KEY POINTS:
Their core business - saving lives or preventing drownings - remains the priority for members of the Mairangi Bay Surf Lifesaving Club (SLC) and, encouraged by the success of their paid life-guarding programme last summer, they will be back bigger and better this year.
The initiative, which the
club says offers an attractive alternative to "flipping hamburgers" for university students and others seeking paid holiday leave, has been supported by the North Shore City Council and others in encouraging young men and women to swap tedium for Speedos.
The club accepts that while they do not have to deal with the mass rescues and often-dangerous conditions of their counterparts on West Coast beaches, they can never drop their guard. The Mairangi Bay SLC remains proud that since their formation in the early 1950s, there has not been a drowning at the beach.
Like many however, they still struggle to understand why three people drowned at Browns Bay a couple of years ago.
With financial help from the council, Coca-Cola, Youth Town and the Lion Foundation, they took special pride in the role they played last summer which allowed an estimated 80,000 people to swim on patrolled East Coast beaches from Long Bay to Takapuna on hot days. There were no drownings.
While based at Mairangi Bay, the club provides paid patrols at other beaches. They had towers at Long Bay, Browns Bay and Takapuna. That will be expanded to second towers at Long Bay and Takapuna and one at Milford this summer.
"Lifesavers in New Zealand do an excellent job," said club general manager Ross Pounds who brought 20 years' experience from California's Seal Beach to the club. "In the US, lifeguards can't be volunteers. They are paid by the county or the state."
The also have the powers of arrest and carry firearms.
"Our paid programme works really well," said Pounds. "These lifeguards put in 2400-plus hours in an extensive programme. There were patrols on a daily basis from December 23-February 6 and at weekends until the end of March."
In the last season - from Labour weekend to Easter - the club were involved in 40 rescues, rendered first aid on 41 occasions and undertook 953 "preventative actions" which included encouraging people not to swim in jeans or convincing youngsters they should be closer to the shore on their flutter boards.
"We are at relatively low-risk beaches and sometimes criticised for taking such a pro-active approach," said Pounds. "But we wouldn't do it any other way."
While the bigger beaches did not have the distinctive red and yellow flags to mark the "swim between the flags area," lifeguards were encouraged that swimmers tended to gravitate towards the patrol tower in the centre of the beach.
But, it is not simply a case of cash-strapped hopefuls turning up and being allocated to a tower.
All senior surf club members must be qualified and undergo annual refresher courses. The new equipment, including IRBs (inflatable rescue boats) and rescue tubes, require technical ability and continuing training.
For any club member keen to step into the competitive arena there is a strict criterion which requires a number of logged hours on duty - either in a paid or voluntary role - before competing at the national championships.
