Bay lifeguards do fantastic job throughout year
This past Saturday, at around 2pm at Pollok Beach, Summerstrand, we (the public) bore witness, first-hand, to the great work that professional and volunteer lifeguards do each day on our beaches to keep them safe for us to enjoy.
So this message is for them. The weather was great and the sea clear and perfect for swimming and catching waves.
A number of Summerstrand Surf Lifesaving Club Nippers families gathered from just after lunch to enjoy the winter sun and surf.
Nippers is a water safety programme run under the auspices of Lifesaving South Africa through the various surf lifesaving clubs – Summerstrand, Kings Beach, Humewood and Bluewater Bay being some in our bay – and the movement around the country.
The Nippers programme is a natural springboard to becoming a junior and senior lifeguard and one can represent SA in global competitions. We do well in these competitions, with a number of top lifeguards over the years from PE.
On Saturday, about 12 Nippers, along with a lot of other bathers, were out catching waves on bodyboards. There were some big swells coming through, directly in front of the Summerstrand clubhouse.
All of a sudden (and things happen in seconds) the professional, municipal lifeguards came speeding past us with Malibu board on hand (better than Baywatch!) and headed straight out over the large breakers. They were amazing.
As it turned out, a bather was in some difficulty quite far out and needed assistance.
Nippers are specifically instructed not to try to effect a rescue since they are not qualified lifeguards and often a lot smaller than the adults swimming in the deeper water, and are therefore told only to signal for help (which they did).
But they instinctively headed over to the bather in trouble and one handed him a board to assist with buoyancy.
The breaking waves and panicking of the bather made it hard for him to hold onto the board, which slipped out from under him but kept him afloat long enough for the lifeguards to arrive with the Malibu board and complete a rescue.
The bather was brought back to shore and calm returned to the scene, although it was a little traumatic seeing this unfold right in front of us, knowing our Nippers were involved, albeit in a lesser role.
All this could have ended very differently and tragically and hence I want to express gratitude for a number of reasons: to the professional, municipal lifeguards who were alert even with all the distractions around and a lot of bathers to watch; to the Nippers who signalled for help and handed over the board, and, on a broader scale, to all the lifesaving clubs and especially all the parents who volunteer in these clubs to keep them going, devoting time on the weekends to train our Nippers to be future lifeguards.
In Port Elizabeth, we are privileged to have awesome conditions for water sports, which is why so many are held here each year, including the Lifesaving SA Nationals, and our lifesaving clubs and lifeguards carry the burden of keeping the beaches safe for all to enjoy.
Nick, Summerstrand