Cancún’s beaches should start to get fresh sand from Jan. 30th

Belgian maritime engineering and construction giant Jan De Nul has begun to assemble machinery and equipment ready for the restoration of miles of Cancún’s beaches washed away by Hurricane Wilma three months ago.

This is what I know so far about the Cancún Beach Reclamation Project: 

• The first ‘reclaimed’ sands will begin to be vacuumed onto the beach before the end of January.
• Approximately 2.7m cubic meters of sand will be dredged from two offshore sandbanks to replenish the 12 km strip from Punta Cancún to Punta Nizuc (view a map).
• Operations will start along this stretch of beach in front of the Hilton Cancún Golf & Spa Resort and move south, in the direction of Punta Nizuc. (Note this has changed since my Jan. 16th post)
• Crews will then return to the Hilton and move north towards Punta Cancún.
• A little over half a mile (0.9 km) of beach will be reclaimed each week.
• Specialist engineers from the Federal Electricity Company (CFE) are supervising the works, which are scheduled to be finished by the end of April.
• Méxicana De Dragados, S.A. de C.V., a 100%-owned Jan de Nul subsidiary is carrying out the works.
• Jan de Nul has sent one of its fleet of "trailing suction" dredgers to Cancún – the Filippo Brunelleschi (pictured). 
• The Cancún Hotel Association is considering asking the federal government for an extra $160m pesos to further extend of the beach to 60m, the width it boasted before Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. This is more than double the 22 to 28m agreed with Jan de Nul on December 20th.

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