Busy weekend to end the surf life saving season

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

Easter traditionally marks the end of the Surf Life Saving patrol season, and this year finished on a high.

At Hot Water Beach there have been up to 2000 people on the beach at a time, SLSC chairman Gary Hinds said.

'We've had an extremely busy weekend.'

The Hot Water Beach SLSC carried out eight rescues on Friday, 21 rescues on Saturday and 10 rescues on Sunday.

People ran into trouble through lack of knowledge, Hinds said.

'It's a lack of swimming ability and an inability to realise you're in trouble before you're in it.

'We get a lot of tourists, so for us it's hard to educate, as they arrive and go within an hour and a half.

'It's not like other places where people spend the whole day at the beach.'

Often, there's also a language barrier, Hinds said.

'It's really frustrating when we get tourists who don't speak English.'

Raglan SLSC had no rescues over Easter weekend, despite rough conditions and a busy beach.

David Galuszka, from Raglan SLSC, put the successful weekend down to the patrollers.

'Conditions were bad and we had just as many people on the beach as we do at Christmas.

'There would have been an easy couple thousand, but we've got a good team.'