February 2009 (ROTM #2) Hot Water Beach, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand
The rip of the month for January showed a massive rip on one of Auckland’s extremely dangerous west coast beaches. Tragically, only a week after posting this picture, Sonny Fai a player for the Auckland Warriors National Rugby League team drowned in a rip at nearby Bethells Beach. One of his coaches drowned in similar conditions at the end of January on the same coastline.
There are some beaches that are just not safe for swimming. It is hoped that Sonny’s drowning, a result of trying to save his younger brother who got caught by the rip but was saved, will encourage people to think twice about swimming outside the flags. If a young, strong and fit professional rugby player can't save himself from a strong rip current, what chance does the average person have?
The rip picture(s) this month shows another rip in New Zealand, but in contrast, the beach in the top photo looks perfectly safe. Hot Water Beach is a famous tourist destination in the Coromandel Peninsula because at low tide, natural hot springs bubble up through the sand to the surface.
The beach is also known for its rips and although the day I took this picture in 1999 was beautiful and calm, the presence of rocks has created a very subtle and weak rip to the left of the main rock. You can spot this rip because as the water flows offshore from the shoreline it meets the incoming water with the waves causing some surface rippling and disturbance. In other words, the surface of the rip looks different to the surrounding smoother water. I took this picture to show that rips can develop around rocks even on a very SAFE LOOKING day.
Now I show the picture during my educational talks because 30 minutes later the man walking in the shallow water had drowned. A 60 year old German tourist, he couldn't swim, got dragged out in the rip, panicked and had a heart attack. Before the accident happened, I took the picture of the signs up warning people about rips in english and in other languages, including German (bottom pic). What this shows is that if you don't understand what a rip is, signs like this are completely useless. He was the second person to drown in on that beach that week and several people drown on Hot Water Beach every year. Amazingly, we went back for a holiday in December 2009 and the same sign was there except now it's overgrown by vegetation! Signs based on text messages only are totally ineffective and don't work...it's as simple as that. They have no educational value at all. This drowning should never have happened.
If you recognise the picture, it was on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Saturday December 20, 2008.
Tragically, the man in the top photo drowned in that rip moments later