It may not have the best beach in the world any more, but it's not stopping the Westshore Surf Lifesaving club as it prepares to defend a record of 14 consecutive Hawke's Bay club championships next week.
The countdown starts on Friday with a team of 21 members entered in the three-day Surf Lifesaving New Zealand Eastern Region Championships at Mt Maunganui.
Also among the 850 competitors will be members of Waimarama and Ocean Beach Kiwi clubs.
The Hawke's Bay championships will be held at Waimarama on February 3-4, and veteran club member Brian Quirk is well aware the others will be out to make sure Westshore don't make it win No 15.
But the club is prepared, going through a revival in strength in what is a typical Kiwi sport honing skills to better carry out some other role, in this case, keeping beaches safe and saving lives.
Mr Quirk, a club member since joining at the age of 15 in 1966, said it has about 350 members, after a "major surge" in October when about 140 youngsters turned out at the club's open day.
The numbers are key to maintaining the consistent supremacy and the vital skills for events including the beach sprints and flag races, surf, swim and ski races, and ironman and ironwoman, said Mr Quirk. But he doubts the erosion-wracked Westshore Beach will ever again be able to stage the national surf lifesaving championships, which it did in 1963 and 1984 and which will be held this year in Gisborne in March.
He said the recent tragedies at Haumoana and Waimarama — four deaths in five days from January 10-14 — were the most he could remember in separate incidents in one week in the 52 years he has been in surf lifesaving in the region.
But he's unsure how such tragedies can be avoided, noting all three involved victims not from Hawke's Bay, and that most coastal drownings in the region involve visitors, who may be less familiar with conditions, whether they be those of the sea or of the footing under the waves.
In the meantime the club members can only do their best. "We've got quite a reasonable team," he said. "I guess the others will be trying to knock us off."