some expert advice on that issue. “If you kind of shuffle your feet, they’ll get out of your way,” he said. “And I’ve never heard of anyone getting bitten by a shark. A boat caught on fire one time, but there weren’t any serious injuries or drownings. And I’ve never seen a fight at the sandbar.” (Although perhaps one was narrowly avoided the day some people from Hilton Head came over and set up their picnic on tables and chairs, complete with fine linen and china, before attempting to cordon off their section from other sandbar-goers. Forrest and his friends told them, “You can’t rope off sections of the sandbar! The Bluffton sandbar is for everyone.”
Forrest recalls fondly all the happy hours spent swimming, hanging out, having cookouts, and playing horseshoes, volleyball or touch football on the sandbar. He knows of people who have been married there, or had their ashes scattered over the sandbar. His daughter Dana, who once played and swam there with her little brother Forrest Jr., now brings her own son Carson to frolic in the warm, nurturing waters. “I can’t imagine Bluffton without the sandbar,” said Forrest. “It’s my favorite place in the whole world, just a perfect spot to hang out and have good time.”
A common theme you hear from anyone who’s been going to the sandbar for awhile is the importance of respecting the river and keeping this precious environment clean. Original Bluffton folk were taught from a young age that you simply did not throw trash in the river, and they hope that the newcomers will take this message to heart. “It didn’t matter who you were, why you went to the sandbar, or what you did there, you didn’t leave any trash,” Carolyn said. “When you got ready to go, it all went with you.”
She also stressed the importance of safe and responsible boat-driving, which revolves around respecting other boaters, and looking out for people in the water. June Simoneaux agrees. “My granddaughter will be the 5th generation to swim off that sandbar,” she said. “I hope we can keep it clean and safe out there for everybody.”
These days, Carolyn continues to go to the sandbar with a lot of the same friends she had from way back when. “I still enjoy it just as much as I did then,” she said. “After a long hard week of work, you can go to the sandbar, get in that saltwater and it’s very therapeutic. You forget all your troubles and everything is just kind of taken care of.”
Almost half a century after Carolyn first started going to the sandbar, the feeling is still the same. This longevity is a testament to the important role that the sandbar plays in building a sense of community among Blufftonians. The fact that it’s a public space which gets wiped clean every few hours is perhaps what makes it the perfect neutral ground. Nobody can own it, exploit it, monopolize it, develop it or commercialize it. It exists for the benefit and enjoyment of anyone who can get themselves there at low tide. If you don’t have a boat, just take Carolyn’s advice and build a spartina raft. When you arrive at the legendary Redneck Riviera, it’s guaranteed there will be someone there to slap you on the back and pass you a cold beer or a handful of boiled peanuts. Long live Sandbar Sundays!
