A SURF SWIMMING ACCESSORY

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15834, 3 June 1919, Page 4

A SURF SWIMMING ACCESSORY

Amc yra various stores which the Defence Department is offering for sale, as not being wanted for war purposes any longer, are a considerable number of life rafts. In addition to owners of vessels, surf clubs have their direction called to these by the Department, and we suggest to the Castlecliff Surf Club that it secure as many of these rafts as its funds will allow. At most of the up-to-date Araeircan bathing resorts, whether surf or otherwise, rafts are moored at distances varying from a hundred yards to a quarter mile off shore, and are found very valuable. They not only merely enable an xchausted swimmer to reach security, but they provide a very welcome rest to those swimmers whose strength is unimpaired. To swim out to the raft is the proper thing at' Florida resorts, for instance, and swimmers find it good spurt merely to lie on them and enjoy the motion and the wash of the water. Very secure moorings would be needed for the violent sea which sometimes runs at Castlecliff, but if they were the requisite weight and periodically inspected and renewed, the raffs ought to bo quite safe. A oouple of lines of ten rafts each, one, say, a hundred yards, and the other two hundred yards out, and spaced aixmt a hundred and fifty yards apart, would serve about a mile of beach, and be a distinct attraction to Castlecliff. 'The matter is one in which the-Harbour Board and the Borough Council could, and, in fact, should, assist the Surf Club,