Stuff Digital Edition

When not to swim

When my grandparents (and mother) lived at Piha through the 1920s and ’40s, they ran the store, the post office, the boarding house, and ran a farm, and got to learn how to survive on the wild west coast.

That history instilled in our family a love of the coast so we would holiday at Piha during the 1950s and ’60s.

It was the time of uninviting gravel roads, and the same old dedicated, repeat, seasonal holiday-makers and old-timers, all of whom knew the rules: unless you are a strong swimmer, never swim on an outgoing tide.

The outgoing tide is when holes and rips develop causing extremely dangerous conditions for the unwary.

That knowledge was freely shared by regulars and locals to a much smaller group of beachgoers than the crowds of today.

Today, the rips and holes develop on the outgoing tide just as they always have but no one, not even the surf lifesaving organisations or Water Safety NZ, put any great effort into warning swimmers of those specific dangers.

Surely it is easier and more responsible to persuade a would-be swimmer to avoid the danger than to allow them to blindly swim into difficulties.

Ongoing reports of the huge numbers of swimmers who need rescuing while swimming on outgoing tides suggests a re-think on water safety philosophies is needed.

Roger Clarke, Pirongia

Opinion

en-nz

2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://stuff.pressreader.com/article/282003265695671

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