Winter is a quiet time in North Topsail Beach, N.C. Pastel-painted homes and condos sit like empty Easter eggs, their windows boarded against winter storms. Some property owners upgrade and repair their homes during the off-season, preparing for summer’s surge of visitors.  Hammers and skill saws interrupt the rhythmic sounds of breakwater, wind and seagulls. North Topsail Beach is one of three small towns located on Topsail Island, a barrier sand spit that hosts about 6,000 year-round residents. During the summer, that number swells to 60,000. Tourists clog the roads and their brightly colored umbrellas dot the beach. But in January, it’s hard to imagine that the island generates $110 million in beach recreation revenue a year. Full-time residents say they enjoy winter’s serenity. At low tide, families and neighbors walk the beach, looking for shark teeth and sand-polished fragments of glass. “It still gives me goosebumps,” said North Topsail Beach resident Connie Pletl. “Knowing that I’m on the edge of a continent.” Pletl has rosy cheeks and flyaway brown hair. She raised her four children on Topsail Island. The family moved to the northern tip of Topsail Island in 1996 after her was stationed at Marine Corps Base Camp… Read More

Retired elementary schoolteacher Pam Kosar tends sea turtle nests. Every morning during the spring and summer she or another volunteer walks along North Topsail Beach’s shoreline, scanning the sand for turtle tracks. North Topsail Beach is the northern tip of a barrier island in the southeast corner of the state with designated turtle nesting habitat. During the warm months, pregnant loggerhead turtles creep onto the shore to lay more than a hundred eggs in sandy holes on the beach. But on the north end of the island, these federally-protected turtles crawl out of the sea, heavy with eggs, and bump into a 12-foot high sandbag wall. Each bag is 10-feet long, five-feet wide and weighs four to five hundred pounds.  Stacked on top of each other, they form an impassable boundary between the ocean and the buildings behind them. The bags stand in the way of pregnant sea turtles, but they also prevent the ocean from dragging property into the surf. Kosar said sometimes turtles lay their eggs in front of the bags despite the less-than-ideal environment.  When this happens, she moves the eggs to an area without sandbags. “The nests will wash away if we don’t move them,” said… Read More

New Jersey native John Shoffner used to plan his vacations to North Topsail Beach around town meetings. Shoffner owns a condo on the north end of the island, but as a part-time resident he can’t vote in local elections.  However, he’s allowed to speak during a meeting’s public comment period, and he wants a terminal groin on North Topsail Beach. “Since the beach started getting so bad, prices have been dropping like a rock,” Shoffner said. “I think I’m the only person in New Jersey who’s lost money on beachfront property.” Shoffner bought his beach condo in 2007. The condo sits near the New River Inlet, the most erosion-prone area in North Topsail Beach. The inlet’s channel migrates south, cutting into the island’s north end. Shoffner and his neighbors protected their condos with a 12-foot sandbag wall, a last-ditch effort to stave off the shrinking shoreline. Shoffner said the area needs something more stable than sandbags and beach nourishment. Trained as a mechanical engineer, he said when he sees something broken his first instinct is to fix it. “I understand the rules, and I admired the whole no-jetty thing,” he said. “But nobody is happy here. And we need something… Read More