Good analysis, David. You win the weekend at CBC. Here's the story as I understand it. (Corrections appreciated):
About a mile up Arana Gulch lies Delaveaga Golf Course. On the golf course lies the practice driving range, where if you badly slice your drive, the ball ends up downhill in Arana Gulch. The balls furnished by the driving range bear the logo of Ocean Honda and it's blue "Wally the Whale" as an advertising reminder.
When the occasional miss hit golf ball dribbles downhill into Arana Gulch, it is likely to get washed into the creek which runs fast in winter storms. Arana Gulch creek passes through a pipe and into the Upper Santa Cruz Harbor, which gets shoaled by all the sediment, thus the need for dredging.
Golf balls sink in fresh water like Arana Gulch creek, and get buried in the sediment. When the dredge snorkel sucks up the sediment, in the spoils are golf balls, which then get pumped all the way out the Harbor, and into the ocean just seaward of Twin Lakes Beach.
Here lies the science experiment DH has alluded to. Golf balls float in salt water due to greater sea water density than fresh water. The Delaveaga practice balls, which have now traveled about 2 miles downhill, rise to the surface from the dredge pipe terminus in the ocean and wash ashore onto the Beach.
Theoretically, a golf ball could float all the way to Hanalei Bay, or even make a passage through the NW Passage, as the occasional rubber ducky has.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ucks-land-British-shores-15-year-journey.html
But put a golf ball in a lake, and it will sink. How do I know this? As a kid I made spare change wading in our local golf course water hazard ponds about sunset and retrieving lost golf balls with my crab pincer big toe. The balls were then sold to the practice range for a quarter a piece, as were golf tees for a dime a dozen.
OK, David, how did
you learn the flotation qualities of golf balls?
Fear not, all is not lost and I offer another guest weekend at CBC to whomever can answer the following navigational history question: the location in Arana Gulch where the practice golf balls drop out of sight into the poison oak is significantly unique on any chart or map that uses latitude and longitude. This position is so unique, that back in the early days of Santa Cruz, there was a monument on the location, and tourists were taken in open cars up to the site to say they had stood there. What is this position?